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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: NBW part II
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
While I certainly do endorse NBW and recommend the interview, I do think she does bring a number of questions that could be discussed here.
For instance, I described her has being a leader of the emergent church. Someone elsewhere challenged that assertion saying she was a traditionalist wrapped in a new way. Which raises two questions, in my mind. 1) What is the emergent church? 2) What would you say are the marks of a leader in the emergent church? For instance, some people say Rob Bell is a leader of this new movement, but reading some of his material I find him repeating some of the traditional doctrines of mainline Christianity in new ways as well.
Another issue NBW challenges people on is how to minister to the outsider? Who is the outsider? I think we can all agree LGBTQ people and drug addicts and mentally disturbed people have long been considered outsiders--not easily welcomed into the traditional church; but as Nadia herself says, when professional people and Baby Boomers started showing up at her community's she struggled with these outsiders. Aren't we all, in a sense outsiders at one time or other--I know I certainly have been at a number of times in my life.
I know my son has some concerns about NBW's ministry. He wonders how she can continue to be an effective minister to her community when she was jetting around all over the country giving seminars, interviews and writing books. I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to his concerns.
Finally, there is her relationship to the hierarchy. She says the hierarchy just basically trusts her--they gave her an education and just set her loose (really?). I can think of a number of other religious people who would love to have that freedom; but what are the inherent dangers of this laize faire approach?
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Your post makes very little sense without reference to your earlier OP. So, to help people out, here is what you'd previously said about Nadia Bolz Weber
quote:
Nadia is a part of the emerging church in the USA. She came from a fundamentalist background, rejected how she was raised, became a comic then descended into alcohol and drugs. Never the less she went into recovery and became a Lutheran minister.
She is the pastor of All Saints and Sinners church in Denver CO. Her main ministry is to the outsiders in the community. Then one day when professional type people started showing up at her church she realized they too were outsiders (at least to her community).
She has written a couple of books and is invited to speak all over the United States.
Here is a recent interview with Terry Gross of National Public Radio.
I particularly like her description of her relationship with her hierarchy.
If you ever have a chance to go to one of her speaking engagements, you will not be disappointed.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
OK, I'll bite. Not least because I've sat down and had a conversation with her, as well as having read Cranky, Beautiful Faith (US title: Pastrix).
I think the most succinct way of putting it is that she's socially liberal yet ecclesiastically conservative. So she takes a liberal view on most Dead Horse issues, yet her expression of faith is very traditionally Lutheran and pro liturgy.
As for what the phrase 'emergent church' means, it's certainly a many and varied thing. So while you cite Rob Bell, it would be incorrect to state that Rob Bell is either typical of the emerging church or that all who might describe or affiliate themselves with the emergent church agree with Bell's views on a number of issues.
One shouldn't be surprised that he trots out some fairly orthodox views. I don't think the emergent church is a reinvention of the wheel; more like putting a new tyre on the wheel to better suit the new, modern road we're travelling on.
My own attempt to describe the emergent church is that it is any attempt to reform the church (either in belief or expression, or both) to respond to modern society and its critiques of church, whether that be a critique of its belief or expressions.
Challenging beliefs is always a risky business, as Lutherans like Nadia well know. Yet as they also know it doesn't mean it is automatically wrong to question the established teachings of the church and that it can lead to positive reform. quote:
...how she can continue to be an effective minister to her community when she was jetting around all over the country giving seminars, interviews and writing books. I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to his concerns.
She's not the world's first itinerant preacher. Plenty have followed a similar model before. For example, when Tom Wright was bishop of Durham, he spent much of his time in America, going on lecture tours and writing many more (and weightier) books than Nadia has ever done. So long as there's someone she can delegate to, I can't see that this a valid criticism.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Quite an interesting tangent, is,
Are you a person who finds someone who goes out of their way to be conspicuous, to dress in an odd way, or in this case, to cover themselves with tattoos exciting, edgy, etc? Or is your instinctive reaction to say to yourself, 'I can't see the point?', 'self-dramatisation' and as a personality trait, something reprehensible?
It's my suspicion that a most of us are either one or the other, and that this is likely to be ingrained in who we are. It may even go with these Myers-Briggs profiles that we're always being told about. It will, however, mean that some of us are predisposed to find someone like this lady is cool, great, exciting - or just not so until there's some other reason to be persuaded otherwise.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
quote:
I don't think the emergent church is a reinvention of the wheel; more like putting a new tyre on the wheel to better suit the new, modern road we're travelling on.
