There is a Church we have forgotten.
Not the one defined by committees and creeds,
but the one that once held the world’s ache in her arms.
She was not built; she was breathed.
She was not managed; she was moved.
She was her—the Holder,
the living presence through which Christ’s love touched the world.
We remember her in fragments now—
a hymn, a silence, a shared meal.
But her body lies scattered:
in exhausted pastors, in burnt-out congregants,
in sanctuaries that echo more with anxiety than awe.
She has been dis-membered by relevance,
by performance,
by the unholy trinity of busyness, branding, and burnout.
And yet, not all sanctuaries have forgotten how to breathe.
Some still gather softly, without spectacle or strain—
where a few voices lift, a few hearts listen,
and the Spirit still moves like quiet wind among them.
These are the remnants of grace—
small, steady, holding the pulse while the larger body learns again to feel.
And yet—
the Reviver still breathes.
This is not the first time the body has forgotten its breath.
Every age builds walls where wonder once lived.
Every age must wake again.
The flood was not just water—it was mercy,
washing away what could no longer hold life.
And here we are again,
eight billion souls afloat on memory,
waiting for the dove of grace to return.
I. The Forgotten Bride
Once, we called her the Bride of Christ.
Not as ornament or possession,
but as living covenant—
a body formed in love,
feminine in her openness,
faithful in her presence,
fruitful in her care.
She was meant to hold, not to hoard;
to heal, not to hurry.
Her liturgy was love,
her authority, mercy.
But over time, we remade her in the image of empire.
We taught her to measure instead of minister,
to perform instead of perceive,
to fill pews instead of hearts.
We crowned her with charisma
and stripped her of compassion.
In doing so,
we forgot that the Church was never a stage for the saved—
but a shelter for the still-saving.
To be her again is not sentiment, but structure—
for only what receives can reveal.
The Church was never made to conquer,
but to contain grace until it overflows.
II. Christ the Reviver
Christ does not rebuild the Church by decree;
He revives her by touch.
He moves like breath through dry bones,
not to form a new institution,
but to remember an old intimacy.
His revival is not the crowd’s roar,
but the whisper in the tomb: “Arise.”
It is the warmth that returns to limbs gone cold—
the gentle pulse beneath systems and sermons
reminding them they were meant for life, not labor.
When Christ revives,
He gathers—not programs, but people.
He binds—not budgets, but bodies.
He calls forth not success,
but surrender.
For what He revives,
He also re-members.
Revival and holding are not opposites;
they are the inhale and exhale of grace.
The world is remade each time love breathes both.
III. Church the Holder
To be the Holder is to be womb-like—
to contain without controlling,
to tend without tallying.
The Holder listens more than she lectures.
She carries stories too heavy for sound,
sorrows too tender for text.
Her power is presence.
Her practice is patience.
Her purpose is healing.
A remembered Church would not rush to fix;
she would stay to feel.
She would hold the world the way Christ held the cross—
without defense,
without demand,
until pain was transfigured into prayer.
To hold is the posture of grace.
It is the physics of mercy made visible.
It is not stillness born of fear,
but stillness full of faith—
the quiet womb where resurrection begins.
Re-membering is what every healed body does:
feeling its way back into wholeness,
limb by limb, breath by breath.
And every time we hold one another without fixing,
the Holder breathes through us.
The remembered Church is not a building reborn—
it is a people rebinding.
IV. What We Have Today
We have pulpits full of eloquence
but altars empty of encounter.
We have sermons on love
and systems that cannot feel.
We call ourselves communities
but live like corporations.
We have forgotten how to hold one another.
We manage pain instead of meeting it.
We monetize mercy,
and mistake performance for presence.
But the Spirit still lingers—
hovering over these waters,
waiting for breath to become body again.
She is not gone; she is gathering herself.
Every act of kindness,
every moment of shared silence,
is a limb remembering where it belongs.
V. Re-membering the Holder
To re-member is to rejoin what was severed—
to gather spirit and flesh, word and deed,
into one living whole.
Re-membering the Church is not innovation;
it is resurrection.
It is the slow stitching of grace
through the torn fabric of belonging.
It is the return of warmth to faith’s fingertips.
It is the Bride remembering her name.
The Church has risen and fallen a thousand times,
not because she failed,
but because love keeps outgrowing its old containers.
Every generation forgets,
and every generation is invited to remember again.
This is our turn—
to wake with eight billion others
and learn how to hold without walls.
The Revived Church will not come roaring.
She will emerge quietly—
in circles of listening,
in acts of undeserved kindness,
in the unadvertised courage of people
who choose to hold instead of harden.
She will look less like an empire
and more like an embrace.
Less like an organization
and more like an organism.
Less like the Church we inherited
and more like the one we were always meant to be.
For this is the sacred cycle:
Christ revives,
the Church holds,
and the world begins to heal.
For some, this remembering has already begun.
In every act of quiet service, every table where the hungry are fed,
she is already re-membering herself.
The rest of us are simply catching up.
Perhaps this is what leadership was always meant to be—
not to stand above the body,
but to help it breathe again.
To live intentionally for evolving
is to re-member her—
to let life itself become liturgy again.
The remembered Church is the first glimpse of the New Creation—
not descending from heaven,
but awakening within us.
She is what happens when heaven remembers earth again.
For Christ revives.
Through her, the world is held.
And in that holding,
all things are made whole.
And perhaps this, too, is grace—that the Reviver never tires of breathing us back to life, and that some hands never stopped holding.
Read the spark that began this reflection →
✨ Her Lord, Her Holding: What the Hymn Still Teaches Us