I Kings 9:3
(NLT)
The LORD said... “I have set this Temple apart to be holy—this place you have built where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart."
(ESV)
"I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.’
Is your church a 2 Corinthians 12:20-21 fellowship, with "quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorderly behavior...impurity, sexual immorality, and eagerness for lustful pleasure"?
Or a church characterized by "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:12-14)..."like-minded, having the same love, being one I spirit and purpose" (Philippians 2:2)?
The question is not "What do you think of your church", but "What does God think of your church?"
Is God glorified; Jesus, the cross & free grace preached with power; the Spirit present and Fruit of the Spirit manifest?
J.C. Ryle Old Paths
http://www.preachtheword.com/bookstore/old-paths-ryle.pdf
You should seriously consider what kind of a ministry you are in the habit of attending, supposing you have a choice. You have reason indeed to be careful. It is not all the same where you go, whatever people may say. There are many places of worship, I fear, where you might look long for Christ crucified, and never find Him. He is buried under outward ceremonies, thrust behind the baptismal font, lost sight of under the shadow of the Church. “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him” (John 20:13). Take heed where you settle yourself.
Try all by this single test, “Is Jesus and free forgiveness proclaimed here?”. There may be comfortable pews, there may be good singing, there may be learned sermons. But if Christ’s Gospel is not the sun and centre of the whole place, do not pitch your tent there. Say rather with Isaac, “Here, is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb?” (Genesis 22:7). Be very sure this is not the place for your soul.
C.H. Spurgeon
If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it.
If you come into the church of God, and expect to get among angels, you will be mightily mistaken; and if the brethren should receive you, and hope that they are receiving angels unawares, they will be mistaken too.
When a brother says, "There is no love in this church" I know that he has been looking in the (mirror), and that his own reflection has suggested the remark.
“Our Lord’s Prayer for His People’s Sanctification”
John 17:17 “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”
Those who are sanctified in this sense have ceased to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers; they have ceased to run with the multitude to do evil; they are not conformed to this present evil world; they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth. The more assuredly this is true of them the better. There are some, in these apostate days, who think that the church cannot do better than to come down to the world to learn her ways, follow her maxims, and acquire her “culture.” In fact, the notion is that the world is to be conquered by our conformity to it. This is as contrary to Scripture as the light is to the darkness.
John Hall, Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City
Congregations must justify their existence. If they only bring people together to be “very much pleased,” why, the Lecture Bureaus will contract for all that. “Did you worship? Were you edified? Did the Lord speak to you? Did you speak to Him? Do you mean more seriously to be pure, honest, upright, generous, manly, holy, from what you did and heard to-day?”
These are the questions which the best part of mankind feel to be proper, and to which we must have affirmative replies.
A.W. Pink Studies in the Scriptures, 1926
Today it is true almost everywhere that we are far more concerned about the results of the gospel than we are about the purity of it! We are more concerned in the blessing of man than we are about the glory of Christ!
The first question we ought to be asking is, how scripturally is the gospel being preached in your church? Is the preacher magnifying Christ? Is the preacher emphasizing the absolute sufficiency of his finished work? Does the preacher make it plain that God does not ask the sinner to do anything, that he has asked Christ to do it all and the Lord has finished the work his Father gave him to do?
Letters of Arthur W. Pink, Letter to Lowell Green, April 10, 1934.
How am I to ascertain whether or not a company of professing Christians (whether in a church, a Bible Institute or anywhere else) will truly help or hinder me? In this way: does their teaching and influence make my conscience more tender or more callous? Does it emphasize the loftiness of the holy standard God has set before me and make me realize how far, far short I come of it, or does it make me pleased with myself? Does it foster pride because my head is becoming full of prophecies, dispensations, doctrines, giving me so ‘much more light’ than many have? Or does it foster humiliation and shame because I realize what a sad failure I am in putting into practice the things of God!
G. Campbell Morgan "Witnesses"
Find me a church where the resurrection light is not shining, where the passion of blood is not proclaimed, and the enthroned Lord is not revealed, and the working Lord is not felt, and it is a tomb, an insult to God and to man.
Robert Roberts of Clynnog, on visiting London and George Whitefield’s pulpit in the summer of 1797
I listened there to a good number of English preachers, but, while I listened to them, I only felt these sighs arising in my breast: Behold the altar, behold the sacrifice, but where is the fire? Behold the pulpit of Whitefield, but where is his God? Oh! great, but miserable congregations! Is it the swelling sound of the pipes of the organ you get instead of the voice of the Almighty?
Samuel Chadwick (A Wesleyan Holiness Pentecostal) The Way To Pentecost
When the church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah. That is why prayer is the test of faith and the means of spiritual power. The Spirit of God travails in the prayer-life of the soul. Miracles are the direct work of his power, and without miracles the church cannot live. The carnal can argue, but it is the Spirit of God that regenerates. Education can civilize, but it is being born of the Spirit that saves. The energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements, and raise millions; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a Temple of the Living God. The root-trouble of the present distress is that many churches have more faith in the world and in the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to Christ’s realized presence and power. The breath of the four winds can turn death into life and dry bones into mighty armies, but one of the indispensable means by which that breath comes is by prayer. Without him we can do nothing.
CAUTION
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
If a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing [for Satan and his devils to do] is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the [Lord] desires… In the second place, the search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the [Lord] wants him to be a pupil.