What is the Work of the Restoration?
Faith Matters resources to accompany your Come Follow Me study: January 27-February 2
I can trust God.
Is there a faithful way to push for change in an institution one believes is divinely guided? Read thoughts from Tim Chaves in, “Is it ok to try to fix the church?”
Listen to Jared Halverson speak on what he calls “contraries” or paradoxes that are inherent in a life of faith. He offers the powerful image of the cross as a symbol of wholeness in our discipleship. One axis, reaching vertically, represents our connection to God, while the horizontal beam represents the love and care we extend outward to embrace those around us. True discipleship, Jared explained, is this centerpoint. It requires both beams—it’s a deep grounding in God that inspires us to reach out in love to others.
I can choose the right when others try to get me to do wrong.
Listen to “Cultivating a Child’s Inner Compass,” our conversation with Jon Ogden:
I can serve God with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. The Lord invites me to help with His work.
What is the work of the Restoration? Listen to “Restoring the People of God,” an excerpt from Restoration:
The poor will receive the kingdom of heaven. The brokenhearted will be healed. The captives will be liberated. The blind will see. The bruised will be made whole. In the ultimate sense, this is the work of atonement and reconciliation that only our Savior Jesus Christ can fully accomplish. But in the more immediate sense, the call of the Restoration is for each recipient of Christ's redeeming love to extend that grace by co-participating with him as “saviors... on Mount Zion.”
That salvation cannot and will not wait for the next world. The restoration of God's people is here. The restoration of God’s people is now.
Watch our conversation with Patrick about the book:
Watch or listen to Patrick Mason’s presentation from Restore 2022, “Envisioning the Restoration’s Third Century.”
Read “The Restored Church or the "Restoring" Church?” an excerpt from Restoration:
It is not enough only to know what God intended for his children in previous generations. We have to know what God wants for us right now.
The ongoing Restoration means that every generation, and every person, must rediscover the gospel of Jesus Christ for themselves… What does the Restoration mean for you, today, at this moment? What does God need you to do that no other person and no other generation has ever done?
Read “The Abounding Church” by Terryl Givens, from Issue 1 of Wayfare:
We invite several perils by associating "restoration" and "fullness" with past and total incarnations. The words presume a fixity, a stasis, an ahistorical set of practices and principles sufficient for all times and conditions—a theological universe, in sum, that is static, sterile and ultimately, stifling. Creativity, novelty, growth, adaptation, adventure, and exuberance find little place in such a programmatic vision. Instead of a dynamic process of unfolding spiritual truths, a process that we participate in with God, connotations of the word “fullness” can suggest simply reassembling puzzle pieces already present into a bordered whole.
I see a different God in Joseph Smith’s revelations, one more similar to the God of Genesis, who says, “Let us create.”
In 2022, we spoke with Jeff Strong about the experience of missionaries in today’s mission field, including the unique challenges and opportunities they face. This conversation was based largely on a document Jeff wrote, called “What One Mission President Would Tell His Own Grandchildren About Serving a Mission.”
You can also hear about Jeff’s experience as a mission president of the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission where he and his wife led a phenomenally successful pilot program with their missionaries. For us, the story of the Bentonville, Arkansas mission has totally revolutionized the way we imagine missionary work.
What does it look like to serve God with all our mind? How can we integrate our spirituality into our intellectual pursuits and vice versa? Listen to our brand-new conversation with Shima Baradaran Baughman, and check out Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart, edited by Kate Holbrook and Melissa Inoyue. (You can also listen to our conversation with Kate and Melissa about the project.) As the book’s description puts it: “Instead of pushing us to choose between faith and reason, love and law, truth within the restored gospel and truth in the wider world of God’s children, these writers urge us to seek ‘anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report’ and learn to live in a world of complexity and abundance.”
Through the Holy Ghost, I can gain a witness of the Book of Mormon. I can be a witness that the Book of Mormon is true.
From The Big Questions Project: How do we reconcile Book of Mormon “problems” with the claim that it is the “most correct” scriptural text? And is it essential that we see the Book of Mormon as truly historical—i.e. written by ancient writers about an ancient people? Could it be some other form of writing—inspired or otherwise?
I think the best evidence of the Book of Mormon’s power is when it does for us what it was designed to do in creating true disciples of Jesus Christ. —Jared Halverson
I see divine fingerprints all over the Book of Mormon; that’s what keeps me reading. But I also see human fingerprints on it. And to recognize the mix of both I think is healthy and valuable… If we set things up from the very beginning that you’re not allowed to approach this text unless you have a bedrock testimony as certain people define it, then we have closed off the kinds of conversations that scripture in general is trying to engender. —Jared Halverson
We believe that in some way, somehow, this came from God. And people can make sense of the details as they will, but we should be able to come together and say, this text matters to us. What does it mean? And how are we best to make sense of it? —Grant Hardy
That’s probably the most embarrassing part of our story, the gold plates, which you can't see, which are no longer here… it seems like it's crazy to believe in. But the gold plates represent a part of our belief in magic. That we live in a world where, who knows when an angel will come through the door? And when they will find marvelous things that are not just something fuzzy up in heaven? —Richard Bushman
What would happen if we leaned into the strangeness of seer stones and other bewildering details of the [Book of Mormon’s] production? What if, in those disorienting details, we find help with the divine work the book’s words call us to join? What if our embarrassment and discomfort are central to the book’s purposes, a vital feature of its power to connect us to Christ, which also means to each other—the convicted and incredulous both? —James Egan
The decision to join the Church remains the single best decision I have made in my life, yet I did so largely on the basis of a mystical experience that defies rational analysis. The decision to stay fully committed to the Church is the second best decision of my life, yet it is based in large measure on my skepticism. —Thomas Griffith
Nephi, Jacob, Alma, Mormon, and Moroni are some of the wisest, most thoughtful, most spiritually mature voices in our religious tradition. By coming to know them through a detailed study of their struggles and encounters with divinity, as conveyed in their writings and editing, we can come to know Christ. The Book of Mormon is much more than is strictly necessary for a basic understanding of Christian principles and a testimony of Joseph Smith. It is one of the most miraculous elements of the Restoration, a self-revelation of God that apparently could not be adequately conveyed in less than five hundred pages. —Grant Hardy
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