Seeking A Church?

 a question came in:

"I was wondering if anyone can recommend a church for me and my family to go to. I tried ----------- in town but they didnt have a kids program yet. I would love to find a church we can go to and feel comfortable. Thanks to all."

 Several kind people suggested their particular group mentioning kids programs and service times. We heard that same question countless times through the years, I always assumed they needed to go to OUR church and "join up" to us.

Hopefully, they would become "committed" and "faithful" to our "vision" with their time, personal involvement, and finances. As a leader, there was a sense of disappointment if they did not choose US and instead picked another group. (Can you see a bit of the competitive spirit in that?)

Another phenomanom we observed was the large group of "church hoppers" that drifted from church to church. We knew many of those folks and a lot of them were devout and sincere in their belief. Over the years as my wife and I were anchors and pillars within our assembly, we watched many of them attend a church group until something would happen like a church split, the pastor fall into sin, a new pastor come in and bring change, or they had a falling out over something or with somebody.

Many of them ended up just existing in some bland, lukewarm group that required little of them in exchange for mutual acceptance.

When we left our church of 24 years, I had no idea what to look for and in much prayer I asked the Lord in regard to which one He might send me to. (funny how very few seem to just wait on God to direct them. It is easier to rely on "the arm of flesh" and human reasoning than get a specific word from the Lord).

 Well, God never said a word to me about visiting other churches, even though for several months, in great brokeness of spirit, I had told Him I would go to ANY of the 35-40 churches in our city. ANY of them. I missed the fellowship, worship, and community. So when God would not send me to any of the local churches, I went anyway.
Do you want to know what I learned? I learned I should have listened to God.

 It was the "same old, same old". A format, a program, a sermon, and mostly the same old one-man show. A lot of "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof" -1Tim 3:5
Only the faces, voices, and programs were different.

Were we against those groups self-righteously thumbing our noses at their efforts to be Christian, or just plain being too critical? The answer is a flat "NO!" At that point of being on the "potters wheel" of brokeness, we would have GLADLY joined in fellowship with any of them.
Going alone to visit, week after week, all I wanted was GOD. It did not matter to me what the name was, where they met, or who went there, all I cared about was being in the Presence of God.

I even went to a small all-black church, where I was the only visitor and the only white person there. That humble, little black church was as close as I got to experiencing some blessing from the Lord in a "normal" church.

Another out of town Pentecostal church had some very good singing and worship which we enjoyed, but it was packaged into the usual box of the One Man Show. One of the tip-offs was the big sign proclaiming the pastor's wife "FIRST LADY ------".  But we swallowed hard and returned a few times in an effort to "connect" to God and man, within the walls of a church.
We found that it helped if we closed our eyes, not looking at the musicians and singers on the stage-platform, and focused on Jesus.  

But what about "DO NOT FORSAKE THE ASSEMBLING OF YOURSELVES TOGETHER AS IS THE MANNER OF SOME...." ? 

 "This also is church"

 One Sunday afternoon I had stopped in to the local AMVETS donation center. A man I had known since childhood was working there and we got into a conversation about God and the Bible. In doing so, The Lord revealed to me something about his life and as we sat in my truck in front of his workplace, I asked if I could pray for him. As we prayed, the wonderful presence of the Lord absolutely filled the cab of that truck; I knew it, he knew it, the truck even knew it :)  After our prayer, he returned to work and as I was driving home, the Lord spoke very clearly to me: "This also is church".

My reaction then was "WHAT does that mean?"  -My "church" paradigm was still in the box, under a pastor, tithing and offering, and supporting our "ministry".

The fact that I had just assembled with someone in prayer according to what Jesus said in Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, was breaking up my views of what "church" means.

In fact, for months afterwards, I kept thinking about what God had spoken to me that day. "This also is church".  (At that time, I had no idea we would be leaving our assembly, even though services had become dry and empty.)  But God had planted a seed and as I was now reading the Bible studiously, the thought of what "church" actually is, according to God, slowly began to change. So much and so many things had been taken for granted, over-looked, and most of all, never examined in light of serious study of scripture.

I began to consider "church" in other places, outside the box. As I did so it began to dawn on me there was a great number of Christians in our community who did not set foot in the door of the local churches. And I understood there was-is a great revival waiting outside the walls of the traditional church institutions. At first, I thought , "how could we get them into ours" but the Lord quickly corrected me on that with "bring them in to WHAT?" And if that was not enough, my wife and I both began to receive dreams from the Lord about these matters, some of which are posted on this website. The "Slough" and "Two Dreams on a December Night" were important messages of direction from the Lord.

After our church resignation Sept. 29, 2004, and our failed experiments in "church shopping", we realized for us we were in an uncharted territory of spiritual wilderness and away from the comforts of manmade security.