It is sad to meet Christians and hear that they have been in a new community for months and have “not yet found a church to go to”.
Especially in East Texas, where I am, there are often dozens of churches that would at least cover the basics to encourage a person to get involved.
What do I mean by Basics?
This is the first new vocabulary word I want to introduce to this conversation. Whether you are having this conversation with your family, spouse, pastor, elders, or whoever…
So, first: The Basics
Those are Basic standards that you are looking for in whichever community of believers you are going to choose to invest in. These are not personal, they are moral and doctrinal. These are the Basics of “mere” Christianity.
The basics are the non-negotiables, and I can only think of a few of them.
This is a church were
God is central – and integrated into every aspect. If a church is focused on or founded on something other than The Triune God, it is not really a church and should be avoided. They can have other things that are important – social justice, or mission statements, or target audiences are fine only if they are subordinate to the emphasis on Christ as preeminent. (Colossians 1)
After all, it’s His church.
The Bible is central to all teaching. If a church treats scripture as a anything other than truth revealed by God worthy of giving us truth for how to live life, and handled properly with wisdom and good hermeneutic, then it not to be trusted.
God is worshiped. Is God worshiped in Spirit and Truth (regardless of any style 
issues)? Is this the intent of the gathering of the believers? Do the teaching, giving, welcoming, sharing and singing all attempt to bring glory to God?
The gospel is clear. Is the good news of God for man taught at the identity level? It had better be. Or is the gospel taught as behavioral modification or salvation something to be earned by the merit of a mere human? Stay away from this.
The Kingdom is prioritized. Local churches that are on the same page when it comes to the Basics are NOT in competition with one another. Our church, at the writing of this article, is in a growth season.
The most unfortunate part of that is how many of the new people are coming from other local churches. I have personal conversations with many of them and I know that many of them are making these decisions in healthy ways, but I would so much prefer to see growth almost entirely from new people to town and the unchurched.
I often push back a little and ask the people to talk through their reasoning. If it seems preferential based, I am ready to confront that thinking.
We are so proud when we get to partner with other local churches. We consider it a triumph for the Kingdom when a family leaves for the right reasons. We think of it as a no loss for us when a family chooses a different church than ours if that church is in a good place on the Basics. We actually encourage it at times (I will talk about some of those later).
We give out a monthly information sheets in our bulletin with activities and events going on at other local churches. We love to pray for families when they leave to go to even another local church, if the motivation seems healthy! A measure of a healthy church is when people leave in the right way and for the right reasons.
