DESCRIPTION
Church reimagined for a new day
Katie Hays, planter-pastor of Galileo Church, shares the story of departing from the traditional church for the frontier of the spiritual-but-not-religious and building community with Jesus-loving (or at least Jesus-curious) outsiders. Now well-established, Galileo Church “seeks and shelters spiritual refugees” in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas—especially young adults, LGBTQ+ people, and all the people who love them.
Told in funny, poignant, and short vignettes, Galileo's story is not one of how to be cool for Christ. Like its founder, Galileo is deeply uncool and deeply devout, and always straining ahead to see what God will do next. Hays says curiosity is her greatest virtue, and she recounts how her curiosity led her to share the good news with people who are half her age and intensely skeptical.
If you are all-in with Jesus but have trust issues with church, We Were Spiritual Refugees will give you hope for finding a community-of-belonging to call home.
Table of Contents
Introduction: #SquadGoals
1. The First Mind to Change Was My Own
2. Getting Our Shit Together
3. Back When Kanye Was Cogent
4. Getting More of Our Shit Together
5. The Beauty of Saying Yes, Saying No
6. Things That Were Harder Than We Thought
7. #Adulting
8. We Are So Glad You've Come
Epilogue
REVIEWS
Krista Tippett
— creator and host of On Being
“Katie Hays’s radiant theology and being, and her fierce intelligence and integrity, are magnetic. So is her soaring, hard-won readiness to question and evolve, stretch and create, in response to the tenderness and tumult of this age. This account of ‘making a church’ lights my imagination about the new forms and meanings of Church, community, and belonging our world is giving birth to.”
Brian D. McLaren
— author/speaker/activist
“Here are three things I couldn’t be more excited about: 1. Katie Hays’s new book, We Were Spiritual Refugees, 2. the amazing church it tells the story of, Galileo, and 3. what might happen if you read it. Who knows what you might be inspired to do?”
Publishers Weekly
“Pastor Hays recounts the roller-coaster ride of her first four years starting the Galileo Church in Fort Worth, Tex., in her illuminating and animated debut.”
Dialog
“The best, the most powerful, parts of We Were Spiritual Refugees are the people and their stories. . . . If you want a book to cause you to rethink and reconsider church, this might be your book.”