Terrible Beauty is a memoir that explores how life’s most challenging moments—failure, fear, and uncertainty—can lead to transformation and grace. The book weaves together personal storytelling and theological reflection to invite readers to embrace the risks of faith. It reveals the beauty found in the messy, redemptive work of community and trust in God. Rooted in the author’s experiences planting a church and facing personal and marital crises, the narrative blends poetic insight with raw honesty. Ultimately, Terrible Beauty is a meditation on grace, resilience, and the power of vulnerability in shaping an authentic faith.
This book is a gift! Life isn’t as neat and clean as we might prefer. It isn’t always up and to the right or a straight line—even when we follow Jesus. We may try to pretend or power through, but the human and the divine, hurt and healing, joy and grief all run on parallel tracks.Through Bryan’s raw honesty and compelling storytelling, take a journey and discover how God doesn’t waste anything—and can redeem everything.
Aaron Stern, Lead Pastor of Mill City Church (Fort Collins, CO) and author of What’s Your Secret?
In Terrible Beauty, Bryan speaks to the evolution within us all, weaving our doubts, fears, triumphs, and glories into a narrative that reminds us that life, and anything worth pursuing, is both beautiful and brutal, a tension to manage, not to solve. The person we become in the process of our journey is as sacred and precious as the story we are writing, the battles we are fighting, and the life we are building.
Tiffany Bluhm, author of The Women We've Been Waiting For and Prey Tell
Terrible Beauty is an honest look at the process of church planting and the necessary parallel process of a church leader’s spiritual formation, neither of which is frictionless nor predictable. It shows us that there is no broadly applicable x,y,z that results in a “successful” church, or church leader. That, in fact, even those with the best of intentions will fall into pits and disappoint the people around them, but that these “dark nights” aren’t meant to discourage us, but rather transform us. It’s a story about embracing the mystery of the Body of Christ (made up of fallible humans) by the Spirit. It’s about the necessity of eschewing technique, and resting in the realization that God is the active agent, and all we are called to do in this life is be receptive to the parts God wishes us to play. Near the end, Bryan writes that “The manual is never what you really need,” and I’m so thankful that rather than add to the pile of by-the-numbers church planting books, he decided to give us this beautiful, encouraging, and prayerfully wise book instead.
Joey Goodall, Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, Mockingbird
It is considered enlightened by some to claim that no one ever really changes, that change is not even possible. But if you want to keep believing that, you should never read this book. If you want to keep believing that, don't let Jesus get a hold of you. Pastor Bryan Halferty has written a brutally honest, hopeful book about the flawed ways we think and act, and about how Jesus meets us right there in the mess of it all with love, compassion and grace. I'm grateful for this book, and I encourage you to read it and learn from it so that you might change, grow and become more and more a child of the kingdom.
— Michael Wear, President and CEO, Center for Christianity and Public Life
This book is a gift! Life isn’t as neat and clean as we might prefer. It isn’t always up and to the right or a straight line—even when we follow Jesus. We may try to pretend or power through, but the human and the divine, hurt and healing, joy and grief all run on parallel tracks.Through Bryan’s raw honesty and compelling storytelling, take a journey and discover how God doesn’t waste anything—and can redeem everything.
Aaron Stern, Lead Pastor of Mill City Church (Fort Collins, CO) and author of What’s Your Secret?
In Terrible Beauty, Bryan speaks to the evolution within us all, weaving our doubts, fears, triumphs, and glories into a narrative that reminds us that life, and anything worth pursuing, is both beautiful and brutal, a tension to manage, not to solve. The person we become in the process of our journey is as sacred and precious as the story we are writing, the battles we are fighting, and the life we are building.
Tiffany Bluhm, author of The Women We've Been Waiting For and Prey Tell
Terrible Beauty is an honest look at the process of church planting and the necessary parallel process of a church leader’s spiritual formation, neither of which is frictionless nor predictable. It shows us that there is no broadly applicable x,y,z that results in a “successful” church, or church leader. That, in fact, even those with the best of intentions will fall into pits and disappoint the people around them, but that these “dark nights” aren’t meant to discourage us, but rather transform us. It’s a story about embracing the mystery of the Body of Christ (made up of fallible humans) by the Spirit. It’s about the necessity of eschewing technique, and resting in the realization that God is the active agent, and all we are called to do in this life is be receptive to the parts God wishes us to play. Near the end, Bryan writes that “The manual is never what you really need,” and I’m so thankful that rather than add to the pile of by-the-numbers church planting books, he decided to give us this beautiful, encouraging, and prayerfully wise book instead.
Joey Goodall, Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, Mockingbird
It is considered enlightened by some to claim that no one ever really changes, that change is not even possible. But if you want to keep believing that, you should never read this book. If you want to keep believing that, don't let Jesus get a hold of you. Pastor Bryan Halferty has written a brutally honest, hopeful book about the flawed ways we think and act, and about how Jesus meets us right there in the mess of it all with love, compassion and grace. I'm grateful for this book, and I encourage you to read it and learn from it so that you might change, grow and become more and more a child of the kingdom.
— Michael Wear, President and CEO, Center for Christianity and Public Life