Kathy Escobar - Faith Shift: Finding Your Way Forward When Everything You Believe Is Coming Apart

Praise for
Faith Shift

I cant count the times people have come to me saying their faith is falling apart and they have nobody safe to go to for help. I wish I could send them all to spend a few days with Kathy Escobar, a wise pastoral presence who understands, accepts, and works with people wherever they are. Short of that, now I can send them to Kathys powerful, practical, honest, sensitive, and intelligent new book. Its just what so many of us have needed and couldnt find. Im so glad its now available.

B RIAN D. M C L AREN , author, speaker, and activist

With this immensely practical book, Kathy Escobar serves as both a friend and a guide, offering help and healing to those traveling the frightening road from certainty, through doubt, to faith. Faith Shift is a must-read for every doubter, misfit, or dreamer who has ever felt alone in the church. Ive been waiting for a book just like this one for years and am so grateful to have finally found it. I simply cannot recommend it enough.

R ACHEL H ELD E VANS , author of Faith Unraveled and A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Kathy Escobar is the best and wisest of guides for those who find that their faith simply doesnt fit anymore. She is the real dealcompassionate, truth-telling, prophetic, challenging. This powerful and practical book will bind up the wounds and heal the broken hearts of religion. Kathy is a voice that I listen to closely in my own journey. She is the spiritual director for the disenchanted and the disenfranchised of our time.

S ARAH B ESSEY , author of Jesus Feminist

Kathy Escobar eloquently and wisely voices what so many of us have experienced, that the faith we embraced in our early years is a poor companion in our later years. Faith Shift helps us take the all-important next step: authentic intimacy with the Divine without surrendering our minds. If your faith needs to shift, read this book!

P HILIP G ULLEY , author of Living the Quaker Way and If the Church Were Christian

Reading Faith Shift was like being with an understanding friend who gets me. With wisdom and grace, Kathy Escobar affirms the growing tribe of faith shifters who have left church, scarred and unraveled. She makes no attempt to woo strays back into the fold, but instead provides hard-won wisdom for the formerly churched. Faith Shift is a life-giving guide for me and my kind.

P AM H OGEWEIDE , blogger, and author of Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church

Kathy Escobar is the perfect guide for navigating the disturbed waters of shifting faith. I cant think of a better person to have as a pastor from afar. Her language of faith shift provides a helpful framework for understanding the states and stages that can be so disorienting and disheartening. Faith Shift shows the way forward to emerge from the rubble of shaken belief.

S TEVE K NIGHT , co-founder of TransFORM Network

Kathy Escobar is an explorer of new faith territories. If youre worried that you might be losing your faith and dont know where to go, follow Kathy. Shes already been there and back and can save you lots of pain and time.

J IM H ENDERSON , producer of Wheres God When and author of Jim and Casper Go to Church

Thank God for Kathy Escobar! While others wring their hands, point fingers, and theorize, Kathy can be found where she loves to spend her timein the trenches with those who sincerely struggle. In Faith Shift, Kathy offers a powerful resource for those in the throes of their own faith revolution. This users guide is a true life saver.

P HYLLIS M ATHIS , licensed professional counselor and co-creator of Walking Wounded: Hope for Those Hurt By Church, an online resource for faith shifters

For those of us whose faith has been ripped from its moorings by life experience and wrenching questions, we cant go back. As Kathy Escobar points out, we may trybut at great cost to our souls. Faith Shift is the surest, wisest, and most compassionate guidebook Ive seen for traveling forward into a liberating way of faithful life.

S COTT D EWEY , co-director of Street Psalms and co-author of Meal from Below: A Five-Course Feast with Jesus

In an age when thousands of Christians are experiencing a shift from certainty into spiritual wilderness, Pastor Kathy Escobar brings warm and wise insight to that often confusing and lonely journey. Her astute observations will help faith shifters know they are not alone and that hope, freedom, and renewed passion call from the other side.

E LLEN H AROUTUNIAN , psychotherapist, spiritual director and urban pastor, and contributor to A New Kind of Conversation

Faith Shift gives the reader needed language to describe the rhythms and processes that many have lived and even more have observed. As the church has shifted, so have her people. Shame is dispelled as deconstruction is explained step by step, and we realize that shifting away from church as we know it does not mean leaving God behind.

D R . D EBORAH K OEHN L OYD , coach, educator, and author

One Sunday after I had left the ministry, while caught in the thralls of my own turmoil, I received a phone call from a practical stranger, Kathy Escobar. With great kindness and wisdom, she helped me find my spiritual feet again. Her words helped get me back on the path to wholeness. That pivotal call was this book distilled.

D AVID H AYWARD , blogger and founder of the Lasting Supper, an online community for people in spiritual transition

Faith Shift is a masterpiece of permission givinga crucial handbook for anyone venturing into the unknown of faith deconstruction and reconstruction.

A NGIE F ADEL , licensed spiritual director, co-pastor of the Bridge, and founder of Agents of Future

Kathy has the ability to build a sacred space through her wordsa place where we feel safe and free to be our most honest self, so we can explore new ways of seeing. Faith Shift is a wise resource for anyone who has been disillusioned at the core by the things we hold dear, especially church.

I DELETTE M C V ICKER , founder and editor-in-chief of SheLovesmagazine.com

These are the beautiful stories of the messy, painful, disruption demanded by true growth and transformationthe stories that make us realize we are not alone in this journey, and awaken the soul to the hope, beauty, and glimpses of Shalom that come with the courage to lean into the deeper questions. An excellent book, and must read!

P AMELA W ILHELMS , president of Wilhelms Consulting Group

F AITH S HIFT
P UBLISHED BY C ONVERGENT B OOKS

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
All rights reserved.

Details and names in some anecdotes and stories have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved.

Trade Paperback ISBN 9781601425430
Ebook ISBN 9781601425447

Copyright 2014 by Kathy Escobar
Illustrations 2012 by Kathy Escobar

The .

Cover design by Mark D. Ford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.