Preacher to Preacher: An Interview with Nadia Bolz-Weber

March 03, 2011 by Jenny Warner

Continued from Page 1

Then I have a bunch of super-smart people that I gossip about the text with every week. My fellow preachers across the country are equally as obsessive about it. I write down ideas from commentaries and thoughts about the texts without judgments throughout the week. When I sit down to write, I ask, "Why does it even matter?" I could wax poetic about the text until the cows come home, but that's not what I'm called to do. I'm called to preach about what matters. If in the end, if I have two pages full of jokes about the text (I always find the text to be incredibly funny), then I have more work to do. I spend about twenty hours a week on my sermon.

What is the future of preaching?

We do this on the backs of all the other faithful preachers who have come before us. I hope that tradition continues—meaning I hope preaching never ends. If the quirky little sermons I write for my church of sixty-five people in Denver are meaningful for all the strangers who later read them online, then I don't think preaching is a dead art form.

Read another interview with Nadia Bolz Weber, "Tattoo Faith," at Patheos here.

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About Jenny Warner

Jenny Warner is the Pastor for Justice, Spirituality, and Community at First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. She graduated from Biola University with a B.A. in Intercultural Studies and Psychology in 1992, and in 2010, received a Masters of Divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary. She is a trained spiritual director, certified by Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle.

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