Brett's book unexpectedly packed a punch. I grew up in the church and now am a pastor's wife. Uncomfortable lays a theological basis for what the Church should look like. Brett is a humorous and compassionate guide through the peculiarities and awkward bits of being part of the larger Christian community. His is a direct challenge to the idea of church hopping, instead calling us to a more broad and gracious view of the Body of Christ. A great read.

I have long believed that church is what you make of it for the most part. If the teaching and doctrine are solid, then "church shopping" should not be a thing. This book really highlights how it's ok to be uncomfortable with church, it's ok to have parts that don't really fit. But it's our responsibility to make ourselves fit with the church rather than the other way around. Great food for thought.

Uncomfortable was a wakeup call I didn't know I needed. This is a book I will be recommending to many in my church.

I had mixed feelings about this book all of the way through. I appreciated McCracken's critique of a desire for authenticity, which can at times give way to a desire for complacency. When "just being authentic" means "I'm comfortable in my sin," we've failed the call to holy living. For me, this brief insight was the highlight of the book.

Each chapter's emphasis was generally good on its own, and a few were even challenging - but mostly, it was predictable and generic.

McCracken's tradition also shone through the book in a way that was off-putting to readers from other traditions (or at least to me). McCracken takes a fundamentalist approach to scriptural inerrancy and writes from a charismatic perspective (which he describes as something relatively new to him). Perhaps most odd to me was a frequent celebration of alcohol, which was highlighted in nearly every chapter, and seems to be at odds with some of the principles of his own book.

There are certainly relevant and important ideas in the book, but when it comes to recommending it to others (especially members of my congregation), this book gets a hard "pass." There are good parts, but to get to them, you have to wade through an abundance of generic observations and far too many quotes from Lifeway celebrity authors and Calvinist church leaders.

Uncomfortable. Awkward. These are words that can be - and often are - used to describe church and Christians. We want to avoid awkwardness and be where we are comfortable, so we should look for a church that makes us comfortable, right?

Brett McCracken says no, being uncomfortable is good for us. In fact, he starts off the book with the idea that we should find the closest non-heretical church that preaches the Bible and commit to that church, regardless of whether or not we "fit" there.

As someone who has often felt like the square peg in the round hole at church - for example, I'm a Calvinist who attended a church in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition for many years - I found this book to be extremely helpful. Looking at the discomfort of not quite fitting in as an opportunity for spiritual growth gave me a new sense of how we are all called to be the body of Christ, each with different gifts and weaknesses.

The only place where the book falls is the chapter called "Uncomfortable Spirit." I believe the point of the chapter is that the Spirit sometimes manifests himself in ways that are uncomfortable for us, which is true. However, the chapter reads as a defense of charismatic Christianity. I have nothing against charismatics; the chapter simply didn't fit the book.

I would highly recommend this book to any Christian, especially anyone who feels like they never fit in at church.