What Are the Top Five Things to Consider Before Joining a Church?

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What Are the Top Five Things to Consider Before Joining a Church?

July 3, 2025

Questions about the top five things to consider before joining a church when coming out of the NAR movement, and thoughts regarding a church putting on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar as a means to draw non-Christians into the church.

* I’m coming out of the Word of Faith and New Apostolic Reformation movements. What are the top five things I need to consider before joining a church?

* What are your thoughts regarding a church putting on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar as a means to draw non-Christians into the church?

Transcript

You're listening to Amy Hall and Greg Koukl on the hashtag SDR-esque podcast, and we're so glad you're listening. And today, Greg, we have questions about church, church-related questions. Okay.

And this first one comes from Abby. Like my daughter. What are the top five things we need to consider before joining a church? Coming out of Word of Faith and N.A.R. movements, it has been tough trying to plug into a church and serve.

Wow. I'll say so. Well, some of them are easy.

I'm trying to think if I make any adjustments in light of Abby's background here. First, you need to have a high view of scripture, number one. Now, it turns out in both the N.A.R. and in the Word Faith movement, they have a high view of scripture, as far as I can tell.

The difficulty with those two movements, and I don't usually offer this as a qualification because most churches are not in this situation. But a high view of scripture and scripture alone is the authority. Maybe I should add that.

Because when it comes to Word Faith, which is grounded or rooted, birthed in the Pentecostal tradition, and also with the new apostolic Reformation, that's what N.A.R. stands for, the Bill of... Johnson. Johnson and his ilk in Northern California. They're all over the country, though.

You have the Bible Plus. At Ashley, we just recently wrote about this in a mentoring letter. That's not coming out for another month, I guess, for June.

But the idea... We're way past June now, Grish. I'm all just collaborated. In any event, in the June mentoring letter, I talk about this, the authority of the Word, and you can't add any other authority to it.

The minute you do, the Bible ends up for all intents and purposes in the backseat. So the N.A.R. has a twisted and distorted ecclesiology to start out with, and their understanding of how the church is supposed to work. That's twisted, but then, because that's twisted, now they got these so-called prophets and so-called apostles that are now giving new revelation that ends up creating all kinds of difficulty and problems, where if they just stuck with the Bible and work to exegiate it accurately, which they don't do with regards to their passage in Ephesians 4, then they wouldn't be running into this trouble.

So the first thing is the Bible, okay? And Bible alone, sola scriptura, sorry, that's... You can't fudge on that. And when you fudge on that, you run into trouble, okay? I mean, in the peace... Sorry, I mean, in the peace, I... If you go back to it, the June mentoring letter, three earmarks of what problematic Christianity, I can't remember the title we used to work, but you'll see that this is critical, okay? That's one. Now, two, they have to teach them the Bible.

And when I say teach them the Bible, here's just something to watch for. This isn't itself heterodox, but it does lead to problems if you don't follow it. If your church is always teaching topicals, they are not teaching the Bible the way it was written.

It was written in discrete chunks for particular purposes. Paul wrote to the Corinthians for a reason. He's wrote twice.

He wrote to the Galatian region for a reason to solve a problem. And if you're just doing topicals, you're just isolating different pieces of information from different texts. And you might learn if the person who's doing topicals is careful, you might learn accurate information about the topics.

But you never learned the Bible the way it was originally given that is in pieces that were meant to be treated as a whole, all right? And so, I mean, standard reason we do topicals, but we do topicals often outside of scripture in defensive scripture. This is the nature of our work. But, and if I'm asked to do something on scripture, well, then usually I'm focusing on an issue.

So it's okay on occasion to do a topical, but, you know, for your standard, fair, your bread and butter, spiritual growth, you want to have a church that is willing to take the time to work through a whole book. So you get the coherence and cohesion and the teaching of that book within its broader context. All right.

So that's maybe that's just number one and number one A, or we'll just call them one and two for the sake of discussion here. So high view of scripture alone, no extras, no extra authorities and to not having a church, not always teaching topicals. It's dangerous.

