9Marks Church Search
I was over at Doug's blog earlier and he mentioned that when he began attending a church recently he had 9 Marks in his mind as a mental check list. It is an interesting post, you should check it out.
After reading his post I figured I'd go see what this checklist was exactly. Turns out what I had in my head over the summer as I tried out a new church was basically this list...only I didn't realize it. Well, I decided to do a search to see how many churches in my area are listed on the website. I expected only to see a handful, I know most of the churches in my area and they don't fit the bill. I was disappointed/ surprised/ not really surprised to see that only one church came up within a 10 mile radius of every zip code I've lived in since moving to Illinois. It is the church I've been attending for a few months now, and am currently considering membership.
When I widened the search to fifty miles only four churches ended up on the list. That's when I was disappointed and surprised. I guess I was hoping for a few more churches in the area that uphold these principles...maybe they're there and just not on the list? Who knows. But at the same time, I'm not all that surprised. After the fluff I sat under for so long, and after visiting various churches, I knew that churches who long to dig into Scripture and uphold the principles on the list were rare. I was just hoping they weren't this rare.
After reading his post I figured I'd go see what this checklist was exactly. Turns out what I had in my head over the summer as I tried out a new church was basically this list...only I didn't realize it. Well, I decided to do a search to see how many churches in my area are listed on the website. I expected only to see a handful, I know most of the churches in my area and they don't fit the bill. I was disappointed/ surprised/ not really surprised to see that only one church came up within a 10 mile radius of every zip code I've lived in since moving to Illinois. It is the church I've been attending for a few months now, and am currently considering membership.
When I widened the search to fifty miles only four churches ended up on the list. That's when I was disappointed and surprised. I guess I was hoping for a few more churches in the area that uphold these principles...maybe they're there and just not on the list? Who knows. But at the same time, I'm not all that surprised. After the fluff I sat under for so long, and after visiting various churches, I knew that churches who long to dig into Scripture and uphold the principles on the list were rare. I was just hoping they weren't this rare.
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