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

May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you…

We have received the blessing countless times, but what does it mean for the Lord to shine his face upon us in a time when many Christians are disillusioned with their faith, wrestling to reframe their relationship with God and with the church?

But another inner struggle often lurks unacknowledged, unconfronted—the struggle to rediscover one's own identity and relearn one's own story. Aimee Byrd finds this experience best described in the metaphor of finding one's face. Through this beautiful meditation, Byrd shows how the church has "been defaced" by its own spiritual abuses, by its loss of imagination and wonder, by empty words without actions.

The author of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has often asked hard questions of the church. In Saving Face, she develops her reflections still further, daring to wonder: what if the crises in the church today are not because we don't have the right doctrine, but because we have lost sight of something much deeper?

What if we are spending all our time pointing fingers at those we consider "wrong," when we should be looking in a mirror instead? What if God has something to reveal to us there? Perhaps we should be seeking the presence of Christ in our own reflections just as we look for him in the faces of the others.

Creatively weaving together stories, memories, journal entries, and Scripture meditations on the divine face, Aimee invites the church to seek the face of Christ by recovering the values of beauty, contemplation, and deep relationship.