Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith by Sarah Bessey

Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith Reviews

• 
  Leigh Kramer

  I don't have the words for how much I loved this one. I wish I'd read it in my early 20s or even college when my faith crumbled and I began the process of rebuilding it. Sarah's wisdom and insights resonate even now as I continue to explore my relationship with God and church.
  
  Disclosure: I'm friends with the author.
• 
  Erin Beall

  I love Sarah Bessey. I loved her first book, I love her blog, and I especially love her instagram account with tons of snaps of her gorgeous kids and knitting projects. But overall, though it absolutely pains me to say it, this book disappointed me. It disappointed me in the same way her friend Rachel Held Evans' new book Searching for Sunday disappointed me (my review here:
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1252016577).
  
  There just wasn't enough new content.
  
  For a LOT of the thirty-something, quasi-evangelical women writers in the last few years, it's basically the same concepts, repackaged memoir-style around each author's life. (In her favor, Sarah has done a bit more theological digging, and as a result this book paints a much more complex and robust theological portrait than some of her competition's.) Overall, it's good, includes lots of important and interesting facts, quotes, and life details. And I can say without hesitation: If you haven't read everything else by this group of ladies, you'll be floored, in love, totally smitten.
  
  To sum up: I love her style, and I will still hang on her every tweet, but if you're reading all the books on the NBW-RHE-Jen Hatmaker-GDM circuit, there might not be enough new content to warrant five stars.
• 
  Annie

  In her usual gentle style, Sarah Bessey guides us through her own process of getting her faith back to sorts. She talks about unexpected ways she was led back to her faith, even to her childhood denomination. And, when I say "gentle," I don't mean in a weak sort of way. I mean gentle in the way someone offers their hand because they are on firmer ground. Bessey has gone through this process of doubt and discontent and she is offering her hand from the other side of that process.
  
  Bessey combines theology, storytelling, and open-ended questions to weave her own journey. And, while this book is her journey, the truths she tells are universal. She takes it beyond a simple faith memoir and into the realm of a guide for other wanderers.
  
  While I found this book profound in the place I'm at now, I could see it being especially helpful to someone who is just coming out of their own out of sorts journey and needs the reminder that everything is ok.
  
  **As part of the Out of Sorts launch team, I received an early copy of the book for review.**
• 
  Ainsley

  I think I would enjoy being friends with Sarah Bessey; this book just wasn't what I was expecting right now. I was expecting more messy vulnerable story like Nadia Bolz-Weber's Accidental Saints or Rachel Held Evans' Searching for Sunday. Frankly, more doubt and confusion and less inspiration and clarity. For instance, losing four babies and not going to church for six years after being "in ministry": can we get more into *that* story? Cause you have lived some life.
  
  So, 2.5 stars for me but I can see how it's a 4 star book for someone else.
  
  My key takeaways:
  - Sometimes you have to take everything apart in order for it to reassemble. And however it reassembled isn't really the point: the journey is sacred.
  - God is in the wilderness and we don't have to deny or fear that journey away from what we have known and believed.
  - It's important to have a small circle of "Somewheres," folks to whom you can tell and feel anything, and being a Somewhere to someone else.
  - this wonderful E.M. Forster quote:
  "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
  (I guess one could substitutes "faith" in there for "life" as well.)
  
  
  
• 
  L.M.

  I struggle with my faith. A lot. I grew up in the American South--in the Bible Belt--primarily in two Baptist Churches. The sort of worship I was used to was either being screamed at from the pulpit every week or the mild, meek voice of a calmer pastor. This calmer pastor belonged to the church I "really" grew up in. I was baptized in it. I made most of my childhood friends in it (though I don't keep in touch with any of them now). I learned most of my young theology there. But in high school and college, the questions came. And I RAGED against them. I knew if one chink pitted in the armor, it would all fall apart. And it did--spectacularly. I have spent the entirety of my twenties trying to reconcile my spiritual life with a mental illness and the hardship of loss and pain.
  
