Spring Lake Church
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Spring Lake Church is an EFCA Church located in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spring Lake Church serves the Green Bay Area with two campuses and focuses on loving God, maturing in His character, and reaching the world.
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Spring Lake Church
Tough Love | Bellevue | August 23, 2026
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Well, good morning, Spring Lake Church. My name is Garish. I'm one of the pastors here on staff. I'm at our downtown campus and I'm over our student ministry there, but I'm also over our young adults across all three campuses. And so if you're a young adult and loving and looking to get connected, please come talk to me after service, and I'd love to connect with you. But throughout this summer, we've been doing this series called Uncomfortable, where we have been diving into uncomfortable topics that we have been uh going into these because we know that as a church that if we are not discipling you on these topics, that means that someone else or something else is going to be discipling you. And so we need to wade into the uncomfortable. We need to wade into the things that we don't want to in order that we can have a proper theological biblical view of these topics. And so I thought, what a great way to start this morning, then start with a nice, uncomfortable question. Are you ready? Okay, good. The kind of murmur of like, oh no, I don't really want to. Okay, but my question is who here loves dealing with conflict? Okay, not a lot of us. Okay, my question. Next question is I'm gonna pull the room. How do you deal with conflict as it arises? So I'm so raise your hand. Raise your hand if you are an avoider. If you're somebody when conflict comes, that you're like, uh, you know, I just kind of turned my head and you pretend it's not there. Okay, a couple of you. Who who aren't people that uh shut down, right? That you're like a deer in the headlights when conflict comes, you're you just you don't know what to do. Okay, who here loves conflict? Who here goes in guns blazing? There's no beef that's too small to squash. Who who here who here doesn't want to raise their hand to all these uncomfortable questions? Yeah, most of you, okay, most of you, right? It's pretty uncomfortable, right? That uh no one really likes dealing with conflict. But some of those big buckets that I talked about of how we respond, uh, is I think, yeah, just the normal ways that we respond to conflict. And some of them have some things that are good, but a lot of it really misses, I think, what Jesus calls us to and how we are to confront one another. All right, what culture usually says is that you know what? Avoid the awkward conversation. That's what you should do. That really, it's just not worth it, right? You don't don't put yourself in a situation that you do not want to put yourself into. That's what you're supposed to do. But Jesus calls us, he says, hey, go to your brother, go to your sister in sin and confront them. That's really uncomfortable, right? That's a really uncomfortable thing to have to go to somebody in their sin. So that's why today we're going to be talking about church discipline. Pretty fun conversation, pretty fun conversation this morning. So, just a good reminder, I was talking about this, that we're talking about somebody that is proclaiming to be a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. That's somebody that this church discipline process is to take place with. And before we even dive in, I think there's two really important questions that we should be asking ourselves before we even start this process. The first one is that is this person actually sinning? Is this person actually sinning? What I mean by that is that there might be times that we hold a certain conviction ourselves that isn't near unnecessarily uh sinful, right? Say I'm somebody that I'm recovering from alcoholism, and so I have made a choice in my mind to say, you know what, I do not drink. I don't think it's a good thing, and so I've chosen not to do to do that. But then if I were to see somebody who is drinking appropriately and doing it um in a way that honors God, that I cannot go to that person and say, hey man, I'm really, I'm really worried about your life. I don't really think that you should be drinking at all, right? That is a conviction that I hold. It doesn't mean that I can then place that conviction onto somebody else. So good question. Is the person actually sinning, or are they not just or are they just not matching a preference in which I have? The next question you should ask is, is this a mistake or is this unrepentant sin? Right? It doesn't mean that every time someone makes a mistake, every time someone sins, that we need to come in and go through the church discipline process. Nope, some people can just turn and say, you know what, that was a mistake that I've learned from that and turn from it. When we need to actually go to the church discipline process, when it moves just from accountability between Christians, is then when somebody, their posture of their heart becomes callous. And when they say, like, ah, they can put up their shoulders and they shrug and say, it doesn't bother me anymore. That I don't, I don't really care that I'm sinning in this area. It doesn't do anything to me. I don't feel the conviction about it. That's when we need to start this process, when we start moving through this church discipline process of people that are followers of Jesus and they've become callous in their hearts. And so my goal this morning is to explore three aspects of church discipline through the lens of Scripture and to challenge us to live the way that Jesus calls us to in this area. So please pray