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Church "Shopping"

There is something inexact about the term shopping to describe looking for a church home. "Shopping" implies that we are looking for the perfect church to meet all of our needs, like we would shop for a grill. The point of church is not to meet our needs for some sort of ministry or music or something else---the point is that human beings were created to worship God, and to do it in community with other believers. On the other hand, there are some things that are important. Here are some of the things I've been thinking about:

Non-essential things:
  • a building,
  • a particular type of music,
  • a bell choir, organ,
  • a super organized Sunday school,
  • communion every sunday.
Important things:
  • a congregation that sings songs that I can sing too,
  • sermons that are expository, explaining the Bible and how it relates to our lives
  • a congregation from all walks of life, ages, and races.
Essential things:
  • They've got to preach about Jesus and his love for his people
  • They've got to get involved in serving the community, and preferably also outside the immediate community
  • They've got to have interest in teaching the children the basics of the faith
  • They've got to care for the members of the congregation.
There are probaby more things that I'm not thinking of right now. In the past 3 years we've gone from a "mega-church" (although a more intellectual and less emotionally based one than usual, which was appropriate for a university town) to a small Moravian church (the first denomonation Michael felt he would be interested in joining, at least until they started messing with the pastor) to a non-denomonational split from that church (which eventually collapsed) to an Anglican church 35 minutes away from our original church. The buildings went from a large beautiful building with plenty of space, a place in a strip mall, a school, using a Christian teen hangout, and back to a school. The sermons went from 45 minute expositions with plenty of intellectual heft, 15 minute sermons which frankly said more than most 45 minute sermons I've been to, and 45 minute sermons with applications for how we should live our lives. The music has generally been a mostly contemporary mix with a few hymns for balance---not too loud or too "drummy".

I'll probably write more later. This describes basically our recent church history, and helps me figure out where I'm coming from.
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