  Thus, reading Sarah's beautifully written memoir was like balm for my soul. She writes with such poetic fervor about the challenges of living out a radical faith in this modern age. She is unashamed of her charismatic roots and the "home" she has found as an adult there. I love this. She has inspired me to unpack my own Baptist roots and deeply look at the gold that is there (and to "sort out" the rest that may not be needed in my own life). I love, though, that Sarah finds and "keeps" practices and disciplines from other Christian paths in her life. I think we are all magpies with our Christian walk and it isn't necessary to "find the right denomination" or to be "right". We are all God's children and all of us are more lost in the dark than we care to admit when it comes to correct theology.
  
  I was deeply encouraged by this book and think that you will be, too, if like us you have struggled to make sense of an evolving faith.
• 
  Stefanie Kellum

  Every now and then a book comes into your life at exactly the right time, and I think I've needed this book in my life for years. Sarah Bessey has a way of speaking the truth in love and friendship without shying away from heavy topics. Her tone invokes a coffee shop meeting, like she's chatting with you over a couple of cups of coffee (more likely, tea...she's Canadian). :) It provides a safe place to reexamine your faith while making you both laugh and cry. It's a book for those wandering in the wilderness with questions about faith and life and for those who think they have it all sorted out, the "recovering know-it-alls," as she lovingly calls them. It stirs up an intricate and intimate wrestling match of the soul and leaves you pondering what you truly believe and in whom you truly trust, and at the heart of the book is simply Jesus and a call to unity in the Church and its many denominations. As someone similar in age, I'm thrilled that her voice rings out for the Kingdom for our generation. Touche, Sarah. I loved Jesus Feminist, but this one takes the cake, and I gobbled it up.
  
  *I read a digital ARC of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss, and I'm thrilled to be part of the launch team. :)
• 
  Rachel Wells

  2.75-3 stars, because there were points of clarity and light sprinkled throughout. That said, I felt annoyed that the author of this book wrote as though she had already sorted through all of her faith questions and found answers for them and seemed to expect you to agree with her conclusions. As someone who is in the middle of struggling with big questions, I couldn't quite relate to her tone. I think this book should have been formatted as a collection of essays rather than a cohesive work; the writing was repetitive down to the exact phrases used over and over throughout. That said, I loved her view of community, friends, and Somewheres, as well as her assertion that saying "it's God's will" in the face of pain and loss is not only callous but patently false. She also made some thoughtful points in favor of Charismatic Christianity - a faith posture that tends to make me uncomfortable - and addressed common ways that evangelicals miss the big picture. So, 3 stars for bringing insight and offering hope, but overall I felt that Rachel Held Evans' Searching For Sunday was better-written, less likely to offer "I've got it all figured out now" answers and better fitted my current heart-space.
• 
  J.L. Neyhart

  I absolutely loved this book. I just finished reading it and I already want to read it again and soak it in deep. Sarah's words are so encouraging and her love for Jesus is contagious. I see myself in so much of her story, though we are from different denominational backgrounds. Sarah reminds us that it is okay to have questions and doubts and experience a bit of wilderness time. And she is so gracious in her writing about how we all need each other, all the various streams of Christianity. I love her vulnerability and honesty and the prayer at the end of the book nearly had me in tears. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You will be blessed.
• 
  Mark

  Those whose first memories of their lives include sitting in church may find this book quite helpful as they too, find that reality isn't quite so neatly organized into distinct categories as they might have heard. Religious education, whether it was through Sunday School, VBS, children's sermons, or whatever it may have been, was well-meaning and quite a bit of it was good. But there is often an overemphasis on certainty, on either-or thinking, of an us-vs-them categorization of the world, and an emphasis on "ministry work" over "regular jobs."
  
  Many people are fine with this type of worldview. But many others are not, and as they mature and emerge into a world that doesn't revolve around church life, questions arise. What are they to do with such questions, creeping doubts, and ambiguity?
  
