Emmanuel will be host to Nadia Bolz-Weber, bestselling author, international speaker and Lutheran pastor on Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. with a reception afterwards. 
Nadia Bolz-Weber will present a talk entitled “Faith and the Power of Imperfection: Being Broken Gospel People in a World Demanding Excellence”.
Nadia is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, an urban liturgical community with a progressive yet deeply rooted theological imagination. She has created a church that draws members from the fringes of society that don’t feel connected in traditional churches.
Nobody really believes she’s an ordained pastor in the ELCA Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Maybe it’s the sleeve tattoos or the fact that she swears like a truck driver.
Either way… she’s fine with it. Nadia is a recovering alcoholic, former addict, and stand-up comic.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People”, her most recent 
book. Her other books include, New York Times bestseller, “Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint” and “Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television”.
Nadia travels domestically and internationally as a speaker and has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, On Being with Krista Tippett, Fresh Air, and CNN and in the Washington Post, Bitch magazine, The Daily Beast, More magazine and The Atlantic. International media coverage includes BBC World Service and The Guardian and magazine features in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. Nadia lives in Denver with her family and her Great Dane, Zacchaeus.
“Nadia Bolz-Weber has probably done more than any other pastor in recent times to poke therapeutic fun at the misdemeanours and flaws of overly-churched Christianity and Christians. The passion behind her words, however, is as deeply pastoral as it is God-drenched and liberating….thus the affection as well as the respect that attend her and her work wherever she goes.”
-Phyllis Tickle author of “The Great Emergence”
Sponsors of this event are Emmanuel United Methodist Church, Memphis, TN;
Epiphany Lutheran Church, Collierville, TN;
and Methodist Healthcare Systems, Memphis, TN.