Finding a good Bible believing church is an important step for a new believer. Hebrews 10:25 tells us not to forsake the assembly or neglect meeting together, and to stir up one an other and encourage each other. 1 John 3:14 says that we know that we have passed from death to life when we have love for our brothers. So gathering together in church is an amazing opportunity to meet other believers, study the Word of God together, pray, and worship together. It will help strengthen your faith as you draw nearer to God.
A few things to note:
- No Church is perfect
- No Denomination is perfect
- No Pastor is perfect
- No Church members are perfect
If you are looking for perfection, you’ll have to wait until you meet in heaven. Churches are full of flawed people, hypocrites, and sinners. So you are in good company! This is not license for abuse and scandal, but it should allow us to look at people with grace and mercy when they do mess up.
It’s also important to not set a person, pastor, church, or denomination as your standard for Christ or your relationship with Him. I once heard an analogy that about listening to a terrible cover band. Just because the cover band portrayed the music poorly of (insert you favorite artist/band here) doesn’t mean that you would hold that against the original artist. In the same way we must recognize that Christians, though we strive to be Christ-like, will fail over and over again, and sometimes they are very poor representatives of the original. The unfortunate thing is that people will let you down from time to time. Always keep your focus on Jesus!
So how do you find the right church? The first thing I would recommend is PRAY. Ask God to guide you along your search for a good church. Then try out a few churches. Many churches livestream their church services now, so it’s a good opportunity to check out a church online before you step foot in the building. Look at their website at their statement of beliefs.
I also recommend going as close to home as possible. There is no need to travel 30+ minutes to attend church unless you live so remotely that there are no closer churches.
Once you do find a church, it’s important to put down deep roots. After you settle on a place to fellowship, get involved. Volunteer to serve in one of the ministries that the church has available. Ask what the greatest need is. Use your talents to serve the local body of believers.
A word about denominations:
Our ministry is non-denominational by nature. We are spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, not a denomination. There are many great denominations that differ on minor issues but agree on major issues.
There are likely going to be a lot of Christians from certain denominations that want me to recommend their tradition over others, including my own church tradition and denomination. However, it’s easier for me to call out denominations and doctrines to stay away from because they are considered heretical than it is to endorse one denomination over another.
While our ministry is “non-denominational” in the sense that we preach Jesus for the kingdom’s sake and not trying to grow a specific denomination, we have a faith tradition and a denominational church that “sent” us to the mission field. We also work interdenominationally with other churches to help them reach their communities. We work with many Protestant churches including Charismatics/Pentecostals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Non-Denominational, Reformed etc.
There are great debates on Wesleyan-Arminianism, vs Reformed Theology/Calvinism, or continuitionism vs cessationism and many others. I encourage you, as you grow in your faith, to check some of these debates out and form your own opinion. These are what I would call family issues, as folks on both sides of these debates are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and in many cases we can agree to disagree on these non-salvific issues.
Some key doctrines to look for would be the Five Solas from the reformation.
- Sola Gratia - Grace Alone
- Sola Fida - Faith Alone
- Sola Christus - Christ Alone
- Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone
- Soli Deo Gloria - To The Glory of God Alone
The Five Solas state that Christians are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed by Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
Other key doctrines include:
- Man lives in a fallen state, separated from God due to sin
- There is One God
- God revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit (the Trinity)
- Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit
- Jesus is God from all eternity, creator of all things, and He chose to partially limit His power to come in the flesh
- He was fully God and fully man. He is Begotten but not created
- Jesus lived a sinless life
- Jesus suffered and died on the cross
- He had a bodily resurrection from the dead on the third day
As mentioned there are some churches and doctrines I would steer clear from. This is not a knock on the people in these churches, but unfortunately they differ too much from basic Christian beliefs that their beliefs would be considered heretical.
I won’t go into much detail here (maybe in later posts) but here are the churches that claim to be Christian that I would avoid:
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormonism)
- Jehovah’s Witnesses
- Unitarian Universalist
- Christian Science
- Any “Progressive” Christian churches (Theologically not politically necessarily, although sometimes these lines can be blurred)
- Any Denomination that doesn’t adhere to Scripture as their ultimate authority (Sola Scriptura)
- Any church that claims they are THE ONLY denomination that has the truth
- Any church where they seem to "worship" the pastor, or that you HAVE to go to their church to get the "True" word of God
- Legalistic Churches. By this I mean a church that puts too much of an emphasis on the outward appearance like attire, length of hair, facial hair, tattoos, jewelry, etc.. Many of these churches fall under the term fundamentalist and would be considered more theologically conservative (again, not necessarily politically, but it often shakes out that way.
In regards to the last one on the list, the Fundamentalist Church, I wouldn't necessarily label as their beliefs as heretical like many of the beliefs in a "progressive church". However, I have witnessed a lot of abuse and church hurt coming these types of congregations. They seem to care more about their standards and rules than the grace and mercy of Jesus. They often feel your adherence to these standards is directly tied to your salvation. Jesus called out this type of religious hypocrisy in several occasions in the Gospels when addressing the Pharisees. There is a fine line between going through a sanctification experience after being justified by the sacrifice of Jesus, and chasing after holiness as your means of salvation (AKA works-based salvation).
You may have a handful of personal checklist items that you are looking for in a church, and that’s great! But it’s important to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be in prayer when looking. When we moved from Illinois to Minnesota, we attended my wife’s home church for a while, but it wasn’t for us, plus it was a 45 minute + drive every week. After our son was born and we lived in a new area, we looked for a church close to home. I remember walking into a church that checked a bunch of the boxes for us. But as soon as the worship music started, my wife and I both felt like the life had been sucked out of the room. It was almost as if God wasn’t there (he is omnipresent so he is actually everywhere but we felt in our spirits that something was off). We packed up our son and left before the first song ended. We found out some years later that the pastor of that church had been charged with multiple sex crimes.
On the flip side, when we moved to a small rural community while my wife was expecting our daughter, we entered this small rural church about half a mile from our house. This church checked almost NONE of our boxes, but I could feel the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. I knew immediately that this would be our church home. The pastor and I became close friends. My wife and I began to serve in many capacities at the church. My wife was the nursery director for many years. I have done everything from running the Men’s Ministry, served as youth pastor, served on the board, and led the multimedia team.
While this guide doesn’t tell you point blank to go to church “X” or “Y”, I hope I gave you at least some framework as where to go from here. If you are one of the full time RV families that we have met on the road, we understand that you travel full time so it’s difficult to find a home church, so we would love the opportunity to have you fellowship with us online as we livestream weekly church services and bible studies.
If you find yourself stationary I would highly, highly recommend you find a physical church to attend even if you travel only part of the year. Find a church close to whatever you would consider “home base”. Attend that church when you are home, and if you have the option to attend that church online while on the road, consider that, or continue to follow us while you are traveling.
As always feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions! We want to support you on your journey!