The church is not sent on a mission by God, rather God is on a mission and the church is called to join him.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. Similarly, don’t judge a church by how relevant/cool their services are–this is an incomplete metric.
The majority of people looking for a new church are in fact Christians. I don’t know the precise percentage but it’s high. You don’t find very many people with no religious history looking up the yellow pages for a church to attend. Usually it’s folks with some previous exposure.
So that begs the question, what makes church good?
You probably noticed something weird about the question. How can church be good? A concert can be good, an art show is good, but isn’t a church supposed to be more than that?
Shouldn’t we be looking for a good church [community] and not a church that’s good?
The former seeks the nature of the community and the latter looks at the Sunday product/performance.
The former consider the nature of the entire community. The latter looks at what happens on a Sunday morning.
The former takes time to determine whether the people in the community are reflections of God’s redemptive call beyond Sunday morning. The latter ‘checks out’ a new church to see if it has preaching we like, music we like, the same kind of people like us.
I wonder if we’ve reduced ‘church’ to the experience we consume on Sunday morning and less about the identity we’re supposed to take with us through life.
If you’re eager to live out the gospel in your life then take the time to immerse into a community. I’m not necessarily talking about becoming a volunteer for the programs, attending the special lunches, but actually getting to know the people.
Invite someone over for lunch, see if anybody lives on your street. You’ll find out pretty quick if you’ve found people who share your zeal (or have even more) to redeem their communities, our city, and beyond.