What does it mean for the Church to be “true and living”?
Faith Matters resources to accompany your Come Follow Me study: January 6–12
“Hearken, O ye people.”
Read “A Restoration Manifesto,” a remix of Section 1 and the appendix to Patrick Mason’s book Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st Century World.
Maybe you’ve read this section a hundred times; maybe it’s entirely new to you. Either way, sometimes it’s helpful to refashion even modern scripture into a contemporary idiom and thus see God’s word through new eyes. What follows here is, to borrow a term from Adam Miller, an “urgent paraphrase” of this powerful passage of scripture… In my contemporary remix of Section 1 I haven’t improved upon the original; undoubtedly the opposite is true. What I hope is for you (and me) to listen to scripture with new ears to hear—then go back to the actual revelation to (re)discover God’s voice, fired with a sense of urgency and mission about the nature and purpose of the Restoration and what you (and I) are called to do as part of it.
The Lord speaks through His servants, including latter-day prophets.
From The Big Questions Project: In the past, church leaders have made some significant mistakes. How much should I rely on pronouncements and teachings of our leaders today?
“If it’s truly the gospel of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter whether you hear it straight from me or from one of my servants. The prophecies and promises are true, and you need to respond just the same.” —Patrick Mason’s remix of D&C 1:38, from A Restoration Manifesto
The Restoration helps me face the challenges of the latter days.
As the Restoration enters its third century, the world has new questions. A loving God has answers. In Restoration, scholar and author Patrick Mason reflects on what it means for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to participate in the “ongoing Restoration.” Every generation must rediscover the gospel anew, and this book breathes new life into well-worn terms and phrases. This book will inspire and challenge you to rethink, recommit, and respond to God’s call to the 21st-century world.
“For anyone who cares about the Church’s mission in the twenty-first century, Restoration is a necessary book. Patrick Mason builds on the early leaders’ radical view that our charge is to renovate all of human society. He points to a few accretions we need to slough off to ready ourselves and then lays out areas calling for our best efforts. This is a strong read, but written with such a light touch and good humor, that I could not put it down.”
— Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
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.”
The Lord uses “the weak and the simple” to accomplish His work.
Listen to “Using Your Gifts for Good,” or “Every Needful Thing.”
Read “Stumbling over Seer Stones,” an essay by James Egan about what the strange origins of the Book of Mormon can teach us:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s “true and living church.”
What does the phrase “the only true and living church” even mean? Read Philip Barlow’s take in “The Only True and Living Church?”
The phrase [“true and living”] boasts a history dating back centuries, used to lend emphasis to a range of nouns: “true and living faith,” for example, or “true and living charity,” “true and living member of England,” and “true and living God.”
Sometimes users of the phrase sharpened the emphasis by adding singularity (“sole” or “one” or “only”). Joseph Smith used the phrase thus in contexts outside of D&C 1. Writing to Emma in 1832 during a trip to New York City, he consoled his wife: “[You] must comfort yourself, knowing that God is your friend in heaven and that you have one true and living friend on Earth, your Husband Joseph Smith Jr.”
…By referring to one true and living friend, did Joseph insinuate that Emma had no others? That her other friends were either false or dead? That her friendships apart from Joseph were perfunctory rather than active, living, organic, and evolving? Or was Joseph’s choice of words a recognizable figure of speech, professing depth of feeling–something akin to: No matter what trials you endure, know that I, at least, am your unalterably devoted friend.
Read “What does it mean to believe the Church is ‘true’?” an essay adapted from Both Things Are True by Kate Holbrook
This is part of what it means that our Church is “true and living”: the Church is always becoming true as it grows and adapts to new circumstances and challenges. One of the ways the Church becomes true is through our own efforts to build it truly. The truth of the Church must be constantly replenished by the faith, hope, and charity of its members. When we build Christlike relationships with one another, we make the Church true.
“I believe that both things are true: our Church is true, and it is living. It is perpetually becoming true.” —Kate Holbrook
Read “The True Church,” a chapter from Patrick Mason’s book Restoration.
Can Latter-day Saints claim to belong to God’s true church when we learn, in our encounters with other people and religions, that we’re a tiny minority and that God is present and working through other religions too? … Can divine love, favor, and revelation really be concentrated on just 0.1% of God’s children?
My head and heart both say no. The scriptures and prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do too.
Listen to “Both Things Are True,” a conversation with Rosalynde Welch on the writings of Kate Holbrook:
“The truth of the church is not only in its teachings and its doctrines, but in the relationships of its members. And that's where as rank and file members, we can exercise our stewardships to make the church true—by being in a true and loving relationship to one another.” —Rosalynde Welch
Find even more from The Big Questions Project:
Read “Spiritual Cartography: Idolatry and Restoration” by Matthew Bowman, from Issue 3 of Wayfare Magazine, “A Developing Church: An Ontogenetic Perspective on Latter-day Saint History” by Travis Hicks, or “Lusterware” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
“For me the issue is not whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the One True Church Upon the Face of the Earth… The really crucial issue for me is that the Spirit of Christ is alive in the Church, and that it continues to touch and redeem the lives of the individual members.” —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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.”
—Terryl Givens, “The Abounding Church”
The Lord called Joseph Smith to be a prophet.
Read a Wayfare essay by John G. Turner, the author of Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, coming from Yale University Press in Summer 2025:
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