SO YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A CHURCH TO ATTEND?

After taking Charity to Union Mills, I went to K-Mart and Wal-Mart to look for some office supplies and a coffee maker for the office at church. While I was there I visited with several friends who I have known for a few years.

How do I want to say this? Sometimes it's necessary to leave your home church. (all accept ours course) There is a time when you need to find a church that you can grow spiritually. There is a time that the leadership has just brought you down to the low end of your spiritual energy. And sometimes you don't even know how low you are running on.

There are many reasons that I could give for the need to change, but one would be, there is no energy of the Spirit in the leadership. I discovered that you don't use your people to build the church but you use the church to build up your people. Sometimes the people are so over worked and under feed spiritual with the Word that they are running on low energy fuel.

Just because a person is working hard in the church, active in singing in the choir, teaching a Sunday School class, working in children church, doesn't mean the person is healthy spiritually. Most of the time the case is they are just about dead spiritually.

And too often the person does not want to leave their home church. And they are sacrificing their spiritual life for the comfort of a home church that they are dying in.

Sometimes people are already nearly dead spiritually anyway so they are not aware of their condition. Some may be busy in their own world of working in the church, but its all form and motion and not spiritual to their spiritual health.

I have often gone to churches that were one step away from death. To try to revive the life that should be flowing in the body of the church was a challenge. What I would discover, the people were hungry for spiritual food, and would soak in the spiritual energy given to them.

Often the issue was not the people, but the preacher before I came. In come cases the preacher that was in the church when I came as an assoc. was lifeless himself.

I am not sure why preachers do not take time to see the spiritual condition of the flock that they have in the church. Some preachers have no energy to pastor. Some preachers get mad that the people are not working hard enough so they shout, fuss, and carry on about the lack of work in the church. Some preachers do not have a clue what the matter is.

Often when I have come and after a time, there is new life been put into the body of the people and there is new life springing up in the church. Then you can see healthy people again, there is spiritual growth as well as new people coming. The church body grows and stays healthy.

In the cases where the preacher gets his feelings hurt and doesn't like what he believes is against his leadership, he will ask that I leave. Only to see the church go back into the condition the church was before.

In this case in my thinking, its time to look for another church. Don't die before you time. There is life in other churches believe me.

WHAT KIND OF CHURCH THAT I MIGHT NOT NECESSARILY BE ONE I WOULD ATTEND.

1. The church does not need hype and emotion, and excessive entertainment.
2. The church does not necessary need to be large
3. The church does not necessary need to have a big building.
   
4. The church does need to provide the means whereby the people can grow in the nurture of the Lord.
5. A church that has a large crowd does not necessarily say that the church is healthy.
6. A feel good church service is not necessarily to say its the right kind of church to attend.
7. A church that has a large group of kids, does not necessarily say they have a healthy church.
8. A church that says they have 100's saved and baptized every year, is not necessarily a health church.
9. A church might not have the best singing in the community, might not have the best youth ministry, might not have the best children ministry.
10. A church might be one of the smallest church in the community and be a health church.

SO WHAT DOES A CHURCH NEED TO PROVIDE

1. A church needs a pastor and not just a preacher.
   
2. A church needs a pastor who is a teacher of the Word of God.
3. A church needs to provide spiritual food for the opportunity for spiritual growth.
4. A church needs to have set before them the objectives and goals that will bring glory to the Lord and spiritual growth to its members.

THINGS I WOULD LOOK FOR WHEN I ATTEND ANY CHURCH WITH THE IDEA OF ATTENDING THAT CHURCH FOR THE FIRST TIME.

1. What is the atmosphere as you enter into the church building?
2. What is the atmosphere as you enter into the worship service?
3. Listen to the music with your spirit not with your emotions.
4. Listen to the sermon. Is the message from the Bible text quoted by the preacher.
5. I would not necessarily look at the number of people attending.

What is hard in attending another church.

1. It is not necessarily going to be like the last church you attended.
2. It is not likely going to feel like the last church you attended.
3. It is not likely to meet your every expectations that you were hoping for.
4. It is going to feel strange and different. Which could be good.
   
5. The music and preaching might be different than what you had expected.
6. Sometimes it takes time to grow to like the right kind of church.