finding a church home

Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, PA - one of the churches our family has visited in the last 10 Sundays

This past Sunday is now the 10th Sunday in a row where I have not had the responsibility of preaching or presiding at worship.  As a pastor, this has been a tough transition.  I'm still in ministry serving the Anglican Church in North America, but I am not assigned to a local congregation.  So, my wife and I taking this new assignment as an opportunity and do something we've never done in our 13 years of marriage - finding a church home together.

Knowing that no church is perfect, I've been running through this list as we've been visiting churches as a family:
1) Was Christ exalted? (in the message, music, reading of Scripture, Holy Communion)
2) Was I challanged in my journey with Christ?
3) Is the church reaching out to the community - not just serving members and attenders?
4) Is the church welcoming to newcomers?
5) Was my family ministered to overall?
6) Is there an opportunity for me and my family to serve at this church?
I'm resisting calling this "church shopping" because it just screams consumerism.  In this process, the challenge has been not to think as a consumer where sometimes "service" in church really means "serve us" (the consumer) when you get right down to it.

So far, we've visited 4 churches in the Anglican Dicoese of Pittsburgh where I am canonically resident as a priest.  After each visit, I've had to press through the superficial stuff and not ask "What can this church do for me?"  Instead, I've had to step back and pray about how I might be blessed to be a blessing to this church for this time we are in Pittsburgh on this ministry assignment.