Accidental Saints, by Nadia Bolz-Weber

In reading Nadia Bolz-Weber’s new book, you may pine for a church in which more preachers sound like her. A sudden desire for a well-placed expletive in Sunday’s sermon may overtake you, as may a longing for prophetic scripture interpretations in hipster pa­tois. Whether you are pastor or parishioner, you may envy a church in which the pastor is permitted to say, “I’m not running after Jesus. Jesus is running my ass down.”

True: those of us without tatted, potty-mouthed leaders or a church that allows for them may idealize both—something Bolz-Weber writes about in Accidental Saints. After the success of her best-selling Pastrix, Bolz-Weber found herself and her Denver congregation, House for All Sinners and Saints, a center of fame and controversy. Here she waves readers away from any plans to visit her church to see what all the fuss is about.

If you want a community like the one she describes, she says don’t become a hanger-on at a church like hers, supposedly filled with all the cool kids. Instead, “do what we did: Gather a small number of people . . . to simply share a meal and pray together. Talk about your lives and what is happening in the world. Be yourselves. Extend grace. Read the gospel . . . and repeat.” Like most of Bolz-Weber’s writing, those pithy sentences have a long shelf life, and their quotability index is off the charts. Perhaps we who wish our pastors were eloquent theologians with a gritty vibe can at least purchase a copy to pass on to them.