Question ...

What is a Restoration Branch?

Response ...

A Restoration Branch has been organized under the legal authority granted by the Articles of Incorporation of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (1872) and in accordance with the directions in A Manual of Practice and Rules of Order and Debate for Deliberative Assemblies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, compiled by Joseph Smith and Thomas W. Smith, and approved by Conference action in 1876.

A Restoration Branch of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has three primary characteristics:

1. It has been organized by one or more elders who trace their authority to the Reorganized Church.
2. Its membership is composed of six or more members who are in good standing and are under the pastoral charge of an elder, priest, teacher, or deacon.  (“Elder” includes the offices of high priest, seventy, bishop.)
3. It preaches and practices the original tenets and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints originally founded April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith, Jr., and perpetuated in the Reorganized Church by his son, Joseph Smith III, April 6, 1860.

A Restoration Branch has certain rights which include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. The right to elect its leadership;
2. The right to identify and police its membership;
3. The right to administer in the ordinances of the gospel as traditionally administered by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints;
4. The right to approve priesthood calls and ordain men limited to the offices of elder, priest, teacher, and deacon;
5. The right to conduct business relative to its particular area of operation;
6. The right to associate (or disassociate) in secondary and governmental organizations; and
7. The right of representation at special, district, stake, and general conferences.

A Restoration Branch does not practice such doctrines as the ordination of women to priesthood offices, the serving of the sacrament to persons without authoritative baptisms, the ordaining of men to priesthood offices other than elder, priest, teacher, or deacon.  Any branches previously associated with an organization which participated in such practices are encouraged to renounce the same in order to function as an independent Restoration Branch.

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