Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community

The cross remains “folly” because it undermines human logic and wisdom.

the cross is also unpopular because it champions weakness in a survival-of-the-fittest world.

We grow most when we are outside of our comfort zones. We are more effective when we are on the edge of risk. We hold beliefs more dear and pursue goals more passionately when they are accompanied by a cost.

The perfect church does not exist, but committing to a church in spite of its flaws is essential—and worth it. Churchless Christianity is an oxymoron.

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 must lean into the awkward conglomeration of people who comprise the church.

The church is imperfect, messy, maddening, and at times mundane. But she is the body of Christ, the organism God has chosen to physically manifest the Son to the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. It may not sound exciting. It may seem too predictable and institutional and bourgeois. It’s certainly not going to be comfortable. But showing up at

The church is necessarily plural. To say you “love Jesus but not the church” is to say you prefer a decapitated head. That’s creepy and doesn’t work biblically (see Eph. 5:23).

Everyone is born with bents toward certain sins, including sexual sins. Whether this is nature or nurture, it matters not.

Our notion of authenticity should not primarily be about affirming each other in our struggles—patting

The New Testament paradigm for homosexual behavior is “emphatically negative,” argues Hays, and “offers no accounts of homosexual Christians, tells no stories of same-sex lovers, ventures no metaphors that place a positive construal on homosexual relations.”