with me this morning. Lord, I pray that we'd hear from your word this morning, Lord, and that you would empower us to be bold and to live this out, Lord, that we would be Christians that have courage, Lord. And so be with us this morning, Lord. Help us to just check all the junk of this week at the door, Lord, so we can just hear from you this morning. Lord, we pray all this in your son's name. Amen. So the first aspect of church discipline that I want to talk about this morning is that church discipline is truthful, that church discipline is truthful, that we are called to confront our fellow Christians that are living in sin, and we are called to share with them the truth. Here it is from Proverbs 27, 5 and 6. It says this that better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiple kisses. This proverb talks about that. It is better for us to share open rebuke. It's better for us to go and to share the truth with somebody openly rather than to love them, rather than to say, you know what, I'm just gonna extend this person a little extra grace right now. I'm not gonna come down on him, I'm just gonna stay silent on the issue. That God's word said it's better for you to go and to share the truth. It's better if you to be open and to confront this person rather than letting what they're doing that is wrong just be uh rather than just not talking about it. That we are called to do this. And honestly, I think that this is just one of our biggest struggles as uh Christians currently is that we don't like calling out sin. That we don't, that we think it's better not to step on people's toes, right? We come up with how many different excuses, right? Like, ah, well, I don't know them, I don't know their history, I don't know what they've been through, I don't know their marriage, and so I'm just gonna, I'm it's it's not my place. I don't wanna do it. I don't want to be judgy, right? How many excuses do we make not to call out sin when we see it? But we are commanded to, we are commanded to go to our brothers and sisters that are in sin. Jesus gives us instruction in Matthew 18 of what this is to look like. You can flip there if you would like in Matthew 18, verses 15 to 17. It goes, If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. And if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. So Jesus, he gives this process and he says, first thing to do, if you see a brother or sister in sin, go to them. It doesn't say gossip about them, talk about them behind their back, go to other believers and say what they are doing. It doesn't say that you should avoid them. It doesn't say that you should just pretend that they aren't doing what they actually are doing. No, he says that you are to go to them, talk to them about their sin. And notice how he starts it off as well, just one-on-one, that you, one person, are to go to them in this intimate relationship, that in the relationship that you have, you should go to these people. Because that is a powerful thing. A friend going to another friend saying, What you're doing is not good. That you are not living the way that you should be living, right? We don't need to go full, fully nuclear right away. You don't need to bring the whole calorie in. All we need to do is go with one person and say, I'm worried about you, that I see how you're living, and it's not the way that God wants you to live. And for the most part, hopefully, that most of church discipline ends here. It ends with us caring for our other brothers and sisters and calling out and confronting them in their sin and that they would repent, right? Jesus says that if they listen to you, that you have won them over, and that is a great thing. So hopefully he can stop there. But if they do not listen, that's when it goes up to the next step where you are to take two or three more people, and you're supposed to go to them again, go to them again and plead with them and say, Please, I see how you're living. It's not how Jesus wants you to live, that you are living in sin, and that is done for a multitude of reasons. One is that you now have more voices, right? Now it's not just the preference of the one person, but now you have multiple people that are saying, We see you, we know you, we love you, and how you are living is not how you're supposed to be living. You have multiple people speaking into this situation. So that's one, but also um now it is uh proving that this person actually is living the way that they are living. In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 19, that for a crime to be confirmed, it'd have to be confirmed by multiple witnesses. And so now when you're bringing these people in, these people are confirming, yep, this person is living how they are living. So it's not just what I'm saying against what they're saying. Now we see other people are confirming that this person is indeed living in sin. And if they repent, awesome. But if they do not, if they refuse to listen, then they're to bring it to the church. And the church is to do the whole thing to do the same thing, to go to them, to plead with them, saying, please turn from how you're living, repent, and go back to following Jesus. And finally, if they refuse again to repent, they refuse to listen yet again, then said that we are called to treat them as a pagan or a tax collector. And these both these groups are not seen in a very fond light, right? Tax collectors are Jewish traitors, that they are Jews that have basically left their kinsmen and said, I'm now gonna be working for Rome, that Rome has now put me in charge to do what I want, to, and uh, and for the most part, that they are using their power, using their authorities to persecute their kinsmen, to persecute their brothers and sisters by putting unfair taxes onto them. So they're not seen in the fond lights, but then