People have six days to be entertained, but the seventh day is a day of rest from worldly amusements and a time to seriously worship the risen Christ. If the church one is attending is theater-driven, tickling people’s ears with what they want to hear while using the world’s methods in an attempt toward relevancy, then the worship of the Lord is compromised with worldliness. Every Sunday churchgoers should shake off the worldly desire to be entertained and enter the holy gathering of the saints with the desire to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth in the beauty of Christ’s holiness.

The following guide is designed to help churchgoers with discernment as to whether they are attending church for the right reasons, and to help with discernment in choosing a faithful church to attend.

Personal Motivations

1. Sentimentalism should never overrule truth.

When it comes to church life, people are easily given to sentimentalism rather than to the truth. There may be a variety of reasons for this: sentimental attachment to a building, longstanding family representation in a particular church, pride in a certain denomination, etc. Doctrinal integrity often takes a back seat to these kinds of sentimental attractions. In these scenarios, people can easily honor their traditions more than the Lord.

2. The church should not be a product for consumption.

People approach a prospective church like consumers: What kind of programs does the church offer? What is the facility like? Does the pastor make me feel comfortable? How did the people make me feel? What people like and what they actually need are often radically different things. The church is established by Christ as a place to help the needy in their struggle against sin to receive mercy and the forgiveness of sins through the message of the gospel.

3. Your children should not determine the choice of a church.

We live in a day of the cult of the child. The home today is built around children in all ages of development with a neglect of proper discipline. This has devastating effects upon church life. Undiscerning parents are prone to listen to their child’s wants rather than to actively nurture their children by leading them in what they need. As peer pressure grows, a youth may complain that sermons are too long, the service is boring, or the views are too restrictive, and undiscerning parents often honor their young people more than the Lord as they base their church attendance on what the young person likes.

This has resulted in the practice of children’s church and youth centers, along with other practices that remove children/youth from the worship service. The consequences of this are devastating upon church life. We are raising an entire generation of children/young people who are not being trained to listen to sermons or worship the Lord together with God’s people. The long term fruits of this show in increased antipathy to anything formal or organized when it comes to worship, and an unwillingness to attend church. This is a prevalent reason as to why scores of young adults no longer attend Christian worship.

4. Style preference should not be neutral.

Often people base church attendance on stylistic preference, often with regard to music. The Bible never presents worship as a matter of personal taste or style. Self-imposed worship is greatly condemned in the Bible (see Col. 2), Christians, therefore, should give great care that worship conforms to God’s Word. Our music must conform to his truth, our liturgies should be filled with his Word, and the sermons should be delivered in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

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