How to Find a Church as a New Christian: What to Look For

It is Sunday, 9:52.

You are in the car in a church parking lot with the engine off, and the dashboard has started to tick. Through the windshield people are walking in, and every one of them is talking to somebody. A man in a green shirt props the door and waves a family through. You do not know the man in the green shirt. You do not know anybody.

Last week you drove to a different lot and did not get out.

Or maybe it is more than nerves. You were in a church once, years ago, and something happened there that you have never said out loud, and a lobby full of handshakes makes your chest tight.

Here is what I want to show you. You need these people more than you think, they are less finished than they look, and there is a plain way to find out whether this is the room.

The short answer: To find a church as a new Christian, look for three things: the Bible is opened and taught, Jesus is at the center, and somebody will learn your name. Go three Sundays before you decide. Scripture does not call this optional: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).

Why You Cannot Do This Alone

The writer of Hebrews is not scolding. The whole sentence is about considering one another, stirring up love and good works, exhorting one another (Hebrews 10:24–25). The point is not attendance. The point is one another.

Paul says why with a picture: “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.” (1 Corinthians 12:27) You are a member, a limb. A hand in a drawer is not resting. The growing happens, he says, when the whole body is “joined and knit together by what every joint supplies” (Ephesians 4:16).

A People, Not a Building

Two words will keep you from looking for the wrong thing.

The first is ekklēsia, the New Testament’s word for church. In ordinary Greek it meant an assembly, the citizens called together; Luke uses it for a town meeting in Ephesus (Acts 19:39). It never means a building. When Jesus said “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18), nobody heard bricks. You may have been told it means “the called-out ones.” The roots do say that, but the lexicons are careful: in everyday use it simply meant the assembly, the gathering itself. Either way, it is a who, not a where.

The second is koinōnia. Luke lists it among the four marks of the first church: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42) Fellowship is koinōnia: sharing, having in common, taking part together. Paul uses the same word for a collection of money (Romans 15:26). It is not coffee in a lobby. It is people holding things in common: bread, prayers, teaching, and, two verses later, their possessions.

What to Look For

Three things to look for on a Sunday.

The Bible is opened and taught. Does the preacher open the book and tell you what it says, or tell stories and glance at it? Bring your Bible and follow along.

Jesus is at the center. Is He the point of what is sung and said, or a mention? Paul says He must have “the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18).

Somebody learns your name. You will not be close to a hundred people. You need three who know your name by the third Sunday and notice on the fourth.

That is the list. Not the music, the size, or the parking.

Three Sundays

Go three times before you decide. The first Sunday you are only finding the restroom and the right door. The second, you can hear the sermon. By the third, you know whether anyone noticed you came back.

And do not expect perfection. They are the ekklēsia, people. The sermon will have a slow stretch. Somebody will be cold at the door. Expect people being made new, the same as you, who have not finished either.

If you were hurt before, say so, to God first, then to one safe person. The Lord “heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3), and a church that is His will not flinch when you tell them a church was not. What was done to you in a room full of His people is not a reason to be alone. It is a reason to find the room where they act like Him.

This is the third of the four plain things in the week after saying yes. The second, reading a Gospel, will make the sermon easier to follow.

When Somebody Gets Her Name Right

I’m only here for the kids. He is a single father of two, and this is his third Sunday at the small church on the corner. He is standing in the back with his hand on his son’s shoulder while his daughter studies the carpet. A woman he does not know, gray hair, cardigan, crouches to the girl’s height and says her name, and gets it right, and says she saved the seat by the window again.

His daughter lets go of his hand and goes. He stands there with the hand still out.

Scripture to Carry Into the Lobby

Keep these for the drive over.

• “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24–25)
• “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42)
• “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)
• “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” (Ephesians 4:15–16)
• “Those who are planted in the house of the LORD Shall flourish in the courts of our God.” (Psalm 92:13)

A Prayer for the Parking Lot

You may be the one in the car with the dashboard ticking. Pray this, then open the door. If you want the longer road laid out, that is what God, What’s Next? is for, and it was built to be read alone or with a room.

Lord, I am sitting outside a building full of people who seem to know what they are doing, and I do not. You said not to forsake assembling together, so I am trusting that You meant me, and that there is a place in Your body for a limb that has been in a drawer. Show me a people where Your Word is opened, where Jesus is the center, and where somebody will learn my name. Heal what was done to me in Your name by people who did not act like You. Give me three Sundays of courage. I am getting out of the car. In Jesus’ name, amen.

And listen for what He has been saying since you turned into the lot:

I did not save you to sit alone, child. These are My people, unfinished like you. Go in. I am already inside.

Church is a people, not a building, and you are one of the people now.