Okay. Three, you want a church that will give you the opportunity to participate as a servant in the life of the church. Okay.

When you look at the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 and Ephesians 4, that's the section that's misused by the N.A.R. and also 1 Peter has some reference to that. The emphasis isn't on the gifts. The emphasis is on the usefulness of the individual contributing to the health of the body, many parts, one body.

Some people do this. Some people do the other thing. Whatever you do, and Peter makes this point, do it.

Use the gift as a good servant of the manifold grace of God. So you want to be able in my generalization about gifts here is just give what you got. I mean, you don't have to look at the list and figure out, well, where do I fit into this list? If you'd fit in, cleanly find some people knowing I got to give to the exhortation or somebody's got to give to mercy and it's really evident.

I have a gift of mouth. So that's kind of teaching, exhortation, whatever. All right.

But some people not sure just give what you got. Whatever opportunity, whatever gift, whatever capability you have, I think most people have the gift of service, quite frankly, because that's one of the biggest things that's needed. But service takes on different profile with different individuals.

So I had a friend who was a tennis instructor teaching pro. And what she would do is she would teach Christians for free, you know, how to play tennis. That was what she could offer, you know, or something like that.

I just use as a goofy example, but give what you got is the point there. So you have solar scripture. You've got not all topicals.

You have find a place where you can serve. Okay. And the other thing is, and I, you want to find a church that's kind of a true, a true blue.

All right. And I used to use this list to talk about choosing a Christian college, but it's hard to find a Christian college anymore that's like this. But has a high view of scripture teaches that Jesus is the only way of salvation.

This is, I'm presuming this is going to be part of high view of scripture for them. That Jesus is necessary for salvation, but any old religion will get you Jesus, even if you don't believe in him. Okay.

You don't want any of that stuff. You don't want any gay affirming church affirming in any way. Now, when I say gay affirming, I mean the movement or the discipline, not the individual person who has same sex attraction.

And you're not talking about not treating them well, you're talking about not affirming the rightness of the action. Yes. Thanks for the clarification.

That's it. If the church is saying, well, whatever, we got to love these folks. So that means we're just going to be a gay affirming church.

That's a problem. All right. Now, in my view, the doors are open.

Whoever will may come. But there was a church that was out that had this list of their policies on the wall. I really liked it.

But they, I think what they said was our church is open to everyone, but it's not for everyone. I like that distinction is open to everyone. Anybody can come.

You want to come? Fine. That's not for everyone. The community operates a certain way.

That's fine. But there are other things that are rules for the community. And a lot of those rules have, some of them have to do with sexual things too.

And so it's not for those people who are not willing to live by the rules set down in the New Testament. So I'm also uncomfortable with theological, I should say, with theistic evolution. I think that's problematic.

And anything that even hints of wokeness or critical theory or anything like that, stay away. Just stay away. So the difficulty here, especially in a smaller community, it's hard to know.

Oh, you also want to stay away from legalism. And that's a whole nother issue that I think Bible believing churches should have in hand if they're listening to the text, letting the text instruct them. But legalism has two faces.

All right. So this would be the last one I'll offer. And Amy's got some things probably too.

Legalism is when theological legalism is when you erect a standard of behavior that is necessary to keep in order to accomplish your justification before God. Paul talks about it in Galatians 5. You fall into grace, circumcision will be no use to you if you're seeking to be justified by law. Works based righteousness.

That's one type of legalism. Here's another type of legalism that was present with the Jews in the early church in Jesus dealt with, and it's all over in Christian circles as well. When you take a human tradition and you make it even with God's law, you take a human tradition and you make it even with God's law.

Okay. And there are all kinds of examples of this kind of thing, and all kinds of Protestants communities fall prey to this, and it's devastating. Okay.

That if you don't do these things thus way every time according to us, then you're not in good keeping with God. You didn't go to church every Sunday. Our rule is you go to church.