also these pagans that are seen, uh they're people outside of God's people, and so the Jews do not really like them and don't uh have very fond relationships with them as well. And so what Jesus is saying is that you are to treat these people as outside of God's people, that you are to exclude them from the covenant community, that for lack of a better term, that Jesus is saying that you are to excommunicate them, that you are to leave them on the outside of church. And so now this is probably the most uncomfortable part of the message where you want to say, like, whoa, whoa, like, is that is that really what we need to go to? Is that finally the option that we need to do? You might feel like maybe we should start backpedaling a little bit. Is that the right thing? But before we think about that, let's think about how we actually got to that final option. That there's been a lot of steps, right? Just to go one on one, and then one on well, and then one with a multiple group of people, and then finally the church, and then the last option is exclusion. This process is never about kicking people out, right? If that was, if that really was the goal behind it, then the first thing to do is a second someone is in unrepentance in that we would remove them from the congregation. But no, that this process has never been about kicking people out. It's about giving people a runway to come back home. It's giving them a runway to be like, what, oh my gosh, how am I living? And to give them the opportunity to repent and to earn back. The goal of this process is to give people to see how they're living and to turn back and to repent from their sins. And that's why we have a very similar process of church discipline here at Spring Lake Church. Right? We follow very similarly. There's some nuances. Firstly, it starts off one-on-one, right? That we, as a congregation, are responsible for one another. That we are responsible for our other members, members meaning people that have gone through our process and say that Spring Lake is my home, that we've planted our flag here, and this is where we want to be. And so, again, if someone's in sin, that we as members are to go to that person one-on-one and to call out their sin. And similarly, then again, if they refuse, then you go with a small group and to do the same thing, to ask them to repent. And this is the only change now. Instead of bringing up to the whole congregation, to bring it up to everybody in the church, we instead we bring it to our elders, people that are nominated by our members every single year at our uh congregational meeting that's going to be happening this September. And so those people are our stand-in, our elders are a stand-in that represent the congregation. So they would go to this person in sin, and again, they would plead with this person and say, We want you to stop, that we want you to repent, that we want you to be following Jesus. But then the same uh final response is the same that if this person is not showing any repentance, that we would remove them from membership, and then we would ask them to stay away from church activity, that we would say, We don't want you here on Sundays. That we don't want you here for anything on the midweek, we don't want you here for any of our activities, that you are not acting and behaving like somebody who actually is following Jesus. I say all this is found in our membership booklet. And if you have gone through the membership process, if you are a member here at Spring Lake Church, this is something that you have agreed to and are submitted to and should be living out. That you should be living out this church discipline process. But here's the thing about uh a process that it's it doesn't really mean much if we're not willing to take the first step. And the first step, again, it's not the leaders getting involved and leaders being the one to go and to talk to these people. The first step is us, right? It says that Jesus says, if a brother and sister and sin, go and point out their fault, that we, as members of the congregation, are to go to the individual and call out their sin. That's the first step that we need to do. Pastor Arlen over at our Lawrence campus, he has this phrase that his mentor had taught him. It's this, that Christians have courage. That Christians have courage. And usually he's used it in the evangelistic sense of that Christians should have courage to be bold and to share the gospel regardless of what might happen, that they should feel empowered by the Spirit to go and to share their faith boldly. But I also think it is applicable here that Christians have courage, be willing to share the truth with a wandering brother or sister, that they would be willing to step into the uncomfortable situation, step into the awkward situation, and share the truth of what they are doing, regardless of what the ramifications are. Christians need to have courage to say the truth. But unfortunately, I think we, myself included, don't have courage. I think there's plenty of times that we're afraid. I think there's plenty of times that we fear what might happen. That we fear what they'll think of us. We fear awkward conversations, we fear the loss of friendships. And I think to be so blunt, I think that we have replaced the fear of God with the fear of man. That has become the loudest voice in our life, that we're more worried about what people think of us than what God is calling us to do. And so I implore you, church, that we need to be Christians that have courage. That we need to be people, followers of Christ, that are willing to stand on the truth and share it with our fellow brothers and sisters. That we need to be people that are willing to share the truth truth despite what might happen, despite the ramifications, despite the loss of relationship, despite them