Comfort doesn’t match up with Church, Faith, and Discipleship

If your goal is to be comfortable in church, with faith, discipleship, I’m going tell you right now that what you are striving for isn’t church, faith, or discipleship.

Let me clarify a bit. I’m not talking about physical comfort here. I’m not talking about having enough money to survive and not worry about where your next meal is coming from. I’m not talking about receiving comfort after you have gone through a traumatic event, or lost a loved one, or you need healing because of something that happened to you. All those things are good things to seek — often necessary for life too.

I’m talking about the kind of comfort that allows you to avoid dealing with uncomfortable and inconvenient things because they expose your belief systems to realities to things and ideas that you don’t like. Church isn’t supposed to provide you comfort in this way. Faith often is very uncomfortable. That’s not actually comfort at all — it’s privilege. Discipleship is costly. How could we possibly see church, faith, and discipleship any other way?

At the beginning of our Lutheran worship service we start with the confession and forgiveness. That should be uncomfortable to the core because a person is doing self-examination and being intentional about where they are broken and how they have broken relationship with God and others. That’s not comfortable. And it’s a part of the service.