I live the imagery here. I hope you don't mind me quoting this elsewhere.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
quote:
She came from a fundamentalist background, rejected how she was raised, became a comic then descended into alcohol and drugs.
For the record, and for what it's worth, she is a recovering alcoholic, but did not use drugs.
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
Certainly she's been down the school of hard knocks, and a bit of body art can be a product of that. Where it becomes "look at me" - a bit like tat - it crosses a boundary.
The Fresh Expressions thing is not dissimilar. Most of what I see classified as "fresh expressions" is the old with all the meaningful bits removed and the rest dressed up with candy floss and sealed in polystyrene. A bit like motor racing is fresh expression of horse racing.
I know the proponents mean well. Personally I think, tats or not, we're better off reclaiming the old expressions - albeit with fresh energy and some degree of explanation where they are too obscure.
Which is not to say NBW doesn't do that. But there is always some risk of the message and the messenger cartwheeling in a tantric flounce.
[ 22. September 2015, 00:35: Message edited by: Zappa ]
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
I'm a complete outsider to all of this, but I'd assumed that 'emergent church' was neither in the evangelical/fundamentalist nor mainstream historical church traditions. I thought it was trying to do something different from both of those things?
Apart from her biography and personal experience, what is it that makes this minister's version of Lutheranism different from that of someone who was raised in (this branch of) Lutheranism and then became a Lutheran minister?
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
A number of years ago, the Episcopal Cathedral here in Denver hosted its annual perish picnic on the lawn, and as usual, no one who showed up was turned away. There was one person who showed up who looked like he had come straight from a Marilyn Manson look-alike contest- long purple hair, white face paint with black around the eyes, black lipstick, black leather outfit, big platform boots, lots of piercings. In all my years of attending church there, I had never seen him attend a service, and I don’t think I ever saw him show up again. But damned if his picture wasn’t somewhere in every publication released by the Cathedral for the next three years. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but he absolutely made the cover of the directory, and the “who we are” page on the website.)
Which is to say that it isn’t always the person with the tattoos and nose rings who is saying “look at me!”
I’m not so sure that NBW and House for All Saints and Sinners set out to be the Next Big Thing, or even a model of what the Church should look like. Most people (including Jesus in his earthly ministry) aren’t really comfortable with being anointed the next big thing. I think she was just trying to fill a specific need. My impression is that she started a church for people who were marginalized by their childhood church for not “acting Christian,” with a special emphasis on people who didn’t fit into traditional gender or sexual roles. This church would naturally be suspicious of anyone who tries to set hard and fast moral rules, and would welcome questions about traditional beliefs. There probably need to be more churches like All Saints and Sinners, but the idea was never to hold out a model that all churches need to follow.
Despite their intentions, they are still a “big deal.” They have experienced some growing pains due to the publicity that their pastor has gotten. On their website, they have a very carefully worded message to potential visitors. They won’t turn away anyone, but it can be hard to build a community when half of the people on any given Sunday are 20s and 30s groups from some other church taking a field trip, and they ask people to respect that before planning a one-off visit.
(NBW actually lives two blocks away from me. I've never met her, but when I fist moved into the neighborhood, I immediately became interested in whoever had the "keep church weird" bumper sticker on their car. A few months later, I saw the tattooed pastor who was always in the paper working out at the neighborhood crossfit gym, and I put it all together.)
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Quite an interesting tangent, is,
Are you a person who finds someone who goes out of their way to be conspicuous, to dress in an odd way, or in this case, to cover themselves with tattoos exciting, edgy, etc? Or is your instinctive reaction to say to yourself, 'I can't see the point?', 'self-dramatisation' and as a personality trait, something reprehensible?
It's my suspicion that a most of us are either one or the other, and that this is likely to be ingrained in who we are. It may even go with these Myers-Briggs profiles that we're always being told about. It will, however, mean that some of us are predisposed to find someone like this lady is cool, great, exciting - or just not so until there's some other reason to be persuaded otherwise.
Tattoos like those are utterly normal nowadays.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Up to a point Pomona.
The tangential question I'm really asking is, are you (or anyone else for that matter) the sort of person whose initial response to a stranger who projects themselves into the space around them by being expressive and a bit aggressively non-conformist, positive or negative? Is your initial reaction 'cool' or 'show off'?
