Finding the perfect church

It was a church slogan used in many places years ago: “The end of your search for a friendly church.” But let’s think about a new slogan: “The end of your search for a perfect church.”

I remember a lady who presented herself for membership at the church I pastored at the time. I’d met her about two years before at a neighboring church when I led a Bible study. She came to us and quickly presented herself for membership, but from a different church than where we’d met. Thus she’d been a member at three churches in about the same number of years.

Research shows that moving from one church to another in the same community is more common than ever before, and this moving about is often independent of denominational labels.

Of course some moving about is explicable. Parents may put the availability of children’s programs ahead of their own needs and go where these are offered. And we had a senior lady who moved to another and larger church because they had seniors’ lunches and the like, try as I did to explain she could attend these and still be with us.

But I also contend that some moving about is for less than stellar reasons.

I’ve known church members who got upset with some program or personality and left in anger. And I know over the years that the churches I’ve served have received some of these disturbed folk, though I tried never to stoke their anger. I remember at least twice when I called neighboring pastors to alert them confidentially that some of their “sheep” were wandering in our pasture.

So, “the end of your search for a perfect church?” Not so, since the search for one is bound to be disappointing. And it’s well-nigh impossible to check them all out.

I read recently that we have an average of 113 churches per county in America. So, I calculated in our town that someone checking out every possibility within a three-county radius would spend six and one-half years in their quest to find a perfect one. If we threw in another adjacent county, the search for a perfect church would take eight years.

But even after so long a time, the searcher still wouldn’t find the perfect church since every church is built of the same molecular structure. Someone defined the church as “imperfect people, trying imperfectly to know, love and serve a perfect God.”

Since there’s no possibility of finding a perfect church, Christians should choose rather to leave their present churches, if they must, in a proper way.

Open, honest discussion with church leaders and prayerful consideration is better than leaving in anger. 

Reflections is a weekly faith column written by Michael J. Brooks, pastor of the Siluria Baptist Church, Alabaster, Alabama. The church’s website is siluriabaptist.com.