December 2 – The Half-*ssed Church
I love her, but I absolutely don’t want to be her.
I’m referring to Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber of “House for All Sinners and Saints Church” (which she affectionately calls The H**f-*ssed Church.) The headlines say of her:
She's 6ft 1in tall, a former stand-up comic and now a competitive weightlifter - but when she isn't down at the gym working out, tattoo-covered Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor.
'I swear like a truck driver', she said.
'I refuse to pretend I'm somebody I'm not', she told abc.
*****
She is taking the liturgical evangelical world by storm, which makes me very happy. And I encourage you to “attend” a one hour interview with her at http://vimeo.com/73913123. I confess, I wept at her description of the God who suffers with us, and the words of Jesus on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them – for they know not what they do.”
The congregation at the HFASS Church she serves is growing and is a wonderful mixture of the disenfranchised and the comfortable. And they do neat things and here are two of them:
Blessing of the Bicycles — We bless bikes. Then, go for a community ride around Park Hill, come back, eat pizza and drink Fat Tire. Happens each Summer.
Beer & Hymns — Quarterly event in a local bar. Basically, we drink beer and sing hymns.
But the life of a pastor is not an easy one. I have put my toe into this lake by being a Lay Preacher at All Peoples United Church, and I – as a fellow volunteer – had it easy. God being my Helper, I came up with a sermon and order of service almost every week for seven years, and that was very cool because it forced me to read and reflect on the Gospels – especially Luke’s (my favourite) - more than I ever would have.
But the heavy lifting – of which I did relatively little – was done by Pastoral Care and Church Housework folks. Thanks be to God our little church understood that, because we were and still are a very small congregation, every person there has to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Not by choice, but by necessity.
The UCW (United Church Women) are stellar visitors and pray-ers. Not only that, they keep the church looking clean and inviting. Our chair of Church Council does gymnastics on top of a ladder trying to put bulbs into those old-fashioned hanging lights. And snow-shoveling, and, and, and…
The Church Teas that provide an inexpensive and food-filled “old home week” for hundreds of folks in this community, and that also raise very necessary funds for missions projects here and abroad, take months of planning and hundreds of woman-and man-hours to launch.
*****
Pastor Nadia does get perks like being on Oprah and on Public Radio, and I’m so glad she does because how else would we learn about her unusual spiritual path and deep and abiding love of God. But serving, as she does, in a less organized and more radicalized parish…I just can’t imagine.
Pretty much all of us at All Peoples go to bed on Saturday night and give our cares to God since God is up all night anyways. (I didn’t invent that saying.) But Pastor Nadia can get calls from folks who don’t have an ability to go to emergency in the event of a health crisis, or a women’s shelter to escape from someone who wants to do serious harm.
You and me, we can say things like, “She or he has a prophetic voice.” Or, as Nadia’s parents said when she felt a call to minister to the addicted and the outcast, “Who knows whether you didn't come into your position precisely for such a time as this." (This is a very from the Jewish Book of Esther.) But we know what happens to prophets.
I think God’s saving Grace for Nadia is that she was a stand-up comedian with a solid death wish - so in some ways it’s all up from there. I love what she has to say in her “Field Notes on Grace from 10 Days on the Road.” See http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/09/sermon-field-notes-on-grace-from-10-days-on-the-road/
At the very beginning of the tour she is very snarky about the book “The Shack” and the author Paul Young. She is a rising edgy Christian star, after all. And partway through the tour, she collapses. And who saves her weight-trained glutes? Paul Young!
Divine comedy, for sure.
I’m referring to Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber of “House for All Sinners and Saints Church” (which she affectionately calls The H**f-*ssed Church.) The headlines say of her:
She's 6ft 1in tall, a former stand-up comic and now a competitive weightlifter - but when she isn't down at the gym working out, tattoo-covered Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor.
'I swear like a truck driver', she said.
'I refuse to pretend I'm somebody I'm not', she told abc.
*****
She is taking the liturgical evangelical world by storm, which makes me very happy. And I encourage you to “attend” a one hour interview with her at http://vimeo.com/73913123. I confess, I wept at her description of the God who suffers with us, and the words of Jesus on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them – for they know not what they do.”
The congregation at the HFASS Church she serves is growing and is a wonderful mixture of the disenfranchised and the comfortable. And they do neat things and here are two of them:
Blessing of the Bicycles — We bless bikes. Then, go for a community ride around Park Hill, come back, eat pizza and drink Fat Tire. Happens each Summer.
Beer & Hymns — Quarterly event in a local bar. Basically, we drink beer and sing hymns.
But the life of a pastor is not an easy one. I have put my toe into this lake by being a Lay Preacher at All Peoples United Church, and I – as a fellow volunteer – had it easy. God being my Helper, I came up with a sermon and order of service almost every week for seven years, and that was very cool because it forced me to read and reflect on the Gospels – especially Luke’s (my favourite) - more than I ever would have.
But the heavy lifting – of which I did relatively little – was done by Pastoral Care and Church Housework folks. Thanks be to God our little church understood that, because we were and still are a very small congregation, every person there has to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Not by choice, but by necessity.
The UCW (United Church Women) are stellar visitors and pray-ers. Not only that, they keep the church looking clean and inviting. Our chair of Church Council does gymnastics on top of a ladder trying to put bulbs into those old-fashioned hanging lights. And snow-shoveling, and, and, and…
The Church Teas that provide an inexpensive and food-filled “old home week” for hundreds of folks in this community, and that also raise very necessary funds for missions projects here and abroad, take months of planning and hundreds of woman-and man-hours to launch.
*****
Pastor Nadia does get perks like being on Oprah and on Public Radio, and I’m so glad she does because how else would we learn about her unusual spiritual path and deep and abiding love of God. But serving, as she does, in a less organized and more radicalized parish…I just can’t imagine.
Pretty much all of us at All Peoples go to bed on Saturday night and give our cares to God since God is up all night anyways. (I didn’t invent that saying.) But Pastor Nadia can get calls from folks who don’t have an ability to go to emergency in the event of a health crisis, or a women’s shelter to escape from someone who wants to do serious harm.
You and me, we can say things like, “She or he has a prophetic voice.” Or, as Nadia’s parents said when she felt a call to minister to the addicted and the outcast, “Who knows whether you didn't come into your position precisely for such a time as this." (This is a very from the Jewish Book of Esther.) But we know what happens to prophets.
I think God’s saving Grace for Nadia is that she was a stand-up comedian with a solid death wish - so in some ways it’s all up from there. I love what she has to say in her “Field Notes on Grace from 10 Days on the Road.” See http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/09/sermon-field-notes-on-grace-from-10-days-on-the-road/
At the very beginning of the tour she is very snarky about the book “The Shack” and the author Paul Young. She is a rising edgy Christian star, after all. And partway through the tour, she collapses. And who saves her weight-trained glutes? Paul Young!
Divine comedy, for sure.