Quotable – J. Gerald Harris tagged:

Quotable – J. Gerald Harris

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“Vance Havner, a preacher’s preacher of the last generation, used to say, “It is the responsibility of the preacher to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

God instructed the prophet Isaiah, saying, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” In every congregation of people there are hurried, hurting, haggard, helpless people who need to be comforted. It is a noble thing to provide solace and consolation to those in such distress.

However, most church folks have broadened their comfort requirements to the extreme – to include things that actually border on the ridiculous. For example, the temperature in the Sunday School classrooms and worship center must be exactly 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Some church members would consider anything more or less than that ideally controlled climate intolerable.

Other church members must be greeted with a cup of coffee upon their arrival at church each Sunday morning. There must be the right kind of cream and a preferred kind of sweetener to satisfy the tastes of each coffee connoisseur. Any deviation from that expected welcome would be considered unsatisfactory.

Furthermore, the volume of sound in the worship center must remain within a certain parameter of decibels or the comfort level would be compromised.

The time of the worship services must also be factored into the comfort equation. If the services were ever too long, some people would presumably become wearied, uneasy, and just plain miserable.

In fact, most of us are extremely interested in our personal comfort; and we spend a lot of time and energy making sure that the church is a comfortable place for people to come – a place that doesn’t scare or turn people off. But in making it a comfortable place to visit, perhaps we have made it too comfortable of a place to stay. Church folks don’t want to leave the “sanctuary” – the safe, comfortable place of worship – to witness or serve.

One of the primary dangers in being comfortable in our Christianity is that over time comfort tends to begin to feel like something that God – or the world – owes us. What we once called ‘luxury’ we now call ‘need’.”

J. Gerald Harris, Editor of the Georgia Baptist Convention’s, The Christian Index, in his editorial entitled, “The Church of the Comfortable.”