thinking about us in a less kind light, that we need to be people that have courage to love each other enough to tell them the truth. But this is where we also need to be careful. Because we can quickly go from being courageous to being cruel. We can quickly go from standing on the truth to then trampling others with the truth. That we need to make sure that we're not just using the truth as a hammer looking for a nail, that we need to know that uh we need to love people how uh through this process, which brings me to our second aspect, that church discipline is loving, that church discipline is loving, right? That's not just that church discipline is truthful, or sometimes truth church discipline is loving, that both these things need to be held together at the same time. They're two sides of the same coin. It's never the question of either or, right? Paul talks with us in Ephesians 4 that we must speak the truth in love. And Paul, again, in Galatians 6, he tells us this posture of how we are to take uh with uh sharing and confronting our brothers and sisters that are living in sin. So this is in Galatians 6, verses 1 and 2. Paul confront uh teaches us how we are to confront one another. He says this, he says, Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the spirit should restore that person gently, but watch yourself, or you may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ. So Paul again tells us that when someone's living in sin, that we are to go and to confront them in their sin. But he says that you who live by the Spirit are to restore them gently. And I think Paul is using this uh these words very specifically, right? In Galatians 5, he just got done talking about the fruit of the Spirit. And so I think now he's highlighting a part of the fruit of the Spirit, gentleness, and saying that we, when we confront our brothers and sisters, that our confrontation needs to be bathed in gentleness, right? That we can't be people that only care about the truth and again our people with a hammer looking for a nail. No, that we when we confront people that it needs to be fully and completely gentle and loving and kind and has self-control around it as well. That we are looking to restore these people gently. Who is here who here has heard this phrase before? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Anyone hear that phrase? That's a lie, right? Words are some of the most hurtful things that someone can say to you or do to you, right? I can imagine in the room this size that there are some of you who have scars from words, that people have said things to you, maybe they're trying to correct you, they're trying to help you out, but they said it in such a way, they said something that has stuck with you for years. That if we're not careful, if we're not cognizant of the ways that we are saying things, we're not, if we are not doing it in a loving way, then all it is going to do is going to do more damage than it is good. And we must be careful. Well, then Paul continues and talks about that. He's saying, when we are confronting another, that we must be on guard, or we might as well be tempted. And what I think Paul is getting at is that we have to be on guard against pride creeping into our life when we are confronting one another. That we must be careful that we do not let judgmentalism seep into our confrontation, that we don't become people as we hear what others are going through with sin that they might be dealing with, that we don't become people that are like, oh, are you kidding? They're dealing with that, they're struggling with that sin. Well, I would never do that. I can't believe I can't believe that's something that they have a hardship with right now, right? That we cannot become people that look down our nose at other people and what they are going through. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 7 in the Sermon on the Mount, that we must be careful before we go and take the speck out of our brother's eye. We must first remove the log out of our own eye. Before we go and we confront somebody on their sin, we must be careful about the sin that is in our life. Otherwise, we would be hypocrites, that we'd be living against the same thing that we are going to be doing right there. So our posture is not to be of judgment or pride, but it needs to be bathed in gentleness and love. And then Paul finishes this section by talking about that we are to carry one another's burdens. That as brothers and sisters in Christ, that we've been united together by something bigger than ourselves, by the same Holy Spirit that is um is in all of us, is also in you is also in me, and so we are connected. We are now brothers and sisters, and so we are called to carry one another's burdens, that we are called to love and to care for each other throughout the whole process of this church discipline. That we need to be a church that cares for one another. And so I think there are times that we love to separate truth from love, and we like to keep truth as the highest good and the highest ideal that we need to cling to at all times. I think there are times that we like to go with a scorched earth policy when doing the truth, that I don't care what needs to happen, that I'm gonna share the truth no matter what, and I don't care who it hurts, I don't know, don't care what's gonna happen, that the truth needs to be shared. That we have a desire that the truth needs to be heard quick and needs to be shared uh hard as well, that we think like, oh my gosh, if I don't share the truth right now, if I don't tell this person what's going on in their life, that they're gonna fall away and they're never gonna come back to Jesus. But we need to make sure that we don't confuse urgency with harshness. We need to make sure that we don't care so much about sharing the truth