A Call to Connection: Rediscovering the Restorative Heart of Jesus

The message of Jesus of Nazareth was, at its core, a message of restoration and redemption.

Restoration—a beautiful, powerful word—is defined as the act of bringing or binding together, or connecting. It speaks to mending what is broken, healing what is wounded, and uniting what has been scattered.

Redemption is the act of being saved from error or evil, a purchase back to a right relationship. Jesus's life and ministry were the living embodiment of these two concepts. He brought people back to God, back to community, and back to the truest version of themselves.

The Opposite of Restoration

Fast-forward over 2,000 years. We live in an era that often feels like the complete opposite of restoration.

We have fragmented ourselves into countless denominations, splintered cliques, and isolated groups. We build walls instead of bridges, labeling our divisions and calling them "church." Rather than focusing on the unifying mission of restoration, we are consumed by our differences, doctrines, and internal politics.

The urgent, practical calls of Jesus's message—to care for the orphan, the marginalized, the homeless, the prisoner, and the widow—have become secondary concerns, often delegated to committees or annual charity drives. We've managed to build highly complex systems that effectively tune out the suffering world, allowing us to remain comfortable while believing we are doing "the Lord's work."

Doctrine or Doorway? The System Jesus Confronted

Jesus's anger was rarely, if ever, directed at the common person. It was almost exclusively reserved for the systems that stood between people and God, between people and justice, and between people and true connection. He didn't get angry about doctrine; he became angry about the doorkeepers. He flipped tables in the temple not as a random act of rage, but as a symbolic, revolutionary act against a corrupt system of religious finance that was exploiting the poor and turning a place of prayer into a marketplace of exclusion.

We have continued this pattern. We've taken the revolutionary teachings of Jesus and built our own comfortable, protective systems. We then call these systems "Jesus's teachings," and in an act of profound self-deception, we replace the word system with the word doctrine. The structure becomes more important than the service. The building becomes more sacred than the broken human being outside its doors.

The Church as a Practice, Not a Place

The Church is not meant to be a place we go to; it is meant to be a practice that we live out. It is to be a call on our lives that is embodied every single day. True "church" is not about having people come to us and sit in our perfect pews. It is about us going to the people—the radical, inconvenient, and sometimes uncomfortable movement of meeting people where they are. This practice is defined by sitting with the very people no one else wants to sit with. It means choosing the company of the excluded over the company of the elite.

People today are hungry for true, authentic connection. They are not finding it in programs, polished services, or institutional formality. In order to find and create genuine connection, we have to go where that connection can happen. Often, the most fertile ground for restoration is not found under stained glass. It is found in the dirty, the dingy, and the dark corners of our world: the shelter, the street bench, the prison visiting room, the bedside of the lonely. These are the places of profound human need and, therefore, the places where the message of Jesus—one of binding, mending, and true redemption—is most desperately needed and most powerfully received.

The call of restoration is clear: get up, go out, and connect.

©Lisa King, MS, LPC, NCC