My suspicion is that this reaction is to do with who you are, what you're like inside. It is like the question whether you are the sort of person who feel an overwhelming need to make a statement, say who you are, project yourself into your surroundings or whether you cringe inwardly at the thought of doing that.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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*Leon*
Shipmate
# 3377
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Posted
I wonder whether this 'edgy' image is rather enhanced, or even created, by the photographer who did her book cover.
I heard her talk at Greenbelt a couple of years back, knowing almost nothing about her before the talk. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and I was quite a way back in a large venue, so I didn't notice any tattoos.
If she's quite conservative liturgically, I'd imagine she looks quite conventional when dressed in vestments. She could dye her hair an unnatural colour if she wanted to ensure people thought she was edgy, but instead she has some tattoos that are likely to be covered up while in church.
Gramps49's son's concern about whether she spends too much time doing talks elsewhere may be a problem, but to me it sounds like a private matter for her congregation. Maybe they have enough other people to lead services, and maybe they like the prestige that comes with having a famous minister. Or maybe they do get annoyed by the not-quite-as-good assistant minister. Either way, it's their issue.
Posts: 831 | From: london | Registered: Oct 2002
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
She looks like a pretty normal non-straight liberal arts grad from a big US coastal city to me. That may be unusual within church circles - that is probably why she seems so 'edgy'. But for young people outside the church she looks totally normal, and not edgy or aggressively non-conformist.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Hilda of Whitby
Shipmate
# 7341
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Posted
I read NBW's "Pastrix" tome. While I am glad that she is successful at creating a worship space for people who feel extremely unwelcome in "normal" churches, I found her to be quite self-absorbed. I also do not think she is nearly as "edgy" as she (and her publisher) seem to think she is.
She also lost me when she said in an interview that, because of all the publicity about her church, men in Dockers and women in mom jeans who live in the burbs were starting to come. These people were harshing her buzz and I got the distinct impression that she thought these people were making her church (and NBW herself) seem a lot less cool.
See this interview, particularly this:
"Still, Bolz-Weber admits to feeling uneasy when "bankers in Dockers" started coming to her services: "It threw me into a crisis, because I felt like, 'Wait, you could go to any mainline Protestant church in this city and see a room full of people who look just like you. Why are you coming and messing up our weird?'"
I couldn't help thinking that bankers in Dockers and women in mom jeans also struggle with pain, alienation, addiction, and despair, and might not feel comfortable showing that in their "mainline Protestant" churches. Perhaps they felt that her church would allow them to be more honest about their problems and doubts. I understand that she wants to minister to societal outcasts, but all of us are social outcasts in one way or another; it's just that sometimes it isn't apparent from the outside.
I'm glad she's there for her congregation, but I find her off-putting.
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"Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad."
Posts: 412 | From: Nickel City | Registered: Jun 2004
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Yeah, Hilda, I thought she was a bit in awe of herself as the book went on. But I am not a good judge of such things - I identify with what Enoch said, and something in me shouts 'self-promoting tw*t' on a hair trigger. This can be a useful BS detector, but in me it's also a give-away for an internalised parental voice which somehow I've not outgrown.
As regards her 'mums and dads' comments - I took these as her honest and appropriately self-critical response to her first, instinctive negative reaction when 'straight' folks appeared to be coming along to soak up the groovy vibe. It's an interesting irony for a self-declared 'inclusive' pastor / congregation; she seemed self-aware enough to highlight it and to try to deal with it appropriately.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I thought she was properly self-deprecating in the NPR interview regarding her initial reaction to the moms and dads.
At the same time, this is something that I thought about when reading Mark's thread on community. People want safe spaces, and that sometimes drives their reaction when they interact with people who are not like them. I can walk into 95% of the churches in this city with my family and people will jump all over themselves to welcome me and make sure that I come back next week with my wife and kid. Unless it is a black or Eastern Orthodox church, I look enough like everyone else and my kid is cute enough to get an over the top welcome. That is not true of a lot of folks who go to House for All Saints and Sinners. So I can get why it was kind of an existential crisis when folks who could pass at 95% of the churches in town before they started talking dead horse issues started showing up at a church which was specifically founded for the folks who couldn't pass.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Dal Segno
al Fine
# 14673
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hilda of Whitby, quoting a radio interview:
"Still, Bolz-Weber admits to feeling uneasy when "bankers in Dockers" started coming to her services: "It threw me into a crisis, because I felt like, 'Wait, you could go to any mainline Protestant church in this city and see a room full of people who look just like you. Why are you coming and messing up our weird?'"
In her book she goes on to talk about how she realised that she was reacting in just the way a mainline church would react to one of her "weird" and that she had to get over herself. Seems a pretty positive response to me.
