What Does Your Sunday Look Like?

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was so excellent. Rachel is very honest in her questions and struggles with the church, fellow christians and her faith walk. I felt she was respectful but passionate about the areas where she didn't agree with the party line of mainline churches. I think she was honest about her questions and feelings, and that we could all benefit from being more honest with each other, as long as we temper it with grace. She starts the book with this thought:

Even when I don't believe in church, I believe in resurrection. I believe in the hope of Sunday morning.

So, she begins with hope. She goes on to say:

The truth is, we think church is for people living in the "after" picture. We think church is for taking spiritual Instagrams and putting on our best performances. We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus told us time and again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for good people, not resurrected people.

I think that is so true. We expect perfection of ourselves and fellow christians, when the truth is we are all just one hot mess. One of of my favorite quotes from this book from the chapter titled "With God's Help". Rachel takes this story from a Lauren Winner book. A 12 year old girl is going to be confirmed. She tells her father, a pastor, she's not sure she can do it--she's not sure she believes everything enough to make a promise to believe these things forever. Her father tells her

What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with forever.

Frederick Beuchner says much the same thing when he says

Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith."

Life with God is not an absolute, it's a relationship, a journey.

What always amazes me about these types of reflective, memoirish (if that's a word) books, is how vulnerable the authors are about sharing their thoughts and struggles. I really appreciated that Rachel showed us her heart. A really good book to share and talk about with others.


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