Looking for a new church can be a tricky business. There are all sorts of reasons why you may need a new church. Perhaps you have moved area. Maybe your existing church has closed its doors. Perhaps you are moving on because it has become impossible to stay where you currently are for doctrinal or pastoral reasons. This post is not concerned with those specific reasons and assumes you are leaving for necessary, legitimate reasons. Which begs the question, what should you be looking for when finding a new church? Here are some things to consider.

Love for the Lord

Fundamentally, you need to look for a church that truly loves the Lord Jesus. You want to meet with and have fellowship with those for whom the Lord is their fundamental priority. Jesus said that the greatest commandment in the whole of scripture was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Mk 12:30). So it is vitally important to find a church that loves the Lord that way.

This will generally be seen in a focus on the Word. God has revealed himself fully and finally in Jesus whose teaching was passed on to us through the Apostolic writing. A church that loves God will love Jesus and centre themselves on the teaching of Jesus. They will be Word-people. All that they do will centre on the Word and they will be looking to conform themselves to the Word which is the teaching of Jesus. A church that loves the Lord will not only be hearers of scripture – so probably centring their meetings on the preaching of the Word and involving the teaching of the Word at most of what they do – they will also be doers of the Word. They will hear what the Word says and look to live lives in accordance with what it teaches. Look for a church that is Word-centred because such as Jesus-centred and showing some evidence they really do love the Lord.

Love each other

One of the key signs that God’s people love him is that they love one another. John puts it quite starkly (1 John 4:20-21):

²⁰ If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

Indeed, Jesus said this is how the world would know we belong to him: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:35). A church that truly loves God will truly love one another. A church that doesn’t seem to love one another is not a healthy place to be because they evidence that they do not really love God.

What does love for the brethren look like in practice? We could do worse than look at 1 Corinthians 13 – regularly read out at weddings but first written to a local church in which love was not very clearly on display. But we could similarly look at Acts 2:43-47 or Acts 4:32-35 to see how it worked out in practice in the Jerusalem Church. But in the end, we want to go to a church that loves Jesus and actively manifests that in a true and genuine love for one another.

Love for the lost

Here is what Jesus commanded his disciples to do at the end of Matthew gospel:

¹⁹ Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

John tells us God himself loved the world and so sent his son so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Jesus, the Son, sends his people out into the world because he loves the world and came to die for them. Just as he loves the world, he calls his people to love the world and reach them with the good new of the gospel.

The only vehicle the New Testament knows for such mission is the church. Jesus tells his church to be about the business of making disciples. He calls his people to love the lost and go into the world so that they might receive eternal life. So, as we look for a new church, we ought to be looking for one that loves the lost like Jesus loves the lost. We should look for one that wants to see sinners saved and is actively reaching out to its community in a bid to see a lost world safe in Christ.

Other considerations that can come out in the wash

The above three things I would argue are vital. You want to join a church that exhibits these three things and should be wary of joining one that has no interest in any of the above areas. But there are some other things worth considering that are not quite so vital. They are things to think about, to consider and factor into your thinking. But they are more of a second order set of concerns that are just worth thinking about.

Can I meaningfully be involved?

You may have found a church that loves the Lord, love each other and loves the lost. But it might be 100 miles away from where you live. Whilst it may well be a good church, you are going to struggle to be meaningfully involved in its day to day life. The distance on paper might not be so far, but if you don’t have a car and are relying on public transport – several bus or train journeys to be involved – again, you are going to struggle to be involved meaningfully in the life of the church. If your church is in a very close knit community and you are driving in, albeit from not far away, you have to consider whether you will be consider ‘local’ and if you can credibly involve yourself in the work of the church. In the end, you need to be able to love the Lord, love the brethren and love the lost in the context of the church you are going to belong to if it is going to be a good fit for you.

Am I culturally and missionally aligned?

Let’s just acknowledge that some people are much more flexible than others. This is not a good or a bad thing. Sometimes rigidness and being unbending is a very good thing. Sometimes, it isn’t. So, our temperament is to some degree neutral and can be both good or bad when deployed in the church. We can employ it helpfully or employ it unhelpfully. But flexible people are going to find it much easier to find a church with which they are culturally and missionally aligned that those who are much less flexible. Those who are more flexible are going to find most churches that love the Lord, love each other and love the lost – albeit manifesting in different ways in different places – are easy enough for them to join whilst less flexible people are going to struggle and find a narrower pool of churches they are going to both feel comfortable in and not cause problems for.

So, it bears asking whether you feel culturally and missionally aligned to a church or not. If you are used to, and wedded to, a very traditional form of church you may well struggle in one that is reaching very messy people. If you have a particular heart for the poor and think this ought to be the primary focus of the church, you are obviously going to struggle in the average and, let’s be honest, majority of) British churches that are very white and middle-class. Some churches are (and I don’t mean these terms to sound loaded, I just can’t think of a better way to phrase it) more easy-going and laid back than others whilst some are more uptight. You need to make sure you are comfortable with the mission and culture of the church to ensure that you are not constantly butting heads on these things.

Of course, most of us should be happy anywhere that loves the Lord, love each other and loves the lost. But if we have particular scruples about how these things should happen or be manifest in the life of the church, it pays to be upfront about that and make sure we are joining what we can happily submit to rather than constantly battling against.