Find­ing a Good Church [G14]

The marks of a Good Church
By David Cox
v1 ©2006
This may be freely photocopied.

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Food, exer­cise, and health many times decide if one has a good life or prob­lems. Equally a good church decides if we have a good spir­i­tual life or no. With­out a good church, spir­i­tual prob­lems will tor­ture the Chris­t­ian and leave him with­out the means to resolve his prob­lems, leave him with a weak­ened spir­i­tual life, and with sad­ness with­out end and with­out rem­edy. For the Chris­t­ian that finds a good church, all of this is just the oppo­site. The church min­is­ters to his needs, and causes spir­i­tual wel­fare in his life. It is a plea­sure to serve God there, and to grow and have a rela­tion­ship with the fam­ily God sup­port­ing you there. Find a good church!

The Need to Find a Good Church

2 Peter 3:17 Ye there­fore, beloved, see­ing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.

God has directly com­manded to not fall into the cus­tom of not con­gre­gat­ing (Hebrews 10:25). To let other things take the time that should be ded­i­cated to God is a sin, and does us great harm. Church­less we can­not spir­i­tu­ally cleanse our­selves nor get spir­i­tual food to grow. We become week and are easy prey to spir­i­tual preda­tors that are try­ing to drag the inno­cents alter them as disciples.

Acts 20:29–30 For I know this, that after my depart­ing shall griev­ous wolves enter in among you, not spar­ing the flock. 30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speak­ing per­verse things, to draw away dis­ci­ples after them.

The Bible gives us clear advice on the pres­ence of evil peo­ple (Mat. 7:21–23) that erect for them­selves reli­gious empires pre­tend­ing to be good churches. God helps us in remain­ing firm in the faith by God’s struc­ture and inven­tion called the local church.

2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 2:2–3, 15 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be trou­bled, nei­ther by spirit, nor by word, nor by let­ter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first… 15 There­fore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the tra­di­tions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

How to eval­u­ate a church?

Few churches present them­selves to the world as “bad”. All say that they are of God[1], and many say that they are the only ones who are still faith­ful to God. Even Jesus advised us in Mat. 23:2–4 that the evil work­ers will many times say good things, but they them­selves are hyp­ocrites (bad mark) that do not do what they preach to oth­ers. We should study things and not accept just people’s word and leave it at that. There are two prin­ci­ples that guide us in rec­og­niz­ing a good church: (1) their doc­trine, and (2) their prac­tice (con­stant actual con­duct). We should under­stand that belief (doc­trine) pro­duces action (prac­tice). Many say many good things, but the major­ity fall hor­ri­bly when one com­pares their doc­trine with their prac­tice. We should say that God has estab­lished these things to man­i­fest by them­selves in time (2 Cor. 11:13–15 “whose end shall be accord­ing to their works” Mat. 7:15–24 “ye shall know them by their fruits”.)

In doc­trine the church should have a lit­eral view of the Bible, and believe what is encoun­tered in the Scrip­tures. A good church exalts the Bible, and tries to put more impor­tance on it, not less. Many bad churches try to explain away mir­a­cles and the dif­fi­cult and unpop­u­lar parts (like pro­hi­bi­tions on women preach­ers or con­dem­na­tion on homo­sex­u­al­ity or free sex) in order to accom­mo­date them­selves to the world. A good church has no fear to stand the scorn of the world because God has com­manded us to take a posi­tion or prac­tice. Above all a good church should be an expert at explain­ing the plan of sal­va­tion, and this should be a con­stantly repeated theme. There should be changed lives, sin should be preached against and vic­tory won in people’s lives. Sal­va­tion should not be reduced to a sim­ple prayer and you are saved, but a spir­i­tual com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion with Christ should be empha­sized that changes people’s lives. We should ques­tion things when great num­bers of peo­ple sup­pos­edly accept Christ, or great grandiose plans for God’s work are put forth or claimed as being done, but the major­ity of these deci­sions do not fol­low through to par­tic­i­pate and sup­port that work of God, nor are they bap­tized and giv­ing finan­cially. Those that are saved should be inte­grated into the work of God in that church where they are saved. Evan­ge­lism should see its fruits back in the fields work­ing in a short time.

Good Marks

1 Corinthi­ans 16:15–16 I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the first­fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted them­selves to the min­istry of the saints,) 16 That ye sub­mit your­selves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us, and laboureth.

The first mark of a good church is that they are active in the work of God, and with the min­istry and serv­ing of the saints. The work of God is defined as seek­ing the lost to present them the gospel wher­ever they are found, exhort­ing them to accept Jesus Christ as their per­sonal Sav­ior, then to dis­ci­ple the con­verts bring­ing them into the local church where they are edi­fied and built up and they them­selves enter the min­istry. Part of this work is spir­i­tual edification[2] of the saints, and the eco­nomic help between brethren, and the giv­ing of tithes for the work of the min­istry and salary of the work­ers (1 Cor 9:14; Gal. 6:6; Mat. 10:10; Luke 10:7; 1 Tim. 5:17).

Activ­ity is not nec­es­sar­ily the same as spir­i­tu­al­ity (Luke 10:38), because good activ­ity is the fruit of hav­ing sat at the feet of God and wor­ship­ping God, and it is born in the heart from a person’s love of Christ, and desire to par­tic­i­pate in His work and do some­thing for your Sav­ior. Many churches empha­size activ­i­ties almost as a require­ment to be saved (bad mark).

