Searching for Sunday
Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
- Christian Living
- Publisher: Nelson Books (Thomas Nelson)
- Published: 2015
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Publisher's Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Find hope and grace when you are feeling cynical about the church and faith. Are you struggling to connect with your church community? Do you find yourself questioning the core beliefs that you once held dear? Searching for Sunday, from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans is a heartfelt ode to the past and a hopeful gaze into the future of what it means to be a part of the modern church. Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn't want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--to her, it was beginning to feel like church culture was too far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing Evans back to church. Evans found herself wanting to better understand the church and find her place within it, so she set out on a new adventure. Within the pages of Searching for Sunday, Evans catalogs her journey as she loves, leaves, and finds the church once again. Evans tells the story of her faith through the lens of seven sacraments of the Catholic church--baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, the anointing of the sick, and marriage--to teach us the essential truths about what she's learned along the way, including: Faith isn't just meant to be believed, it's meant to be lived and shared in community Christianity isn't a kingdom for the worthy--it's a kingdom for the hungry, the broken, and the imperfect The countless and beautiful ways that God shows up in the ordinary parts of our daily lives Searching for Sunday will help you unpack the messiness of community, teaching us that by overcoming our cynicism, we can all find hope, grace, love, and, somewhere in between, church.
Endorsements (8)
“Praise for Searching for Sunday As you read Searching for Sunday, you will feel that you are being breathed into, not just by Held Evans, but also I think, by the Holy Spirit, who felt very near, right at hand, as I was turning these pages.”
“and plenty of humor. If you need a book to pastor you, befriend you, pick you up and dust you off, and maybe even give you a spiritual kiss on the cheek and a devotional kick in the pants, you’ve found it here.”
“If you’re done with church or simply on the verge of throwing in the towel, then please, please, please read this book. It’s a brave, wry, and exquisitely penned meditation from someone who knows precisely how you feel. I loved every word.”
“Rachel Held Evans has written a spiritual travel guide for religious runaways. She beautifully takes us with her as she leaves home, wanders, questions, suffers, and then returns. But the church she returns to is as true, raw, and beautifully difficult as the writer herself. As someone who has also left, been angered by, missed, then returned to church, I love this book. I love how Rachel doesn’t shy away from what’s ugly in her search for what’s beautiful both in herself and the church.”
Pastor. Nadia Bolz-Weber
“Oh my goodness, this is Rachel’s best book yet—and that’s saying something. In this beautifully honest, hopefully wry book, Rachel speaks for so many of us. I believe that her hard-fought words will heal many wounds. A must-read for all who love Jesus but struggle with loving or understanding or finding their place in the Church.”
“into compelling concrete narrative. Her book is a forceful invitation to reconsider that faith has been misunderstood as a package of certitudes rather than a relationship of fidelity.”
“In Searching for Sunday, Rachel’s honest and hopeful wrestling tore through my cynicism about the perils of organized religion and touched my heart—reminding me why this heart achingly broken but beautiful Bride is worth the fight.”
“It is always refreshing to hear the painful truth about the conflicted life of faith from one more recovering American Christian. Yet it is even more poignantly healing to witness how our fitful human, sin-tainted truths can still lead us back to the one Truth that can hold it all. In these pages there is room for sacred doubting and holy tantrums because ultimately the love and grace of God permits us all that room.”
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