that we forget how we are communicating the truth to these people. Because the reality is that it's gonna take time for these people to, for their sin to be revealed for them, for them to understand the ways that they are living, the ways that they are hurting other people, right? There's times it could just take one conversation, but the reality is it's gonna take multiple conversations for them to understand, for their heart to be removed from the calluses and the hardness that it has, to then be a heart of flesh again. And so it's gonna take time, and we have to let God work. And so one of the most important things that we can do after confrontation is just to continue to pray for these people. Be continue that God would be at work in their life. But also our motivation should be as well as this not only telling them the truth, but caring for them throughout the process, right? That we cannot be people who are looking just to share the truth and then leave. That doesn't do much good. For instance, imagine this I'm saying I'm standing on a beach and I'm walking along and I see somebody out in the water and they're flailing and they're drowning, so I go and I step to the edge of the beach and I look out at them and I say, stop that. Technically right, right? I am correct, but they should stop drowning. That's not a good thing. They should stop what they are doing. But how helpful is that for me to tell them, say, hey, here's this thing that is true, stop doing it. Not that helpful, right? If I were to actually love them and care for them, what I'm going to do is I'm going to run out into the water. I'm going to throw them a life preserver, I'm going to help bring them back to shore. And so we need to tell people the truth, tell them how their living is wrong and how it's against what God calls us to do, but also it's to walk with them through the process, to love them through the process, to help them to come back, help them in their repentance, help them to keep them accountable. That's what our church discipline needs to look like. Not only calling out sin, but stepping into hard and messy situations and help these believers move back towards Jesus. But then that raises one final question. Why are we doing these things in the first place? Why are we willing to have these hard conversations, right? If it's all just about punishment and making sure that people that are living against Jesus are punished, then why are we willing to have these hard conversations? And it's because this last aspect is because we want to see these people be restored. Church discipline is restorative. Church discipline is restorative. This is where we get into the final goal of church discipline. It's we want people to turn back. We want people to repent. We want people to be redeemed. That is why we go through this entire process. So that's why we're willing to share the truth. That's why we're willing to do all these things. Is we want people to turn back to following Jesus. And unfortunately, this is where many churches and pastors have done this incorrectly. They have wielded their authority and they have done this church discipline incorrectly, and they have left scars, and they have left hurt, and they have left pain, and they have excluded people just because of their own preferences and what they have decided is the right thing and the wrong thing. And so if you're a part of this service this morning and you're here and you have scars and you have hurt and you have pain from that, from church leaders wielding their authority incorrectly, I just want to say that I am so sorry. That is not God's intention, and we are so glad that you are here this morning, that you are joining us. And I pray that this would be a space that you can heal. I pray this would be a space that you can uh have a right relationship with the church and understand that we care for you. Because if you look at God's word, I think we can see that church discipline, if it is done correctly, the end goal is restoration through repentance. We see in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul gives an example of this restorative process, right? Paul, he's talking to the church in Corinth, and we see that there is a man who is uh dealing with sin. Uh, there's a he's in a case of incest, uh, and Paul confronts the church about uh them really doing nothing, right? He says, Why have you not removed this man? Why are you not mourning at the current situation? And then he tells them what they ought to do. He says this in verse 5, he says, Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. And so, right away, Paul says that you're to hand this man over to Satan. I think what this means is that they're saying, like, hand this man over to his evil desires. This man wants to go on living in sin. He wants to go on living the way that he seems fit. And so again, this is the end process, so let him. So, in excluding him, you're saying, hey, you want to live a certain way, you want to act a certain way that is not following Jesus. We're gonna let you do that. We're gonna let you experience the consequences of living that way. But if you want to live that way, you can't do it with people that are following Jesus. So either handing them over to Satan for his own evil desires, so that may experience the destruction of his flesh. And Ryan talked about this when he talked about hell a couple weeks ago, that this word destruction is really connected to the idea of his h of hell. And so I think it's happening right now is that Paul's saying, hand this man over to his evil desires, and so that he may experience a little bit of what hell might be if he continues on in this direction, that he would get a taste of what his actions could lead to, that he keeps living and this unrepentant lifestyle brings into the question of is this man