  This book is Sarah Bessey's autobiographical look at how she sorted through her life that turned into "Out of Sorts" when she too, faced a world that was not quite what growing up in church had led her to believe it would be. Her desire is for her readers to be able to use her experiences as inspiration to work through sorting through their own religious artifacts and baggage -- figure out what is still worth keeping, and learn to let go of the things that are no longer helpful, things that are useless, and things that may even be harmful. Are there new practices and traditions that might help a person continue in discipleship and spiritual growth?
  
  Even though she writes accessibly and in a conversational tone, the subjects she tackles are not light. She deals with questions of theodicy, biblical inerrancy and hermeneutics, ecclesiology (the church), the nature and work of the Spirit, vocation and calling, social justice - to name a few.
  
  Sorting through the past and present of faith is an ongoing process. It will probably continue for the rest of each person's life. The key is to "making peace with an evolving faith" (subtitle).
  
  (Based on ARC.)
• 
  Leia Johnson

  Before the armchair theologians come out of the woodwork to scream HERESY! and the too cool critics find a way to pick this apart (because this will happen--it always does in this anonymous internet universe), let me be one of the first to say: BRAVA, Sarah, on a deeply moving, meticulously thought out sacrificial offering of self. This is the kind of book that isn't just a book--it's an invitation to listen to someone else's life story. And when we listen to other people's stories--well, isn't that what makes life worth living? Connecting, learning, absorbing.
  
  There will be others who read the book and think it's okay--well-written and thought-provoking at times, but not life changing. For those of us who have walked this (nearly) exact road, we thank you. Thanks for saying it out loud. Thanks for forcing this conversation to the forefront of modern Western Christendom. Thanks for recognizing the sacred in your every day.
  
  For me, reading this book was an exercise in shaking my head up and down "Yes, yes, yes!" over and over and over again. This is about comfort and community--Sarah Bessey is my people, and this book was so thorough, so intentional, so beautiful.
  
  I received this book from NetGalley.
• 
  Marty Solomon

  Wonderfully typical piece of writing from Sarah Bessey.
  
  Sarah writes this book about many times in her life when we has felt a little not herself and "out of sorts." It's a book about doubts and fear, about deconstruction and learning to be ok with learning. It's about letting go of things that need to be rejected and also about returning and reclaiming things that you thought you would reject.
  
  I say "wonderfully typical" because everything that Bessey says is heartfelt, well-written, authentic, vulnerable, honest, and easily accessible. She is a very "in touch" and relatable author. And, as always, her benedictions slay me and leave me inspired. For anyone wrestling with a more genuine and authentic faith, maybe a little out of sorts, this is a great read.
• 
  Meredith McCaskey

  I read Jesus Feminist and found it beautiful and thought-provoking. I didn't even know Sarah Bessey had written other books. My kind and thoughtful husband, in Christmas shopping for me, looked her up and found Out of Sorts and when I opened it on Christmas morning he said, "I read the summary and I thought this sounded like something you'd like right now."
  
  My lovely husband. How right you were!
  
  From the other Goodreads reviews, it's clear I'm not the first person to feel my soul give a long, slow exhale of relief in the chapters of this book. I am struck, just as I was struck with Jesus Feminist , by Sarah Bessey's kindness, her gentleness towards weary, bewildered, beaten-down hearts like mine. She offers a safe place, some room to breathe, to cry, to untangle hard questions without fear of condemnation.
  
