A Church Hunting Lament

We moved to Murrieta in September and have enjoyed it so far, but to find more community - and, you know, because the Bible recommends it to grow in knowledge of Christ and spur each other on and all that good stuff - we need to find a church here. I loathe this process*. It makes me hypercritical, and that makes me feel like a judgmental jerk. We've visited four churches and countless church websites, and my complaints have spanned from mere preferences (too big or too small or too far from home or too dark inside) to valid concerns (the songs are more about me and how God makes me feel than they are about God and worshiping who He is). We didn't visit one church because the pastor was too spray tanned in his website picture, and I didn't see how I could trust an Oompa Loompa's Biblical teaching.

It hasn't been all bad though. We've found churches that excel at welcoming visitors, churches with beautiful music that glorifies God, churches with sound Biblical teaching from pastors who are not orange. We have several solid options, and we're leaning strongly toward one, but it's not as easy a decision as it was in Orange County. The first time Jeff and I attended there, we looked at each other afterward and one of us said this is it and the other said yup with zero hesitation.

Our church in Orange County has a sweet mix of professional musicians who consistently choose songs that point to God, a pastor who speaks to us in a regular voice and goes the exegetical route with his teaching so we always are in the Bible, a nice community, and a sanctuary with tons of natural light. And it's called Grace Fellowship Church, not something like Cemented in Hiz Luv (I should note that I made up two additional ridiculous, trendy-sounding names, but then I Googled it and discovered they were in fact real church names so I omitted them). 

They say you don't get to choose your family, but that's not totally true. You get to choose your church family. I think that's the pressure here. What do you look for in a church? How did you choose your church? 




*Yo. I understand and appreciate that we live in a country where we are free to worship God and some people do not have that luxury and I should just be grateful and not overthink this decision. But I live here and I'm an imperfect human, so deal.