Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

“I’m just not being fed.”

“I’m looking for a church that’s a good ‘fit’ for my family.”

“I want a church with a meaningful program for my children.”

These are not necessarily bad questions to ask. But the reason why these may be the wrong questions to be asking is that they place my needs, my wants, and my perspective as the only criteria by which we determine the answer to these questions. I am the ultimate authority and judge.

My guess is that a person asking such questions probably will never find what they are looking for, for our needs and our wants change as we change.

What would it look like, if, instead of putting me at the center of the universe, put God there. And instead of asking how can the church meet my needs, we began asking a different set of questions.

“What kind of a Christ-follower is God asking me to be?”

“What kind of a Christ-follower best pleases God in their gatherings?”

“What kind of a Christ’s church member should I be to further the kingdom of Jesus Christ?”

What would our church world look like if we were asking these questions? What would our world look like if Christ-followers asked these questions instead?