a true follower of Jesus? Because, right, because being excluded is, for us as 21st century Christians, we struggle with the idea of what that might look like. But if you were a first century Christian, being excluded from the body, being excluded from the co from the assembly, is a terrible thing, right? If you're a first century Christian, say this man uh in 1 Corinthians 5, say he say he formerly was a pagan, he was living for false gods, but now he's come to Christianity, and so his former community doesn't want anything to do with him. But now he's been excluded from his current community, he's being excluded from being a Christian, so he can't go back to his former life, but now this life that he's being excluded from that, and so he has no one. He has no one to do life with, he has no one to trade with, he has no safety net, he's all alone. And we in the 21st century, we we could go down the road and there's another church there, but there's no other churches in Corinth. There's no place for him to go. He's all alone doing life has become extremely hard, and he's been cut off essentially from God's presence. He's been cut off from God's people. And I think that's the picture of hell, right? That he's cut off, and this is what he's going to experience if he does not understand, if he doesn't see what his sin is doing. Again, the consequences are not the end goal. The goal is not to punish this man and for him just to experience punishment. The hope that Paul says is that his spirits may be saved on the day of the Lord, that God would use this time, use these consequences, use these hardships to reveal this man's sin. That he would see how he is living and he would come to Jesus and he would say, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I've been living this way. Lord, forgive me, Lord. I ask for your forgiveness. Please help me to come back. And that he would uh turn, right? The goal is not to make him suffer. God is not revel in this man's agony, but what the Lord wants is that he would experience his suffering and that he would ask to be forgiven. And so, if you have somebody in your life that if you were to have to go through this process with them and it gets to this end stage where they have to be excluded, I just want you to know that what you are doing is not a bad thing. It's not it's not gonna be something that is uh it's not gonna be something that's gonna be bad for them, but it is ultimately for their good, that you are helping them in the restoration process, right? That you anyone who has kids know this, that sometimes you need to let them experience the consequences of their actions for them to turn. And so I want you to know that what you are doing is for their good. But we also need to be people that if we have somebody that does come back, we have someone that does repent, and they understand the error of their ways and they turn back, that we need to be a church that welcomes them in with open arms.
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SPEAKER_00That we cannot be people that see their past situation and the ways that they have lived and hold them, oh, hold it over their head, that we need people that say, We're so glad that you're back. We're so glad that you have turned from your ways of sin, and we're so glad that you are here again, that you've repented, right? Colossians 3 talks about this, that if you were in Christ, that the old is gone, the new has come, that we cannot hold this past way of living over their heads. We need to bring them back into the fold with open arms and say, We're so glad that you have repented from your sins. And so we do church discipline by telling the truth, we do it in love, and we do it to have people be fully restored. But we can talk about this process over and over and over again. We talk about what we are supposed to do, and sometimes we can forget, we forget to remember why we're able to do this in the first place. It's because of what Jesus Christ has firstly done for us, that He has ultimately restored us and redeemed us, right? We can think about this process about going through Church of London, wanting to restore people, but firstly, but we need to remember how much we have been restored, how much we have been redeemed by Jesus. That he saw us in our sin, he loved us enough not to leave us in it, that he pursued us, he confronted our sin, and he bore our punishment. And he made a way for us to come back home. And so, as followers of Jesus, that we need to do the same. As we remember how much we have been redeemed, we need to be people that allow our brothers and sisters that are wandering away to come back, that we need to be looking to have these people be restored. We need to pursue our brothers and sisters that are living in sin, that we need to be people that are courageous enough to go and to share the truth, and to love them with gentleness and humility, and to help them to be fully restored. So let me pray for us this morning. Lord, we thank you for your Son Jesus and what he has done for us, and that through his blood and his death on the cross, that we are forgiven and we are fully redeemed. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us, knowing that restoration, that we would be able to see our brothers and sisters who are wandering, and we'd be able to help them in the restoration process, that we would be willing to be courageous, to be bold, to go and to share the truth, regardless of what might happen, that we'd be willing to be people that love people enough to go and to share it with others, Lord. And Lord, I pray that we'd be a church that when people come back, when they repent, that we would love them enough to have open arms and to bring them back into the fold, to bring them back into your church, Lord. Lord, we pray all this in your son's name. Amen.