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Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
Posts: 1200 | From: Pacific's triple star | Registered: Mar 2009
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
A number of years ago, the Episcopal Cathedral here in Denver hosted its annual perish picnic on the lawn
Well, I suppose that explains TEC's decreasing numbers.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
Posts: 2512 | From: Oakland, CA | Registered: Feb 2008
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hilda of Whitby:
[QB] I While I am glad that she is successful at creating a worship space for people who feel extremely unwelcome in "normal" churches, I found her to be quite self-absorbed. I also do not think she is nearly as "edgy" as she (and her publisher) seem to think she is.
"'Why are you coming and messing up our weird?'"
I'm with you on this one. There's a fair bit of "look at me" in her make up which could be distracting. What is it all about - her, her tattoos, the church's edginess?
The more you claim to be edgy, the less you possibly are. If you really are edgy you don't need to say it, you just are: you engage with those people and issues no one else touches.
"Messing up our weird?" Well, it does seem to suggest that the church is not as inclusive as it first appears and that it's all mediated - perhaps even controlled - by its minister. Now that makes it all pretty self indulgent ....
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Dal Segno
al Fine
# 14673
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
"Messing up our weird?" Well, it does seem to suggest that the church is not as inclusive as it first appears and that it's all mediated - perhaps even controlled - by its minister. Now that makes it all pretty self indulgent ....
That's an awfully big conclusion to draw from a little evidence.
If you read her book, she says that "Messing up our weird" was her first reaction. On reflection she realised that she was reacting exactly the way that she complained that mainstream congregations react when someone weird comes in ("Messing up our normal") and that she had to get over that reaction, and do something about being truly inclusive.
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Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
Posts: 1200 | From: Pacific's triple star | Registered: Mar 2009
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
I'm with you on this one. There's a fair bit of "look at me" in her make up which could be distracting. What is it all about - her, her tattoos, the church's edginess?
The more you claim to be edgy, the less you possibly are. If you really are edgy you don't need to say it, you just are: you engage with those people and issues no one else touches.
Is she claiming to be edgy, or are we just assuming that she is making that claim because we assume that no one would dress like that unless they were trying to get attention?
I am a fairly conservative dresser, I get a monthly haircut, I keep my face neatly shaved, and I have no tattoos. It has nothing to do with wanting people to think that I am conservative and straight-laced. It's just how I like to look. Is it possible that people who dress other ways just like to look that way, and aren't trying to get your attention?
She certainly seems to be engaging with people and issues that many churches will not touch. And her approach (starting a church within a main-line Protestant denomination and holding regular Sunday service with Eucharist) is anything but edgy.
So where are the assumptions coming from?
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Egeria
Shipmate
# 4517
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Posted
Liberal arts degree holder from a large coastal university here. Of course I know some people with tattoos, including some of my favorite basketball players , but I do get the sense of "look at me, look at how edgy and non-conformist I am!" from Bolz-Weber.
What I find really repulsive about her, though, is that she says "I hate nature." To me, that's a grave sin and a sign that she's not fit to be a pastor. When I quoted this to my religiously non-affiliated sister, my sister said, "Then does she hate God?" If I were visiting a church and heard that from the pulpit, I would be out the door like a shot and writing a letter of complaint to the Presiding Bishop.
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"Sound bodies lined / with a sound mind / do here pursue with might / grace, honor, praise, delight."--Rabelais
Posts: 314 | From: Berkeley, CA | Registered: May 2003
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
Is it possible that she doesn't literally hate nature and just means that she isn't crazy about camping and hiking?
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Egeria
Shipmate
# 4517
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Posted
Don't you think there's a world of difference between saying "I don't like camping," and "I hate nature"?
I love nature. I have a feeling I wouldn't enjoy sleeping on the ground, even with a well-designed "hip-hole" and in a good sleeping bag. "Roughing it" would definitely be a challenge for me. But that doesn't equate to hating nature, now, does it?
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"Sound bodies lined / with a sound mind / do here pursue with might / grace, honor, praise, delight."--Rabelais
Posts: 314 | From: Berkeley, CA | Registered: May 2003
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Egeria:
Don't you think there's a world of difference between saying "I don't like camping," and "I hate nature"?
You are going to have to present us with the context of how she said "I hate nature" before we can tell.
It strikes me as something so over the top that it couldn't possibly have been intended as a literal statement. It was delivered by a former stand up comic, after all.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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