Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community

There is no getting around the fact that a Christian community is one that suffers. The pioneer of our faith suffered, the main symbol of our tradition is one of agony and death, and it’s no use trying to remove the cruciform marks from the hands and feet of the church. The mark of the gospel is not health and wealth, but nails and blood.13

churches ought to embrace, rather than avoid, the uncomfortable aspects of Christianity if they are to thrive in the twenty-first century.

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

love requires sacrificing the sovereignty of our feelings. Love cannot survive on the basis of emotional satisfaction. It is covenantal.

Theoretically, married people can’t quit a marriage. In the same way, theoretically, Christians can’t quit the body of Christ. . . . Our submission to God, irrevocable commitment to each other and interdependence should hold us together when we want to distance ourselves from Christians who fail to live up to our gold standards or who complicate ou

Sometimes the ties that bind must be loosened for the sake of the gospel.

Holiness is difference. It is strange. But not for the sake of strangeness. For the sake of Yahweh.

A unified church is one of the strongest evidences of the truth of the gospel.

It is the different-ness of the gospel, not its hipness, that changes lives and transforms the world.