Contending for Restoration While Holding to The Truth
“You cannot continually encounter the poison in the world without being poisoned unless you are staying close to Jesus.” -Diane Langberg
This past week, hundreds gathered at the Restore Conference, a conference created out of a desire to restore faith in God and the church. It is sobering to sit in a room filled with people who find solidarity with one another through the sharing of horrific stories of abuse within the church. It is grievous to listen to testimonies of adult clergy sexual abuse, child clergy sexual abuse, and perhaps the more insidious but no less destructive tales of spiritual abuse. Yet, the conference is not designed to leave people in despair. Rather, invitations to continue to contend for restoration were made. Author and therapist, Diane Langberg who has spent over 50 years walking with people through tragic stories of abuse and trauma, spoke calling all in attendance to remember that their motivation to working for healing must always be their love for the Lord. In a moment of profound vulnerability, she spoke of her own season of bitterness and cynicism towards the church, reminding us all that we cannot encounter the poison of abuse in the church without our own hearts being poisoned unless we stay close to Jesus.
I (Kayleigh) have been meditating on this poignantly spoken truth and have felt convicted to root myself and Restor(y) as an organization ever more deeply in a love for our Lord Jesus. So to those of you who are following along, who desire to partner with us or support this work of restoring the church we want you to know a few things:
We Are Committed to Contending for Restoration While Holding to the Truth: We will keep working for healing within the church, recognizing that there are many forms of pain, trauma, suffering and abuse that threaten that health. However, as we do, we will hold to the truth that is Jesus. We will stay close to him and will guard against cynicism and bitterness that would detract from our work.
We Are Committed to The Church: We truly believe that for healing to come to the church, healing must happen within the church. We are convinced that pastors, church leaders, and entire congregations are essential to this healing. For this reason, we will continue to focus our resource development, training, and partnerships on coming alongside local churches.
We Will Be People of Hope: We will continue to hope for a healthier church. Our hope will not be shallow or dismissive of pain, but rather we will view our hope as an act of resistance, a refusing to allow trauma to have the last word over the story of God’s church. We will hope as people who know that Jesus is working to present the church as blameless and spotless, a radiant bride. We will continue to join him in that restorative work.
We are so thankful that you are here. We pray that as you continue to work for healing in the church you too would stay close to Jesus, that the poison that threatens us all would not overcome you, but that you would know the deep love of Jesus for you and for his church.