  I know she's been labelled "liberal" as if that's an insult. May all Christians learn to be liberal in their love and compassion, in their heart for Jesus, as Sarah Bessey shows herself to be.
• 
  Vanessa Rivera

  I didn't like it as much as I had hoped. The first few chapters seemed like it was going to head in a raw and open direction when it comes to deep questions/doubts/challenges of faith and then it became the quintessential evangelical book that I think the author would have cringed at if she'd been reading it during her "time in the wilderness " as she calls it. I'm sure its very helpful for those struggling with Pentecostal/ Charismatic doctrine- as this seems to be the core of her time in the wilderness.
• 
  Caity Gill

  3 or 4 stars I can't totally decide. Parts of this book made me cringe, and other parts of it made me want to stomp and say "amen". I appreciate the heart of this author.
• 
  Andi M.

  Sarah Bessey fills a Rachel Held Evans-shaped space in my heart. These two women are my favorite people writing about Christianity and the roominess of God’s table.
• 
  Brittany

  I think my biggest struggle with this book was my continual search for an overarching thesis. I love Bessey’s worldview, it is very similar to my own, and there were some great takeaways, but while there were strong chapter messages, there wasn’t a strong book message.
  That being said, I think Bessey allows readers in to see different aspects of her faith & how her relationship to God/church/spirituality has changed, and that could be very inspirational for readers who haven’t allowed themselves to really delve in, look at what they believe, and make the necessary changes.
  It’s a good one that I’d recommend just not my fav in this genre.
• 
  Lisa

  I appreciate the candid nature of this book and it’s open heartedness toward so many variations of Christianity. I need to read more from the charismatic stream of the Christian family. It’s not my language, but I can too easily forget what a significant element of the Body of Christ it is. Bessey is the bomb, and I so much appreciate her though our lives are quite different as are many of our spiritual expressions. Yet we came of age around the same time and value so many of the same things so her cadences resonated with me.
• 
  Edie

  I started reading Sarah Bessey's latest then put it down, went to find a highlighter, and started it all over from the beginning. I've been texting and instagramming highlighted passages from start to finish. This book gets my highest stamp of approval.
  
  Out of Sorts is about the grief we feel as we move through life, sorting through what to keep and what to leave behind. Because even when we know that we are moving on to something better, there is often grief in leaving the known behind. It is about the becoming and unbecoming. The unwinding of the ties that held us together, acknowledging that even though we are choosing better ties, change is hard.
  
  Once again Bessey doesn't urge you to accept her beliefs or walk her paths. She encourages you to do the hard work of finding your own. This isn't a book that lays out the truth for you to pick up and wear and make your own. It is a book that says this is hard work and I'll walk beside you while you find your own way. Sorting through your own baggage, I'll encourage you and prophesy over you. This is a book about walking each other home.
• 
  Lisa

  It’s hard to stop at 3 stars for this book because I really like the author. This book wasn’t what I thought it would be according to the title. Yes, Bessey comes to terms with her relationship with the church, specifically, but as I read through, I kept coming up with alternative titles for the book, like, “Why I love Jesus and the church” (I know, I should write book titles). I was expecting to hear about profound doubts she’s wrestled through (and specific examples of those doubts and questions) and where that lead her. Instead, her focus seemed to be on the meaningful value of the Christian life, once examined and redeemed, which is great, but I was hoping to read someone whose questions resonated with my own, but this was not that kind of book.
• 
  Carmen Liffengren

  Out of Sorts is the sort of book that acknowledges that we all struggle with our faith in myriads of ways. Bessey is bold in asserting that if we aren't wrestling with our a faith, even a little, we aren't really growing and maturing. She offers a balm for rebuilding faith in more mature terms. I loved how she finds solace in many Christian faith practices:liturgical, Quaker, non-denominational, etc. She even stepped away from church for a while to find her place in faith again. She writes eloquently about re-calibrating and constantly growing and evolving. I found that this book resonated with me on a deep level giving me some freedom within my own faith journey.
• 
  Erin Henry

  It felt like she was writing my faith story. Of having it all and knowing all the answers to knowing nothing and then rebuilding. She had a beautiful faith and vision and I hope to be where she is someday.
• 
  Jennifer Jones

  I really enjoyed this book! It was relatable and challenging to me in just the right ways. I especially appreciated her concept of “place: the radical act of staying put” within imperfect community. I was also thrilled to see her reference James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, as that has been so helpful to me in understanding my own “deconstruction.”
  
