How to choose a church: questions worth asking
Balanced questions for choosing a church, whatever your background: Bible, preaching, sacraments, community, children, distance, doctrine and membership.
Deo Gloria, . 4 minute read.
Choosing a church is one of the more consequential decisions a person makes, and one of the least discussed. Most people choose by feel: the music, the friendliness, how close it is. Those things matter, but they are not the only things. Here are questions worth asking of any church, whatever your background, followed by an honest note about where the publishers of this site stand.
Is the Bible treated as God’s Word?
Ask how the church regards the Bible. Is it read in worship, and how much of it? Is it treated as God’s own Word, to be believed and obeyed, or as a collection of human reflections? Do the leaders expect members to read it at home? A church can be warm, active and well run and still have quietly stopped believing that the Bible is true. You want to know that before you commit.
Is Christ preached?
Listen to a few sermons and ask what they are about. Is the text of Scripture explained, or used as a launching pad? Is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for sinners, at the centre, or does the message amount to advice for a better week? Good preaching leaves you knowing God better and knowing yourself more honestly. Length and style are secondary; substance is not.
How are baptism and the Lord’s Supper handled?
Every Christian church has these two, though under different names and with different understandings. Ask when and how they are celebrated, who may receive, and what the church teaches about what they mean. A church that cannot explain its own sacraments has not thought much about them.
Will you be known?
A church is a body, not an audience. Ask whether people will notice if you are absent for three weeks. Is there a pastor or elder who will know your name and your situation? Are there smaller groups where people actually talk? Are the sick visited and the grieving cared for? Large churches can do this well and small churches can do it badly; ask how it works.
What happens to children?
If you have children, or hope to, ask what the church does for them. Are they welcomed in the service, or sent out? Who teaches them, what are they taught, and from what age? Is there a path by which a child raised in the church becomes an adult member who understands what they believe? Look for a church that expects your children to become adult Christians and has a plan for it.
How far away is it?
Distance is not a spiritual question, but it becomes one. A church forty minutes away is a church you will attend on Sunday morning and nothing else. Being close enough to drop by, to help, to be helped and to see people during the week changes what belonging to a church means. All else being equal, closer is better.
What does the church believe?
Ask for the church’s statement of faith and read it. Is it short or long? Does it commit the church to anything you could hold it to? Does it match what you heard from the pulpit? Ask, too, how the church relates to other churches: does it belong to a wider body, and what does that body believe?
What does membership involve?
Churches differ enormously here. Some have no formal membership at all; some require a class; some require public profession of faith after instruction. Ask what is expected of members, what the church promises in return, and what happens if a member drifts away or falls into serious trouble. A church that promises nothing and asks nothing may be easy to join and easy to leave; consider whether that is what you want.
How to visit well
- Go more than once. One Sunday tells you about one Sunday.
- Attend the main service, not only a special event.
- Stay for coffee. The ten minutes afterwards tell you more than the sermon does about how the church treats people.
- Talk to the pastor. Ask the questions above, and notice whether they are welcomed.
- Read the church’s website and statement of faith before you go, and compare.
- Take your time. A church worth joining will still be there in a month.
- Pray about it. Ask God to lead you to a church where his Word is preached and where you can serve.
An honest note from the publishers
This site is published by Reformed Christians, and we should say why we think two of the questions above matter more than people expect.
The first is confession. We believe a church should write down what it believes, in enough detail to be held to, and should ask its leaders to teach in line with it. That does not make a church rigid; it makes it accountable. Doctrine shapes everything else a church does, whether or not anyone says so, and we would rather it be visible.
The second is catechesis, the steady teaching of the faith to children and newcomers. The Bible tells parents to teach God’s words to their children at home and on the road (Deuteronomy 6:6–7) and tells the church to entrust what it has received to reliable people who will teach others in turn (2 Timothy 2:2). The Christian faith is meant to be handed down, whole, from one generation to the next. Churches that stop doing that tend, within a generation or two, to have little left to hand down.
We may be wrong about which church you should join; we are not in your shoes. But we would rather you chose with your eyes open. The Reformed church listed on this site is one of the places you could visit while you decide, and it would be glad to answer any of the questions above.