In preparation for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Temple dedication in 2019, we were invited to remember, reclaim, embody, and share the purposes of the Temple. Many people spent the summer and fall of 2018 exploring the Temple purposes and opening themselves to allow that experience to breathe new life into their discipleship and our world.

Today, thirty-two years after the Temple was dedicated to peace, reconciliation, and healing of the spirit, I would like to issue the same invitation. Let us spend time with the purposes of the Temple and open ourselves to the new life the Spirit already is breathing into us.

Remember

Remembering is often a passive thing. We sit around tables, campfires, and living rooms, telling stories and sharing laughter, joy, and tears in response to common memories. This type of remembering rarely asks anything more of us. There is another, more active, type of remembering, though. It not only recalls, but reinvigorates and reignites, inspiring new decisions and catalyzing new action. This is the type of remembering we must engage for the purposes of the Temple.

Doctrine and Covenants 156:5 outlines the purposes of the Temple:

• The temple shall be dedicated to the pursuit of peace. It shall be for reconciliation and for healing of the spirit.
• It shall also be for a strengthening of faith and preparation for witness.
• By its ministries an attitude of wholeness of body, mind, and spirit as a desirable end toward which to strive will be fostered.
• It shall be the means for providing leadership education for priesthood and members.
• And it shall be a place in which the essential meaning of the Restoration as healing and redeeming agent is given new life and understanding, inspired by the life and witness of the Redeemer of the world.

It can be easy to forget these purposes in our daily lives. When we remember them, however, we must allow them to form us and guide our actions.

When we remember that the Temple is intended for reconciliation, we then must go and reconcile difficult relationships and circumstances in our lives. When we remember that the Temple is intended to prepare us for witness, we then must go and share the love and peace of Jesus with others. When we remember that the Temple is intended for leadership education, we then must go and learn about the things we are avoiding, the things we don’t understand.

When it comes to the purposes of the Temple, remembering never can be passive; it must continuously call us to new ways of living.

Currently, in the Temple, the Center for Living Water offers several gatherings that create space to remember and practice the Temple’s purposes. Participants who join Sacred Pulse take time each month to slow down and reflect mindfully on how they can foster an attitude of wholeness in their lives. Spiritual directors meet regularly with one another and offer spiritual direction to the people they serve. They engage in leadership education and help people access healing of the spirit. These are just a few examples of how remembering the purposes of the Temple leads to active expression.

Additionally, each Wednesday, the Temple Sanctuary hosts a live-streamed Prayer for Peace. This weekly practice forms our discipleship by continuing to bring the work of peace and justice to the forefront of our minds and calling us to act in response. Our prayers for peace inspire, guide, and sustain our work for justice and peace.

Reclaim

Reclamation increasingly is important for followers of Jesus Christ. Our world presents many depictions of Jesus that directly contradict who he was and undermine the mission he lived. Individuals and groups with self-interested agendas and desires for consolidated power are distorting Christianity and gospel principles to justify and serve their own aims.

Now more than ever, we must reclaim what it means to be disciples of Jesus, the embodiment of God’s shalom. At the groundbreaking of the Temple in April 1990, President Wallace B. Smith celebrated how its building signified a “…new beginning in…our commitment to peace in Jesus Christ.” He articulated its challenge to us saying, “…The call today is for a people who will live the life of Jesus prophetically.”

Let us then reclaim the purposes of the Temple, and in so doing, let us reclaim an understanding of discipleship that faithfully represents Jesus.

The Temple, as a physical space and unifying symbol, can help as we reclaim the purposes of the Temple and a broader understanding of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. In the space itself, we come to learn what makes for peace. Here we are formed in the pattern of Christ and challenged to put our discipleship before our long-held assumptions and misguided allegiances.

We gather at the Temple as intentional community, choosing to engage with one another in ways that model wholeness and healing. For those who might never have the opportunity to visit the building, the unifying symbol of the Temple still offers formation and challenge.

When speaking of how the disciples in her community are living ministries of the Temple, Apostle Catherine Mambwe shares that the Temple calls us:

…to be a living sanctuary. When someone comes to you, they are going to find peace, they are going to find a solace place, they are going to find love, they are going to feel joy, and of course you’re going to share with them the hope of Jesus Christ.

In October 2026, the Community of Christ Peace Forum will take place at the Temple in Independence, Missouri, USA. Through this event, we will celebrate peacemakers and reclaim an understanding of God’s shalom that includes all creation! This event, accessible in-person and online, will offer us knowledge and tools to better live our discipleship with integrity and signal to the world that dominant narratives of over consumption and environmental destruction are not God’s will. The Peace Forum is one event, among others, through which we are reclaiming the Temple’s purposes and through them reclaiming what it means to follow Christ.

Embody

Embodying the purposes of the Temple is perhaps the most difficult task. Embodying is more than going through the motions, and it isn’t just something you do when it is easy or suits you. Embodying the purposes of the Temple requires an intentional and consistent choice to live as sanctuaries of Christ’s peace, even—and especially—when it is most difficult to do so.

Doctrine and Covenants 161:2a, counsels us:

Become a people of the Temple—those who see violence but proclaim peace, who feel conflict yet extend the hand of reconciliation, who encounter broken spirits and find pathways for healing.

This is what it means to embody the purposes of the Temple. We are to live in the world as it is, and engage with it from the deep hope of what it can be.

Becoming a people of the Temple never can be separated from the peace of Jesus Christ. We are not a people of a building, but instead a people of the peace it represents and proclaims. When speaking about what it means to become a people of the Temple, President Emeritus Steve Veazey said:

We are called to be sanctuaries of Christ’s peace—individually, in our families, in our congregations, in our communities, in our mission centers. The whole worldwide body called Community of Christ is called to be a sanctuary of Christ’s peace on a daily basis.

In July and August 2027, and January 2028, youth from around the world will gather at International Youth Forums, including one at the Temple in Independence. At these events, youth will encounter the peace of Jesus and learn to embody that peace in the world. Embodiment is difficult, but when we gather in community with this as a shared goal, we empower one another to transform the world.

Share

The blessings from living the purposes of the Temple never were intended only for Community of Christ members. The building itself was constructed in a way that invites us in before sending us back out to serve God’s world. The purposes of the Temple, therefore, cannot be confined to one place or one group. They must be shared broadly and freely! All of us are called to participate in this sharing.

We are told in Doctrine and Covenants 163:8a that “The Temple is an instrument of ongoing revelation in the life of the church.” When we intentionally engage with the Temple through this mindset, we will be amazed at the new ways we are called to live the Temple’s purposes in our discipleship. We do this collectively, of course, but also are called individually to be living ministries of the Temple by sharing its purposes wherever and whenever we find ourselves.

In April 2027, the Temple will celebrate its thirty-third anniversary! Over the last three decades, this space and its ministries expressed throughout the world have helped tell the story of who we are called to be—a people of the Temple. As we continue to live this call, may we all remember, reclaim, embody, and share its purposes with a deep and unshakable commitment to the peace of Christ it represents.