We should also note that a good church has a leader (pas­tor) who is a man of God who cares spir­i­tu­ally for the church (1 Tim 3:5). His prin­ci­pal work is to spir­i­tu­ally shep­herd the flock (church), to advise, pro­tect, and visit the sheep to fix what is wrong (coun­sel­ing). Pas­tor­ing speaks of preach­ing (to exposit or explain) the Word of God. To advice and pro­tect speaks of iden­ti­fy­ing spir­i­tual dan­gers to the flock and to be active in fight­ing against them, to put him­self at per­sonal in doing this. Pas­toral vis­i­ta­tion speaks of vis­it­ing indi­vid­u­ally the mem­bers to sup­ply or cor­rect what­ever is wrong with them (coun­sel­ing). There should be an exhor­ta­tion and effort shown towards the mem­bers to get them to attend, par­tic­i­pate, tithe, pray, and be active in the work of God in this church. There should be offi­cial dis­ci­pline from the church against church mem­bers that act unwor­thy of Christ, and are not wor­ried about their poor exam­ple and life.

The good church is marked by a fer­vor and ded­i­ca­tion for prayer, and prayer is con­sid­ered essen­tial by them. Every­thing is planned in prayer, and prayer soaks every work and worker con­stantly. The good church places the Word of God as the cen­ter­piece of all their ser­vices, pri­mar­ily by preach­ing and teach­ing the Scrip­ture. This should be by care­ful expo­si­tion, that is, the actual read­ing of verses from the Bible, then expla­na­tions of these, fol­lowed by appli­ca­tion to our lives (Neh. 8:8).

Bad Marks

Pre­sump­tion of doing great works for God. Mat. 24:24–25 reveals these false work­ers by their boast­ing of doing “great signs and won­ders.” The true men of God are like Christ, hum­ble and meek[3], and we will never find them with pride, arro­gance or self exaltation.

Paul advised (Acts 20:28–30) the elders of the churches of the pres­ence of evil work­ers that are “griev­ous wolves” that (1) will not for­give “spare” the flock of God, (2) that speak perverse[4] things and (3) with the end in mind of drag­ging into sub­mis­sion and fol­low­ing of them the brethren. Peter also enters here in 2 Peter 2:1–3 says that these will intro­duce “damnable here­sies” (things which divide and destroy the peace and broth­erly love of the brethren). Peter marks them as caus­ing shame towards the name and the cause of Christ because of what they do, and because their ways are laced with cov­etous­ness. Ezekiel 34 also describes evil pas­tors who are cruel peo­ple, tak­ing advan­tage of oth­ers, that frighten and scat­ter the sheep by their actions rather than gath­er­ing them. They are also marked by their greed (they are not sat­is­fied with a just salary, but seek luxury[5]). Their mark is their astute use of “feigned” (plas­tic that con­forms to any shape or need) words. Another mark is their strong hand in dominating[6] (dic­ta­tor) instead of being a godly exam­ple. The lead­ers of a good church are exam­ples of Christ[7], spe­cially the pastor.

The Com­mu­nity of the Church

God did not make our sal­va­tion in a vac­uum. When Jesus saved us, He made us a part of the redeemed, (Jesus is the head that com­mands and directs, and the mem­bers are the body that obeys). No mem­ber is alone, but there is a union and rela­tion­ship that nur­tures one another, and there is spir­i­tual care for all. In a body, the mem­bers are those that main­tain healthy and alive the rest. In our sal­va­tion, the basis of our incor­po­ra­tion is because of our love of Christ. Mat. 25:31–46 explains that those who are really saved are those that serve Christ by serv­ing the brethren. This is the mark of a saved per­son. 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. There is no bet­ter mark of a godly com­mu­nity of truly saved than abun­dant love between them, serv­ing one another in love, and doing the work of God. A good church is a bless­ing from God. Find one, and give thanks to God for it. Sup­port it with every­thing you can.

Size, lux­u­ries, min­istries, com­forts, and all such things should not be the decid­ing factor.

[1] 2 Cor 11:13–15 the false apos­tles and deceit­ful work­ers trans­form them­selves into apos­tles of Christ, and Satan as an angel of Light.

[2] Edi­fi­ca­tion is spir­i­tual. By this we mean the pre­sen­ta­tion of expla­na­tions of pas­sages from the Bible so as to change their lives and bring them into con­for­mity with the will of God, leav­ing off sin.

[3] 2 Corinthi­ans 10:1 the weapons of our war­fare are meek­ness and gen­tle­ness of Christ, “not cru­elty and force” Eze. 34:4; Jer. 23:1–4; Isa. 40:11.

[4] “Per­verse” is things that turn aside, twist­ing, dis­tort­ing, that which is oppo­site the plans and pur­poses of God.

[5] Eze 34:2–3; Isa. 56:11; 1 Tim. 3:3; Tito 1:7, 11; 1 Peter 5:2.

[6] 1 Peter 5:2–3 speaks of “being lords over God’s her­itage” instead of “ensam­bles to the flock”.

[7] Heb. 13:7; 1 Tim 4:12; Tito 2:6–8; 1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; y 1 Thes. 1:6.