Post 11: Multi-Church child of God

Image: A man holding an open bible with drawings of 3 different churches surrounding the man.

Post Summary: In this post, a continuation of Post 6: Finding a Local Church, I discuss the testing and conclusion of my Church Trials Experiment, where I visited 3 different churches over a 6-month period to find the right gospel-centered church for spiritual growth as a new Christian.

Anxiety Wanes
Fresh off of the heels of a job termination, I purposed within me that I would spend more energy on building my relationship with God and seek His help with the anxiety that came from the sudden job loss.

Turning to God's Word for help in dealing with this anxiety, I came across several scriptures that proved to be very helpful. Such scriptures included Philippians 4:6-7 where the Lord warns Christians not to be anxious, but instead to make petition to God, praying with thanksgiving in all situations, and He will give us peace! 1 Peter 5:7 instructs believers to cast our anxiety onto Him because He cares for us! Psalm 55:22 informs us that God will sustain those who cast their cares onto him! Matthew 11:28-30 says Jesus will lighten the loads of us who are weary and burdened, giving us rest!

As I began to cast my cares onto God and focus more on Him, the less I was consumed with the anxiety about job loss and uncertainty of what comes next. After a few weeks of setting intentionality towards God and not my present circumstance, I began to recognize the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit showing up in my life and the anxiety went away!

The Multi-Church Commitment
Having already visited three churches a couple of times each, I decided to dive further into testing out each of the three churches between July 2024 – October 2024 to find a church home. I thought that the best way to figure out which church to commit myself to would be to get involved in various aspects of each church as a way of testing the church.

Two key scriptures that lead me to do this “Church Trials Experiment” was 1 John 4:1 and Matthew 7:15-23, both suggesting that false prophets and false teachers are in the world and that it is important to verify whether spiritual messages are from God or not.

Church #1
This church was a fairly decent sized church, perhaps 150-200 people attended each service and there were two Sunday services in the summer and fall. The church was renting a timeslot in the space that was also being used for something else during the week, so we had to set up and take down chairs and equipment every Sunday. The pastor and congregation seemed nice enough.

I started out the testing by attending sunday services here, twice a month. I had also volunteered on the Audio/Visual Team with church #1, helping to set up and tear down the sound systems for both Sunday services. This required a committment of two sundays per month, which for convenience sake, ended up being the 2 sundays that I was also attending the services.

I also began volunteering with church #1 to assist with hosting a once monthly game night at the Seattle Men's Shelter and a once weekly Friday afternoon community dinner serving unhoused neighbors. I also joined a tuesday night Men's bible study group held in South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle.

As I got involved in homeless outreach, I came to realize that the Lord was softening my heart towards the homeless and leading me in the direction sharing His goodness with our unhoused, poor, outcast, and rejected neighbors (Isaiah 58:7, Psalm 82:4, Deuteronomy 15:7).

Church#2
This church was smaller in size, maybe about 60-70 members, and also held in a smaller space connected to another building. Attendees and staff were very welcoming towards new members.

Here I attended service once a month. I also volunteered to help with once monthly community service days on the 4th Saturday of every month doing various things, and helping the church with hosting various events.

I also joined their wednesday night summer class session series where we were going through an 8 week course called Practicing the Way: Be Like Jesus.

After the first couple of sessions in the course, I noticed how biblically and scripturally hollow the class was. This seemed odd to me as the premise of the class was practicing the way of Jesus. Why would a class teaching folks how to be more like Jesus not use the bible, where those teachings about Jesus are, as it's main informational resource?

I mentioned this to the administrators of the class and they just sort of brushed it off by saying “well this is not a bible study class”. I responded with“this class seems to introducing participants to the concept of following after Jesus, however it should have mentioned salvation as the starting point for how a person can follow after Jesus.”

I also mentioned to the administrators how the teachings in the course lacked adequate scripture reference and that the course should be demonstrating the necessity for anyone aiming to be like Jesus to consult God's word first above all other 3rd party written works.

I had also suggested that we should alter the sessions a bit and at least start off each class with a bit more topical bible reading. If they were unwilling to read more scripture during the class sessions, then they should at least include more scripture reference so folks can study at home.

My replies seemed to have been met with indifference/uninterest and they basically double-downed on “this is not bible study” but they did say that they would pass my suggestions along. I also emailed the pastor with several examples, even in the first session, how much more scripture should have been used as a main point of reference, not a passing side note, but he didn't even give an adequate response to that either.

Despite my reservations concerning the lack of biblical content in the course, I stuck with it through the 8 week commitment. Although I made suggestions on how to improve the course, nothing changed and they seemed like it wasn't really a big deal that a class introducing people to Jesus was not predominantly looking to the bible to make that introduction.

