Cotton Candy and Revolutionary Rides: The Moth Radio Hour
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
At the Moth, we're using the power of storytelling to connect teachers with their students. Once a student develops their story and voice, they can show up more authentically in the classroom, their relationships, and beyond. Which is why we developed the Moth Teacher Institute, an annual conference that brings together educators who want to use the Moth storytelling techniques in their classrooms and communities. The programming features live storytelling, panel discussions, and hands-on workshops to help find, shape, and tell your own true personal stories. To learn more and apply, visit themoth.org.
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Sarah Austin Janess. At the Moth, we come together to connect through personal stories. The Moth has over 500 public events a year where everyday people stand on stage to tell their true stories. In this episode, a bold bike ride in Yemen, shaking a tail feather in Harlem, and our first story by Lutheran pastor from Denver, Nadia Bowles-Weber. Nadia told this in front of a sold out crowd of 2,700 at a Moth main stage in Oregon where we partnered with Portland Literary Arts. Here's Nadia live at the Moth.
I'm not what you would call the biggest fan of church. Which can be awkward since Technically, I'm a Lutheran pastor. My dislike of church, I came by honestly. I was raised in a really very strict, conservative Christian church where there was just a whole lot of rules and very little fun and no possibility of actually getting to be my whole self. And so when I felt the call to go to seminary, I thought, you know what I want is to start a church from scratch. There could be very few rules, a whole lot of fun, and everyone gets to be themselves. So in 2008, I founded a congregation called House for All Sinners and Saints. And the amazing thing about being able to start a church from scratch is you don't have to worry about being conventional, so you can just make shit up.
So if the very first thing you want people to see when they enter in the church is a velvet painting of Elvis crying that says, Elvis welcomes you to House for All Sinners and Saints, you can do that. And if you don't really want to do a blessing of the animals, but you want to do a blessing of the bicycles, you can do that. And if you want to take over the basement of a bar quarterly for an event called Beer and Hems, you can do that. And we did all those things, and that's what started to get the attention of my denomination. And I was so excited to get an email that said, we want to invite you to give the keynote presentation at a pastor's conference. We really want you to share your expertise.
The thing you need to know is I didn't graduate college until I was 36.
Yeah.
I had never been an expert in anything. And when I went to seminary, I was so old that they called me a second career student, which I thought was adorable because it implied I had a first career, which I did not. But the difficult part of starting a church from scratch is that you have to start it from scratch. And so my denomination gave me a little funding to get going, but all they cared about was how many people came and how much money did you bring in. And it started to feel like every Sunday I was throwing my own birthday party and waiting to see who liked me enough to show up. And then I was like, it's not supposed to be about me, it's supposed to be about God, and then I felt worse. And it was rough.
We would have maybe 50 people on a Sunday, but during the summer, the numbers just started getting really low. And we ended up not getting more than 35 people on a Sunday during the summer. And so... The day before I was going to Chicago to keynote that pastor's conference as an expert, I found myself single-handedly trying to get a cotton candy machine in the back of my Honda. And my back was hurting, and the reason is because I had just come from Costco, and I had lifted all these cases of soda, and enough burgers to feed like 80 people, and an industrial bag of Doritos, and I'd put it all in my Honda, when I realized
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–10:48
2
How did Nadia Bolz Weber decide to start an unconventional church in 2008?
10:48–26:07
3
Why did Nadia use carnival-style Rally Day and cotton candy to rebuild community attendance?
26:07–47:22
4
How did a drag-queen ‘minister of fabulousness’ transform Nadia’s crisis into healing?
47:22–50:42