What should I be looking for in a church?

[jcyrb]

No church is perfect. One of the first community churches I visited had a very faithful and compassionate pastor, and I received much counsel from him. However later on he moved away and the interim pastor was not nearly as good. That is why I recommend you to at least check out the reformed church, because in many churches the atmosphere is heavily influenced by the personal charisma and faithfulness of the pastor, and as soon as the pastor moves away, the church would often deteriorate and lose membership. The reformed Presbyterians (especially the Presbyterian Church of America and other conservative Presbyterian branches such as OPC) put much effort into building healthy relations among their local branches to support each other while preventing abuse of power by higher ups.

There are also many Pentecostal based churches that may be good, but my impression is that many of them focus too much on spiritual gift, which often just means they resort to fake emotions and subjective feelings. The reformed churches, given all of its flaws, still remain solid option in my opinion.

To clarify, I am not talking about the mainline Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). Don’t go to that. They open allow practicing homosexuals to be in the church and to serve in the church. Look at the conservative wings of the Presbyterian churches.