Saving Face: Finding My Self, God, and One Another Outside a Defaced Church

We have received the blessing from benedictions countless times, but what does it mean for the Lord to shine his face upon us? What's in a face? What if the crises in the church today are not because we don't have the right doctrine, but because we have lost our imagination and wonder? What if we have lost sight of the ultimate blessing to have God's face shine upon us? What if we are spending all our time husting a curated face of what we think we are supposed to be and never really developing a real face? Never digging the truth out of ourselves about who we are - and missing the presence of Christ with his people.

Saving Face is a meditation on the divine face, and the meaning we get from the faces of others as we are trying to find our own. Deeply personal and contemplative, this book originated in a time of rising from disillusionment while still aching for a church. Today the church is in a state of transition. We see many leaving and deconstructing from harm, hypocrisy, abuse of power, and the absence of Christ and his love. It is a time of revealing. But Christ is not absent. We need to learn how to listen and look for him together. We are learning that faith is more than propositional statements about who God is, as helpful and important as they may be. Along with our confession, faith is a summoning to see and experience what is real and to walk in it together.

Aimee Byrd creatively weaves together stories, memories, journaling entries, and Scripture meditations on the divine face, seeking Christ's face in the faces of others that he has put in her life. She invites the church to do the same. The church needs to recover the value of beauty, contemplation, and relationship. We need to look at one another's faces and learn what that demands of us. We need to develop our own faces. The church needs to develop her face. And in doing this, our deepest longings come out of us and find their end in Christ, preparing us for eternity.