Church Hopping - With Good Reason

I found a blog with a post entitled 10 Dumbest Things Christians Do and one of the things listed is Church Hopping. The author describes the church hopper as someone looking for that perfect church and this person is generally very critical and will not remain loyal to a church until the “perfect church” has been found.

Well I am guilty of church hopping, but I believe I have good reason. I am currently looking for a church to attend regularly and this means I visit various churches and I do so critically as I don’t want to stick to a church that violates instructions we have in the Bible.

For instance, last Sunday I visited a nearby church and the most of the service seemed more like a theatre play than anything else. The bible makes it very clear:

Matthew 6:5 (Message Bible version) "And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?”

Matthew 6:5 (KJV) And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

So needless to say, they won’t be seeing me again... Before that we attended a Roman Catholic church as my wife was Catholic, but I never considered myself one. Now I felt uneasy at this church from the start. In the church they had a shrine in one corner with the statue of Mary and people would go on their knees before this statue and pray, then kiss the foot of the statue. They also believe that you can only get to heaven through Mary...

Doesn’t the bible make it very clear that we should not bow down before any idol (which is obviously what is happening in this church) and the only advocate between man and God is Jesus Christ and not the virgin Mary? Now I was stupid enough to have my kids baptised in this church as I didn’t know better at the time. They believe in child baptism and to quote the guy who done the baptism “if your child should die tomorrow and she was not yet baptised, she will not go to heaven, but will be stuck in Limbo”... What bull is that!?

So now is it so wrong for me to go around looking for a church in which I feel comfortable committing to? And is it so wrong to want to have my kids grow up in a church that is lead by the Bible and not a church that wants to lead the Bible?

If I do not find a church I feel comfortable taking my children to then I will just continue to praise and worship God in my own home with my wife and kids... you find something wrong with that? Then read:

Matthew 18:20 (KJV) “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”