There was no real bible teaching in any of the sessions during the 8 week course. There was sparce scripture scattered throughout the course, but mostly pulled out of context to suit the agenda of the video or specific session. None of the scripture used or topics discussed pointed to the salvation and spiritual reconciliation offered through Jesus Christ. The free gift of Salvation offered through Christ (Romans 6:23, John 3:16, Acts 4:12) is the most important thing about Jesus that a person should know, but was not AT ALL touched on during this course.

Church #3
This was also a medium sized church, roughly 250-300 people as well, and in a decent size building. Here, I would attend service whichever Sunday I was not involved in services at the other two churches, which generally ended up being once a month.

At this church, they would also make an announcement at the end of every service asking for volunteers to help with the building clean up so I volunteered to assist.

Clean up was scheduled from 12p-2p on Sundays. They also provided pizza for lunch before the cleaning which was nice bonus. The cleaning lead would distribute tasks to all who showed up to help.

I also volunteered to help the hospitality/food service team for a couple of special events, including a church picnic in the park and men’s fellowship night.

Across the board:
At all of the churches, I made it a point to share about my new found salvation in Christ (2 Timothy 1:8, 1 John 5:10, Revelation 12:11) with anyone who asked or was interested in hearing my testimony.

This was an enjoyable way to meet members within each church, hear their stories, and get their thoughts about the church and leadership. I had fun meeting new people and making connections, though I found it difficult to remember so many new people I was meeting.

I found serving most meaningful when I was helping the homeless and unhoused individuals in the community, and made sure to have regular attendance for service events geared towards the homeless.

During this church trials period, I was listening intently to sermons from the pastors of each church. I also continually prayed to the Lord for guidance in placing me where I would experience the most spiritual growth as a new Christian and trusted in Him to lead me accordingly (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Conclusion of the church trials:
After a few months of attending sermons and volunteering with the different churches, a few things came to the surface about each church that ultimately helped make the decision.

Church #1
I began to notice that church #1 sermons and messaging was more often along the lines of “self-help using biblical concepts” rather than focusing on the salvation of the Lord.

Also, there was an occasion where the church platformed an openly gay man who was speaking about how LGBTQ can find harmony and unity with the church. This was troubling because they were using God's pulpit to platform someone openly involved in a sinful lifestyle. He was speaking about how LGBTQ should be able to find acceptance and harmony within the church rather than condemning sexual immorality as sin (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) and sharing about how God can save those trapped in homosexual lifestyle. God does indeed save those involved in homosexual lifestyle when they've been convicted of their sinfulness and turn their life to Christ, confessing their sins and forsaking their own way (John 14:6, 1 John 1:9, Acts 4:12) .

Church #2
Over the trial period, I began to notice that a lot of the sermons were about church growth, sustaining faith through specific ritual practices, and “confessing Christ” but I didn't here many sermons on placing our trust in Christ for salvation and our faith and belief in who Christ is which leads a person to repentance.

There was a a weird incident where I had not visited the church for several weeks. Within this time of absence, I shared a post within the church chat group about a teaching from another YouTube pastor which had clarified some confusion I had about salvation. The Pastor of this church immediately deleted my post and then messaged me separately that he did not want me sharing messages anymore since I had not been regularly attending church services for several weeks. He didn't seem to care much about why I hadn't been attending church or if anything was wrong with me that kept me away from church, but seemed to only really care that I was sharing posts but not an active member of the church.

There were also a few instances where I directly messaged the pastor about volunteering and he didn't even respond to those requests. I later learned that the expectation for volunteers was that they be committed to serve 2-3 weeks out of the month which was not possible for me at this time but I would have been nice for the pastor to mention that since I had directly asked him about it instead of me hearing it from other volunteers.

Church #3
Over the trial period, it became clear that church #3 was regularly more gospel-centered in their sermons than the others. The leadership in Church #3 really seemed to care about me as a person and was really big on discipleship of new believers and members.

Church #3 also reserved church membership for those who were already saved and could at least articulate the gospel enough to understand who alone saves us and how we are saved, which was new to me because I had never been a part of a church that had a membership requirement like that.

Church #3 also had much more biblical based literature and reading material, one of which was a booklet describing how to spot a healthy church. Reading this booklet help me to begin recognizing why the other churches I had visited had not been living up to what a healthy church should be.

I also began to really feel deeper fellowship with members at Church #3, where as there was not developing a deep fellowship with many members of the other 2 churches.

And the winner is....
Church#3! Whoo hoo!

I began committing my regular attendance in that church and immediately stopped attending the other two churches.

As the church trials experiment wrapped up in late October 2024, I reflected on this period and realized that the Lord did indeed answer my prayers for guidance (Proverbs 15:29, 1 Peter 3:12)! He had indeed directed me to the most gospel-centered church out of the three churches I committed to test during this time!

By this point, I was excited for the growth and direction that was to come from God! Stay tuned for the next post where I talk a bit about diving into Christian YouTube and some of the teachers and preachers I started listening to early on as a noob on Christian YouTube.