What Should I look for when choosing a church?
When choosing a church you want to look for a church that is biblical. What do we mean by that? Well, we want to be informed by the Bible as to what a church should be. And so we can go back to Acts for instance, where we see the early church. And it tells us that they were devoted to the Apostles' teaching. And so you want to look for a church that is faithful in teaching and preaching God's word. And like Paul says in Acts 20:26 that he always preached the whole counsel of God. And so you want to look for the church that does that.
But, you also want to look for a church that is not an organization or an institution but one that is a family, one that is a body, where there is mutual love and care and relationships. And so you want to see a church as devoted to that kind of biblical fellowship and biblical relationships. You also want to look for a church that has godly leadership that submits to Christ as the head because Christ is the head of the church. And so that's got to be obvious in the way that they make decisions and the way that they function as a church. So, you want to look out for those things. And then you want to look for a Church that is deeply dependent on the Spirit of God, and so prayer is an obvious way in which we see that happen. And so look for a church that's devoted to prayer.
So, if you see some of these things, and maybe you can add a few more to them, you're probably heading in the right direction to find a biblical church that will help you grow in your faith as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Chandran Samuel
serves as the pastor of Delhi Bible Fellowship (DBF-Dwarka), New Delhi. He is married to Sharon and they have four children.