As I sit here in America, surrounded by mass-market coffee shops and concrete jungles, I can’t help but wonder: where does the church fit in? Or more importantly, where do we, as believers, fit into the church? To put it another way, what is our role and responsibility towards one another amongst the crashing waves of postmodernism?

This all began when I recently attended a church in which the pastor stood in front of the gathering and proclaimed “we don’t want to look like a church.” He went on to say that he wants the attendants to feel comfortable and laid back while they are at their meeting. I’ve thought about these words for a long time and their implications and have come to the conclusion that I must have missed the memo wherein the church is supposed to conform to the wider culture and be a “comfortable” place for people to come and feel good about themselves. I must have missed the passage in the Bible where God tells us that He only wants us to be happy and “comfortable” in our daily lives, and happy and “comfortable” while we’re supposed to be worshipping Him who died the cruelest of deaths to wash away our iniquities.

Never mind the fact that Christian brothers and sisters all over the globe are being tortured and killed everyday by the dozens because of their beliefs while Americans are pursuing a “comfortable” faith. Never mind the fact that thousands of Christians are currently living in abject poverty while Americans believe that God’s favor is shining upon them through luxury. Never mind the fact that the Christian church’s relevance is being replaced more and more each day by the throes of tolerance and seeker-friendly warm-fuzzy mentality.

Yes the church is supposed to be welcoming. Yes the church is supposed to be a place of encouragement and friendly faces. But the church is not supposed to be a place where one should go to get a weekly dose of “you’re a unique person and Jesus has a special plan for your life.” The church is not supposed to be the only place we feel “comfortable” talking about and worshipping our great Savior.

The Gospel is not “comfortable.” It is not full of warm fuzzies. It is utterly offensive. It goes against everything that this postmodern society stands for. It calls for self-denial. It calls for boldness. It calls for the realization that the Christian life is not about putting on a spiritual façade one day of the week and living in complacency the other six.

We must deny ourselves to the point where the only thing we have to grasp onto is Christ. Jesus calls us to give up everything and follow Him. While some may take this as giving up all worldly possessions, I believe it may have more to do with how we follow Him with our words. How recklessly we pursue the Gospel, to the point where all thoughts of how good a reputation one has, or how likable that person is are all just washed away and all that is left is Christ, because that’s who our identity is in. It is not in political organizations or social organizations. It is not in our careers or what school we attend or what church we are a member of. It is not even in our families. Our reputations and identities should be in Christ alone. The world must know us not by love alone, but the love of Christ alone. But this cannot begin and end with the outside and unbelieving world. This must also extend into the depths of our Christian circles.

And so we must be bold. We must take up our own crosses and speak out against those who would claim that God does not want us to suffer or be uncomfortable. We must not let our brothers and sisters be led astray in the name of the American Dream. Prosperity and comfort are amazing gifts of grace, but they cannot be abused and substituted for the true Gospel of Christ. The Bible does not say “to live is Christ and to have money and cars and houses and power and family is gain and the favor of God.” It says “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Our hope for comfort should not be in this world. It must be in the next.

Because of this, we must be challenged and encouraged to preach the Gospel to each other and to the world everyday without the fear of what we will come out looking like afterwards. Our worship lifestyle must be exactly that: a lifestyle. Not a one day a week period of false piety and dressing oneself up in a garment of perceived righteousness. With nothing but Christ to guide us, and nothing but Christ to find our identity in, we must earnestly seek to proclaim His name and His true Word as it exists in Scripture. Not what some would have it say through a postmodern lens. The souls of the unbelieving world as well as the souls of our straying brothers and sisters in Christ are not the only things at stake in this task. The Gospel is at stake.