Jordan Chamblee
AFA Journal staff writer
December 2017 – Every Christian dreams about the “perfect” church, where certain kinds of music are played, and certain kinds of sermons are preached. Many Christians find themselves bouncing from church to church searching for the right blend, a place where they can feel comfortable. And God wants church to be comfortable, right?
In his book, aptly titled Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community, Brett McCracken puts forth a question. What if the discomfort we experience at church is actually good for our spiritual well being?
“Attending my current church has been difficult and full of personal discomfort,” writes McCracken, “but also probably one of the most spiritually enriching churchgoing seasons of my life. Nothing matures you quite like faithfulness amid discomfort. Looking outside of ourselves. Putting aside personal comfort and coming often to the cross. This is what being the church means.”
Discomfort: road to repentance
McCracken covers several areas of discomfort in church, all of which become both an opportunity for humble repentance and “coming often to the cross.” Many Christians have been made uncomfortable by other Christians, especially Christians who aren’t like themselves.
“The reality of God’s family is that people have different backgrounds and personalities and opinions,” writes McCracken. “It’s a huge challenge committing to a family like this, but it is not optional. Adopted sons and daughters of God can’t just throw in the towel and retreat to our just-like-me friend groups and homogenous cliques… We are aliens together, sovereignly placed together as residents in our community for such a time as this.”
But other members of the congregation are only part of the discomfort experienced by churchgoers. Preferences in worship style can cause tension and even rifts in congregations. While it is important to have biblical convictions on these things, McCracken writes that these rifts over worship preferences are founded on pride.
Authentic corporate worship demands that Christians abandon self. “The vitality of a church’s worship,” says McCracken, “depends on members of the body submitting their autonomous freedom and opinionated preferences to the larger community, and ultimately to the Lord.”
Deference: highway to humility
McCracken continues: “This sort of humble and submissive posture is the heart and soul of Christian worship, because it reflects the deferential character of Christ himself.”
The author believes humble and authentic worship should be what he calls the angled-mirror reflection of God’s glory – up to Him and out to the world. He concludes that this level of humility leads the worshiper to participate freely in “bowing the head in deference, opening the hands in release, and relinquishing one’s rights for the sake of the King.”
Regardless of what makes any particular Christian uncomfortable at church, it is those challenges that build the church up into a wonderfully diverse family, each member a living stone uniquely cut and shaped by the Craftsman to fit together into a beautiful house. Christians can lay aside secondary issues and their dreams of a perfect earthly church in light of the heavenly reality to come.
“We are, mysteriously, part of a cosmic plan God has eternally known,” writes McCracken. “And we have an eternal inheritance. The discomfort and disdain we endure in this life as a particular people will be a blip in the timeline of our infinite history. We will at last be the perfect church we presently long for; the unblemished bride at an unimaginable wedding feast.” 
Brett McCracken (brettmccracken.com) is managing editor of Biola Magazine at Biola University and writes for Christianity Today. His book Uncomfortable is available at online and retail booksellers.