  My favorite quote of the book, which beautifully sums up so much of my own experience:
  
  “But most of us, at some point, will encounter the second state, which he called 'critical distance.' This is the time in our formation when we begin to ... well, doubt. We begin to question. We hold our faith up to the light and see only the holes and inconsistencies....
  
  Yet he writes, 'Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.' I remember crying out to God once while in the midst of what I called my wilderness, what Ricoeur calls the critical distance, because I was longing to 'go back.' .... I found it was not enough to live without the magic and the beauty, without the wonder. I couldn't return to my first naivete and I missed the simplicity of it. I wanted to be called again, to hear the voice of God again, perhaps never more wildly than when it felt like the God I once knew was disappearing like steam on a mirror.
  
  But those who continue to press forward can find what Ricoeur called a second naivete. I didn't know it, but I was pressing through my wilderness to deliverance, toward that place on the other side of rationality, when we reengage with our faith with new eyes. We take responsibility for what we believe and do. We understand our texts or ideas or practices differently, yes, but also with a sweetness because we are there by choice. As Richard Rohr writes, 'the same passion which leads us away from God can also lead us back to God and to our true selves.'”
• 
  Jessamyn

  I felt this book so deeply. After not attending Mass for two years due to the pandemic and having little kids, we finally went back to Mass a couple of weeks before Easter this year. These past two years have been filled with more questions than answers, more mystery and silence. It's been filled with pain and struggle too, as I try to parce out fact from fiction in my own faith tradition. Her constant reassurance that it's okay to have doubts and questions was exactly what I needed today, as I wrestle with my own doubts and questions.
• 
  Danielle

  Meh. My ability to resonate with the author stems from our differing worldviews and biblical opinions. But for a Christian who is more her "stripe", it would be an enjoyable read. She's not too offensive, sassy, sarcastic or offensive to organized religion. She's funny and well cited.
• 
  Rebecca Jackson

  Sarah Bessey writes with such compassion, humility and love (and eloquence!). It’s a balm for the soul. It reads like a good conversation with a fellow Jesus follower full of “me too” moments and “yes, this!”. I felt welcomed into this book and found myself rereading passages because it was either exactly how I felt or exactly what I needed to read. Will return to this book often and have already pressed it into the hands of a few others.
• 
  Georgann

  I sort of thought I didn't get as much out of this as I'd hoped, but then I looked at all the sticky notes that marked places I wanted to reread...While it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be, Bessey offered me much to think on and remember.
• 
  Christy Krumm

  I cannot recommend this book enough! Out of Sorts meets readers at their most crucial point where their doubts, fears, uncertainties, and discomfort with their faith is growing difficult to bear. Rather than denying their fears, Bessey asks readers to dive straight in, admit every single feeling and frustration you’ve ever had, and trust the Holy Spirit might lead them on a journey -- maybe not towards every answer, but at least towards Him. And in the end, He may just be enough.
  
  As a fellow wanderer, Sarah leads the way by telling her story first. She speaks openly about being a pastor’s wife who refused to go to church for many years. Who felt disillusioned and duped by the hypocrisy she’d experienced in certain religious gatherings, and who ultimately came to a place where she was aching “to be called again, to hear the voice of God again” because “the God [she] once knew was disappearing like steam on a mirror.”
  
  Instead of being cast into the fiery pits of hell, as some of us might fear, and instead of walking farther away from the Christian church, her earnest seeking actually leads her back to it. Not only that, it leads her to know and recognize Jesus in a deeper and truer way. With every chapter she extends an invitation for readers to join her in the wandering. Between the lines, she calls out, See, if I can do it then so can you! You have permission.
  
