Tattooed, potty-mouthed and hilariously funny are not the first words you would use to describe a typical pastor, but they are the perfect words to describe Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. She is a highly recognized Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor, and the founder of House for All Sinners and Saints in  Denver, Colorado.

On Tuesday night, she came to the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church just off Snelling Avenue, where she talked about her new book “Accidental Saints.” Bolz-Weber read two excerpts from her book and also raised over $1800 in a raffle for the Highland Park Elementary School. The prizes included a Virgin Mary belt buckle, a Christmas ornament of Santa kneeling by the manger, sheet music for “The Little Drummer Boy,” and the grand prize was what Bolz-Weber called “the ham of God.”

Bolz-Weber started by saying how she doesn’t like to filter herself because she thinks a pastor shouldn’t lie about who they are. Then she transitioned into explaining that people relate to each other and God on their shared brokenness rather than their shared victories. She said, “When we are honest about our lives and struggles it opens up a space of holiness.”

“She connects on the level of messing up and failure but yet having people give her another chance,” Hamline Religion Professor Deanna Thompson said.

The first excerpt Bolz-Weber read from her book was on the December 2012 shooting in Newtown. She shares the story about when she botched the sermon the Sunday after the shooting. She said, “instead of being in a ‘Christmas’ mood, we asked ourselves ‘where the hell is God?’” For her sermon, she explained that she was going to read off all 26 of the victims’ names and then ring a bell after each one. However, her new intern, Alex, corrected her and told her that 27 people died that day. She was taken aback. Alex told her that Adam Lanza, the shooter, also died that day. She said that she knew he was right because “God came to save all of us.”

“It’s a big juxtaposition, [because] she reads the chapter on Newtown and then we are auctioning off ham. Not everyone would do that or pull that off,” Professor Thompson said.

In between her stories, Bolz-Weber had children go to the front and pull the raffle tickets out. Laughter rang out through the usually silent sanctuary as the night went on.

In her last reading, Bolz-Weber talked about her past demons, such as dealing with depression. She said that she named her depression Frances and compared her to a terrible roommate. Bolz-Weber continued by describing how ‘Frances’ taught her to hate sobriety, community, exercise, eating “food made of food,” and of course, Jesus.  Explaining further, “demons keep us from the love we have, and isolate us,” she said.

“What she read to us, those two excerpts, were like incredibly religious. It’s not light theology, it’s pretty darn deep stuff. On one hand it seems like it is all about her and on the other hand it seems like she really is trying to say ‘this isn’t about me – I want to talk about God,” Professor Thompson said.

At the end of the night, Bolz-Weber did a Q&A with the audience. The first question that was asked was why she was Lutheran; she slyly responded, “because Lutherans are so damn good looking.” After this, she got more serious and shared her experience in finding the right religion for herself. “She knows how to work an audience,” sophomore Austin Werlein said. Many audience members thanked her for coming and for being herself; some wiped away tears as they left.

Bolz-Weber has been traveling around the United States for her book signing tour since September 8, will continue to travel to Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Portland and she will finish in Seattle on October 13.