Choosing a Church

Well, if you read my monthly update, you saw that I have not settled on a church. I want to desperately settle on a church and get “plugged in,” but it is very hard for me to choose a church. Sometimes my critical mind gets me in trouble, and this is one example of that time. I have come to accept that the church is imperfect and will always be that way, but that does not make it any easier for me to choose. One of the main questions is how much do I want to challenge myself when choosing a church in Zambia. All churches are different from what I have experienced before, but do I need to go to a church that is very different from my previous experiences? If I wanted to choose a church that is extremely different from my upbringing, I could always go to a Pentecostal church in the compounds. A former American who worked for the Jubilee Centre choose to do this and got a life lesson in the process. He said that every Sunday there was always a big breasted woman breast feeding two children at once during the worship service. He said it was hard to pay attention while that was happened, but at the same time he and his wife felt like they should challenge themselves and go to a church outside their comfort zone.

That is great for him, but do I need to push myself that much. I totally believe that everyone should experience a true African worship service at least once, but I don’t know if I personally could settle into such a community. Maybe that is a copout answer. Maybe I am choosing the easy way in order to be comfortable. There is no easy answer though because there is a fine line between truly knowing yourself and your needs and continually trying to push yourself to experience new, different, and stressful situations.

One thing that I know is that I can’t go to a church that preaches a prosperity gospel. I define the prosperity gospel as an understand that the belief in God will benefit you financially. You see this teaching many times in America, but you see it more often in Africa. I can’t go to a church that preaches this because it is not the gospel. It is a distortion of the true message of Jesus and what He claims to provide to his people. Many churches here continually preach that this is your year of breakthrough for blessings. Then if you don’t receive your blessings, you are evidently sinning. This is not biblical and is not the gospel of Jesus Christ (read Job for one example of why this is not biblical). I can’t go to a church that preaches this because it frustrates me very much. I want to yell in the middle of a service because this is not the gospel and not the purpose of the gospel. (At the same time I want to yell in church in America many times. I once did yell in Thomaston at FBC, and my mother slapped me. Ok, that was a complete lie, but I once wanted to yell to see what kind of reaction I could get from my mom and the congregation. Anyway I digress.) Because so many people are poor the preachers are just telling the people what they want to hear to make them happy. I wish I could say that this was the case only in Africa, but it is also the case in America. Constantly, we are just telling people what they want to hear instead of preaching the gospel. Some churches in America preach the prosperity gospel while others preach that the gospel just requires you to do good and be better than your neighbor while forsaking any sacrifice that may be required. The church is losing relevance and prophetic vision by the day because it gives up preaching the gospel in favor of preaching what people want to hear. That is one of the reasons that the Jubilee Centre focusses on training church leaders because when the pastors and leaders truly understand their vision and the call of the gospel they can effectively communicate the gospel with out fear. May God save the church before we hurt ourselves and may I choose a church before I hurt myself.