If not, you're going to get harassed by us. The Bible doesn't say you got to go to church every Sunday. It just says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

Hebrews, what, 10. It doesn't say you got to do that on Sunday. That was the habit of Christians.

Early on, it's the habit of most Christians. Now, you make it a rule to live by that's legalism because that isn't God's rule. Okay.

And I would make a distinction between a discipline and a rule. We've talked about that before. There's nothing wrong with being disciplined and doing something.

Yeah. The discipline of meeting together on Sundays, which is where most Christians meet together in the morning, Sunday mornings weekly. That is a good discipline.

We have encouraged that. But when it becomes the rule and then you get judged and harassed because you missed a Sunday or something. Now that's it's morphed into something different.

So I jotted down some things while you were talking, Greg, and you hit on a lot of them already. I do want to say I'm kind of focusing on things that I think you specifically might need coming out of those those movements. Yeah, to be to be looking for because you're not used to seeing it.

But I will say, if you have general questions about just generally, if you're out there coming from whatever background, we did do an episode on September 15, 2022 called what question should I ask pastors when looking for a new church that I think would be really helpful in this. But I'm just going to hit on a few things. I had number one view of the Bible, so you covered that one really well.

And then when you talked about Greg, the idea of people who only do topical. Another way you can go wrong in a service in a sermon is you can go for all the emotional things and avoid doing truth. You avoid.

It's more about stirring up your emotions than giving you truth. And I can tell you earlier this year we were at a reality conference and someone came up to us. She was in tears.

She was in her early 60s coming out of an emotional church. And she was just crying saying that she was so used to people and pastors just building up her emotions and speaking to her emotions, she wasn't used to having truth spoken. And it impacted her so greatly.

And she said, to me, it made me emotional. Actually come actually receiving the truth did cause emotion. It just they weren't directly trying to stir up emotions.

They were doing it with truth. So make sure that their truth is their goal. And that doesn't mean there won't be emotions.

It just means that the truth is where the emotions should come from, not the other way around. Good point. Next, and you need to make sure that the focus of the sermons is to tell you about God so that you can worship Him, not to focus on you and you getting something or manipulating God in some way.

Or getting your heart's desire or whatever it is, or even just focused always on your behavior. And here's here's five steps to ABC and here's how you can change your life. And that's the way that's evidenced a lot in my view in worship.

And if it may be very difficult to find a church that satisfies you out of the ways that that also does not have this problem in worship. So this is one that you'll maybe have as a secondary issue, but it is a big problem in worship because so much of the music is anthropocentric, man-centered, not theocentric or Christocentric. It's all about celebrating our emotions instead of celebrating who God is or Jesus is.

And of course, no church is going to be perfect. So by the way, if they found that they wouldn't let you join, you'd mess it up. And then another important thing, and you mentioned places where you can serve, and I would add into that the whole idea of fellowship, is there kindness and fellowship in your church? Is there an attitude of servanthood in the church where people are serving each other? They're getting to know each other.

They're fellowshipping with each other, not just going in and leaving, but there's actually a community happening there. And then finally, I would say, especially if you're coming out of this movement, is there pastoral accountability? Is the pastor a king in your church? And everyone just, he has yes men around him and no one is holding him accountable. There's no way to object to anything or the elders aren't actually doing any sort of role where they are keeping him accountable, then that's a danger.

And then one way you could find that out, you might want to just ask the pastor, you know, I'm curious, what was a recent controversy in your church and how did you handle it? What happened? Maybe not even, you could ask the pastor, but maybe ask some of the people in the church to see from their perspective too. Just be on the lookout for that. If you're used to having, and I mean, I don't know exactly how it is in our churches, but I think they tend to take on themselves a lot of authority.

So just make sure that the authority is spread out and there's accountability. Well, if you fancy yourself an apostle with a capital A or a prophet with a capital P, it's pretty hard to take advice from somebody under you, as it were, where they look at it. And that's part of the problem with that movement.

