• Searching for Sunday

  • Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
  • By: Rachel Held Evans
  • Narrated by: Rachel Held Evans
  • Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (1,894 ratings)

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Searching for Sunday  By  cover art

Searching for Sunday

By: Rachel Held Evans
Narrated by: Rachel Held Evans
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Publisher's summary

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.

©2015 Rachel Held Evans (P)2015 Thomas Nelson Publishers

What listeners say about Searching for Sunday

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Don't bother

I would not recommend this to anyone she is blatantly anti catholic and has no regard for people who don't fit her mold--yet expects respect from the very folk she denigrates

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38 people found this helpful

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Everything I love and hate about the church

What was one of the most memorable moments of Searching for Sunday?

After reflecting on everything wrong in today's American churches, Rachel Held Evans reminded me that rooting for the demise of "those" Christians isn't helping, either. It was a humbling reminder that we all have work to do.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The story about the young gay Christian in the chapter "Enough" had me in tears.

Any additional comments?

This book is funny, moving, and inspiring. Every Christian should read it.

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36 people found this helpful

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Searching for a biblical worldview

First, I did listen to the entire book. Rachel is an excellent writer with a great vocabulary. I would encourage her to remove all the labels and adjectives from her prose. She is a staunch defenslder of her progressive positions and that is her right. I just side on a biblical worldview not a progressive worldview on Chriastity. All the best on your continuing search. Blessings to you and your family.

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Her best yet

I think this is RHE's best book so far. She's honest and humble. The humility was a pleasant surprise! I love how she uses the sacraments to make her own journey. Beautifully written and ruggedly honest account of her church journey so far. I sense she's just beginning to see that her church journey and her spiritual journey are two related, but different, things.

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Giving words to some of what spins in my own head

While I don't necessarily agree with everything RHE says in this book, she has a remarkable ability of putting into words many of the same things spinning around in my own head. We live in a Christian society that frowns on anyone questioning evangelical mainstream thought, yet if we are honest, the questions Rachel addresses are the very ones going around in our own heads. Where can we safely turn to address these questions? This is a good place to start.

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Spot On!

I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, as the daughter of two Presbyterian pastors. Rachel Held Evans is my hero with this book. I have loved the church, left the church, loved the church, sought the church, and in many ways I am still searching for it. Jesus’ bride: we are broken, healing, and clinging to the fact that we are fully known and fully loved.

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Compelling and Honest

I think Rachel has an incredible accuracy when speaking about church and for a certain demographic of its members. I grew up in church, have had many wounds from it, and yet, am sitting in a place of leading a local church. I feel the tension this book invokes on a daily basis. I am so happy that there are so many millennials that would stand and fight for the Church to move forward in grace, humility, and love.

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Loved it

Honesty, color, personality and intellect shine in this book. It explores questions many are asking, but that church struggles to answer. Bless you for your project, Rachel!

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  • TJ
  • 05-04-15

50% perfect, 50% over my head

As a Gen-Xer raised in the evangelical church, about half this book resonated so perfectly with me that I should probably be given co-authorship credit. The other half (mostly the abstract, "poetic" parts) went in one ear and out the other. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

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Wonderful!!!

A poignant and timely book. If you go, or have ever been, to church -- this is an absolute must read.

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