Questions To Ask When Choosing A Church

Joining a church is a huge deal. By joining, we do not mean just going to a regular meeting once or twice a week. It does not even mean simply getting your name on the membership roll. Joining a church means committing yourself to a covenantal relationship with a group of Christians who are your family and with whom you share life-in-Christ together. That is how big a deal it is. So, if you have relocated and you need to find a Williamsburg Christian church, then you must make sure you ask the right questions before joining it.

Though these questions are not the only ones that you should ask before choosing one of the vibrant churches in Williamsburg, they are very important. None of them stands alone, but together they create a crucial decision-making framework.

The idea of becoming part of a church that does not love, preach, and teach the gospel is absurd. Far too much is at stake then. However, in order to make that judgement, you need to have an idea of what the gospel is. If the gospel is simply the message by which you can be saved from sin and hell, then you may find that there are a lot of churches that enable you to tick that box.

This question is inseparable from the first one, which is essentially about the nature of the church. If the church is a building that you enter, then in most places in the Western world you are going to have a number of options. But it is not just a building! Or if the church is just a meeting that you attend, then many of us again are going to be spoiled for choice. But it is not merely a meeting. It is not even less than that, but it is so much more.

The church is a covenant community created by the gospel and for the gospel. It is an outpost of heaven, a light through which Christ shines and brings life. The church is actually the people of God, as they perpetually gather and scatter, for the purpose of making Christ known through their corporate witness of both word and life. The church is the means of both discipleship and mission.

So when you are looking for a church, make sure that this expansive vision of what it means to be the people of God energizes and shapes both the structures and activities of the particular expression of church that you are considering.

You must join a church. In saving you, the gospel incorporates you into God’s people and further enlists you into God’s mission. In order to disassociate yourself from, or only loosely affiliate yourself to, the people of God is a denial of the gospel. Discipleship requires community, and community is normative for the mission.