Washington Post article on Nadia Bolz-Weber

photo credit

It has a great slideshow (here),
but it's not a fantastic article:Bolz-Weber’s liberal, foulmouthed articulation of Christianity speaks to fed-up believers
..and (inevitably) as Happy has noted, 
                                                                                   bad comments.

Amazingly, it never directly mentions that Nadia Bolz-Weber (the Sarcastic Luthersn) was a stand-up comic; that would help to know when interpreting comments like these without video/context:

I never experience God in camping or trees or nature. I hate nature,” she told the Austin crowd as she paced the stage. “God invented takeout and duvets for a reason.

But here are two excerpts I'll note..

1)I love the description of the flow of the gatherings at her church:

Seating is arranged around an unelevated circle, lay people can pick up a card and help run the service, and sermons by Bolz-Weber are usually 12 minutes tops. Singing is all a capella and every service has a creative, congregant-run, interactive program.

Isn't every church like that?(:

2)Helpful to join the struggle as she becomes a celebrity:

“It was awful,” Bolz-Weber writes. It seemed as if her “precious little indie boutique of a church” might be overrun by bankers and doctors. She called her pastor friends to ask, “Have you ever had normal people take over your church?”

These days, about 180 people show up each Sunday, an eclectic mix of homeless and corporate types, punk teens and suburban baby boomers sitting on stacking chairs in the rented hall. Bolz-Weber’s growing popularity has forced the questions: How deeply into convention can she stand going? Can she stomach the idea of hiring staff? Of being mega?
The congregation is “becoming big and it’s freaking her out, because that’s not her gift,” said Harotunian. “It gets to her identity — what kind of pastor does she want to be? A lot of people think she’s going to climb the ladder. but I don’t think she can do that. It’s very precarious.”