Bryan is the Lead Pastor of Anchor Church (Tacoma, WA), a community imperfect Jesus-followers with a growing number of congregations around Washington’s south sound.
His book Terrible Beauty is a memoir that explores how life’s most challenging moments—failure, fear, and uncertainty—can become unexpected pathways to grace and transformation. With poetic insight and raw honesty, Bryan Halferty invites readers to embrace the risks of faith, where beauty is found not in perfection, but in the messy, redemptive work of community and trust in God.
Endorsements for
Terrible Beauty
Bryan Halferty’s Terrible Beauty is several things at once: a guide to “planting” a Christian church, a frank interior journey, and a memoir told with heart-felt candor. Because Halferty is a pastor, the reader might assume a lot of meringue on a lemon pie, but every page is deeply honest, astutely self-regarding, linguistically poetic. He has a poet’s ear for language and metaphor. He is less interested in that image of himself in the reader’s mind, than in getting what he feels and thinks on the page as accurately and honestly as he can. Even if the reader is not particularly interested in planting a church, the artistic rewards of this book are in every chapter.
Joseph Powell, Poet and Author of Hard Earth and Fishgrooming and winner of Artist Trust Award, the Tom Pier Award
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
Anchor Church
A community of imperfect Jesus-followers living for the good of Tacoma and the greater south sound.
Bryan’s family and a small cadre planted Anchor in 2018 with the hope that it might be both a safe harbor and a sending base for those on their way to Jesus and others already following him.
Terrible Beauty
(a memoir)
Terrible Beauty is a memoir that explores the paradox of life’s most challenging moments—how the painful, uncertain, and messy experiences can lead to transformation and grace. Centered around the author’s journey of planting a church, it is an honest and poetic account of risking everything to follow a calling while confronting the weight of failure, fear, and self-doubt.
The story begins with a medical crisis in the author’s family, where the fledgling church community rallies around them, revealing the profound beauty of shared suffering and mutual care. Through humor, vulnerability, and theological insight, Terrible Beauty challenges readers to embrace the “terrible beauty” of stepping into the unknown, where faith is forged not by success but by learning to trust God in the midst of uncertainty.
At its heart, Terrible Beauty is a meditation on grace, growth, and the power of community, inviting readers to move through fear and failure into deeper love—for God, for others, and for themselves.