Well, we're not going to get to all the questions about the church. We'll have to save them for later, but I am going to ask you this last one. This one comes from anonymous.

What are your thoughts regarding a church putting on a production of the play, Jesus Christ Superstar, apparently as a means to draw in non-Christians to the church? This was real popular when I was just out of high school. I'm trying to remember. I don't know if it has, I can't speak to the theology.

Now, it was really, really popular when it came out as a musical, and if it's really popular with the secular audience, chances are it's not theologically sound. My rule when it comes to theatrical presentations of Jesus, the first rule is do no harm. I have some films that I really like, and they're not all historically accurate.

One of my favorites is the Nativity, and there you've got the wise men showing up at the birth of Jesus, which didn't happen that way. They're in a stable, which that didn't happen either, etc, etc. Well, it's all right, because the main thrust, the characters, the movement, the ideas, the concepts, is all very sound.

Then you have other, like other films like The Last Temptation of Christ, people might remember that from what the late 70s, and this was a very human Jesus that was not the Jesus of the Bible, and so it followed a very secular understanding. I can't remember Jesus Christ's superstar, but my suspicion is that it's not sound. The best thing to do is just watch it.

You can get it, I'm sure on what Amazon Prime or something like that, you can find the film and watch it, and see what it says about Jesus. But the other thing I'm concerned about is the attempt to appeal to young people by going back to a Jesus Christ superstar musical from 50 years ago, and I don't know if it's going to work. Well, they're actually, I think they're working on a movie of this right now, and last I heard a woman was going to play Jesus, but I'm not sure if that's still happening.

So it must be making some sort of a comeback. We will say that when you mention this, who is it? Anonymous. Okay, you mentioned Anonymous.

I mean, a whole bunch of red flags come on. Huh? It is not because there's a theatrical production being done that I have no problems with that at all, but kind of going this way. This is a hippie movie, just like hair.

You know, these are things that all happen during that period of time to make Jesus look cool to the hippies. So it was part of the Jesus movement stuff, I guess, but I don't know enough about the characterization to say whether or not it would be appropriate in a church. It's the theology that it communicates.

That's the key deal and the way it communicates it. All right, I have no problem with the musical in general. But the content is key.

Yeah, I mean, that was my thought, Greg. It's been so long since I've heard Jesus Christ superstar. It has been a long time.

And I was a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I don't remember. I maybe listened to it once or twice, so I don't remember anything. But the thing to keep in mind here is that the church exists to proclaim the excellencies of God to show people who God is.

And the Jesus presented there is not going to be the Jesus of the Bible. There's no, I mean, again, I don't remember the details, but I just do not. There are so many.

If you want to do a production, there are productions like the best Christmas pageant ever. You could do that one. That presents the gospel and it presents all sorts of things.

But you're not directly portraying Jesus in a way that a non-Christian portrayed him. Remember, whenever you have an artistic production of anything, a novel, a TV show, a movie, you're getting the worldview of the author presented as if it were real. All the characters are going to act within that other worldview.

So why would you want to present a worldview that is not true and not Christian to non-Christians to attract them to your church? Right. Especially for that reason. Because they finally come to your church and they'd like you the musical, but they get the wrong Jesus.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense and it's not productive either. I don't think, and I think it's dishonoring to the true God. Now, I'm not saying it's dishonoring to be in Jesus Christ Superstar necessarily, but for a church to present it, the church is the place where we are to reflect God the clearest to people.

That is the place. So I just don't think it's appropriate. It's disappointing to me to hear that.

Two thumbs down. The balcony is closed. And that's for someone who likes Andrew Lloyd Webber.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Avi and Anonymous. We appreciate hearing from you.

Send us your question on X with the hashtag STRS or you can just go to our website at str.org. Look for our podcast page, our hashtag STRS podcast page and you'll find a link there and you can send us your question. Just keep it to one or two sentences and we will consider it for the show. Thank you so much for listening.

This is Amy Hall and Greg Cocle for Stand to Reason.

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