  Permission to trust your instincts if some dogmatic use of scripture feels a bit off. Permission to ask questions and redefine the concept of having “faith like a child” because the real “childlike quality” we are to embody “isn’t unthinking acquiescence: it’s curiosity.” Bessey continues, “the true wonder of childlike faith [is that children] truly want to know. They’re not asking to be cool or to push back on the establishment or to prove anyone wrong or to grind an ax or make a point without making a change.”
  
  Much of the book is structured on the idea that our first task is to do a little spring cleaning. She invites readers to sort through their religious “basements” filled with experiences and beliefs and decide which ones to keep, and which to let go of.
  
  Indeed, a lot of her advice is about letting go. Letting go of our need for control, for answers, for black and white theology, and for needing to understanding and explain everything. Bessey writes, “I had to learn that taking the Bible seriously doesn’t mean taking everything literally. I had to learn to read the whole Bible through the lens of Jesus, and I had to learn to stop making it something it wasn’t -- a glorified answer book or rule book or magic spell. I had to stop trying to reduce the Bible to something I could tame or wield as a tool.”
  
  When I read her words, the Spirit inside of me smiles in agreement and feels challenged, empowered and free. Maybe that’s what this book is really about: the permission to be free. God gives us that permission any time we want, but sometimes we just need someone like Sarah Bessey to point it out and to guide us to a place where we can both edwell in and live out of that freedom each and every day.
• 
  Tristan Sherwin

  Within Charismatic circles we can often have the tendency to describe and “advertise” Jesus as the answer. But does this sanitise Him too much? From my own experience, He continues to be a question that calls my faith to become a pilgrimage; a journey, a cyclic course of development and change, upturning and settlement.
  
  Or, as Brian Zahnd recently expressed it on his blog, “We have Jesus. We lose Jesus. We seek Jesus. We find Jesus. We rethink Jesus". And round and round we go.
  
  Within Out of Sorts, Sarah Bessey shares her own experience of this journey: unfolding the ups and downs of rummaging through our faith in the intent of sorting out what needs to rediscovered, reclaimed and recycled from what is just refuse. As someone who has also found themselves consistently on this road-trip for the past five and a half years, I've taken great encouragement from Sarah's words.
  
  As a consequence of openly and honestly expressing her struggles with faith, scripture and church, I firmly believe that Bessey has produced one of the best books about what it means to be part of the church and a follower of Jesus. Mainly because her account is so earthy and human, while remaining Spirit infused and animated. She tenderly emphasises the fallibility of our humanity, whilst consistently leaning into the faithfulness of the Divine.
  
  Sarah's tone reminds me of Philip Yancey; there's an understanding and empathy that is carried across which can only be birthed from genuinely wrestling with oneself. Her words are free from condescension and cynicism, whilst still calling us to listen and reconsider and acknowledge. Because of that, I'm more than happy to sit and listen to her, knowing that I'm receiving truth and wisdom and perspective that aren’t going to be served with a side order of condemnation and an injection of guilt. Truth, when dispensed this way, still comes with conviction, but of a more powerful sort that uncorks something that is already inside of me. To use a film metaphor to describe this, Out Of Sorts pulls off the kind of Inception that DiCaprio & Co could only dream of (no pun intended); I'm convicted reading Sarah's words, not because they force conviction into me externally and unnaturally, but because her honesty draws my own deep insecurities out into the open.
  
  She might not consider herself a theologian, but don't discredit yourself too soon, Sarah—you've done a fantastic job here in articulating the meandering trail of following Jesus.
  
  This is a highly recommended read!
  
  My hope is that you will read it. For those of us who feel “Out Of Sorts”, you’ll draw great wisdom from this. For those of you who don’t, maybe it will help you come to terms with the truth that we all are, in a way, and that’s ok. Being “Out of Sorts” is part and parcel of what it means to believe.
  
  (Ps. In case you wondering—my favourite chapters were, 7. The People Of God: On Church, and 10. Obey the Sadness: On Grief and Lament)