I passed this sign today in Germantown, (the part of downtown Nashville we live in), and sadly, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, that sounds like a church flyer.”
So many churches these days are obsessed with comfort. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s easier to grow your church that way, since churches are just groups of people, and people in general are obsessed with comfort, safety, and security. The problem is this: Churches claim to study, believe, and teach the Bible. And my copy of the Bible doesn’t have much to say about promising comfort and security. In fact, a lot of the people who followed Jesus in the Bible got their heads chopped off. And at the least, did some jail time.
I know, this isn’t an ad about a church. But the reality is, many of the churches in America today could just change the name on this sign to the name of their church. ”__________ Church: A community where life is comfortable.” Some would try to use the whole thing: “A community where life is comfortable and invigorating, all at the same time.” But they’d still fail, because that promise is just another illusion.
I looked up the actual definition of invigorating. One of the definitions was “to give vigor to; to fill with life.” You might not be willing to accept it, but it’s spiritually impossible to find life through comfort. Well, maybe a fake, counterfeit version of life. But who wants to settle for that??
Wait. Better not answer that question unless you can be really honest with yourself, because most have already settled for the comfortable, counterfeit version of the life they were meant to live.
Have you?
Tags: bj harris, Christian Illusionist, church, church community, comfort, Harris, illusionist, magician
saw this same sign and glad to hear someone put such great thoughts to it. thanks for sharing, brother. indeed.
Thanks for reading and commenting. Would love to connect sometime and chat about Germany.
I think it’s churches are more excited about the business of building the Pastor’s ego and making their “mark” on the community. Community seems to be more of a catch phrase these days than something we really want to live out. Seems like the new breed of Pastor is more excited about getting a book deal and hoping to speak at Cataylst than they are about advancing the Kingdom of God. Jesus tended to live a life that made the comfortable uncomfortable. Sorry about the Soapbox, its your blog anyways…
Terry – Do you think technology and social media has had anything to do with this? I was thinking about so many of the desires to be authors and speakers, instead of being content to just love, serve, and teach.
There was a time when you weren’t able to “keep tabs” on other pastors, and you also weren’t able to “put your stuff out there” quite as easily.
Thanks for reading and commenting…