Four-Day Morning Workshops 

(Mon-Thurs)

Off the Page! 

Michael Brothers 
This workshop strives for a recovery of an oral/aural style of preaching. Particular attention will be given to writing for the ear, the use of a manuscript, preaching without a manuscript, visual engagement, improvisational speech, and body movement. Participants are to come prepared to preach a beginning and an ending from one or different sermons.

Shepherding Stories: Storytelling in Community

Michael Dean Morgan 
Storytelling has the power to change lives and connect communities. Storytelling is a map of our communal memories and values. Story allows all to “come as they are” and hear the lessons anew.  But where do great stories come from? This workshop opens the window to using storytelling as a community-building tool. Through interactive exercises, we will explore story creation fundamentals, uncover hidden narratives, and discuss expanding this work into your community.

Contextualizing Preaching in Digital Media Ecosystems

Hyemin Na
Preaching does not occur in a vacuum. Four moves comprise this workshop: 1) introducing the history of media development and the narratives that accompany technological innovation; 2) providing a brief overview of core traits emerging in contemporary digital media cultures; 3) discussing current preaching practices and concerns within digital media ecosystems; and 4) preaching in a new digital media format and peer feedback.

The Agile Preacher: Preaching from the Pulpit to the Public Square

Chelsea Yarborough 
This workshop invites participants to explore how to extend their preaching practice beyond the pulpit and into the public square. Over the course of the week, we will examine various platforms and discover how expansive proclamation enhances one’s ministry reach and complements the work done from the pulpit. Participants will draw inspiration from the methodological approaches of Prathia Hall and Fannie Lou Hamer, who are both exemplars at rhetorical agility. By the end of the workshop, preachers will leave with practical tools for expanding their practice both within and beyond the church setting.

Postcolonial Preaching

HyeRan Kim-Cragg 
There is not a single place that is not affected by modern Colonialism. Preachers are called to grapple with this reality. This workshop invites participants to engage postcolonial issues by exploring four elements of preaching: rehearsal, imagination, place, and language.  At the end of the workshop, participants are encouraged to critically reflect on their own sermons and to preach the Gospel with postcolonial insights.

Preaching in and with the Earth: Rekindling Eschatological Hope Amid Death-Dealing Realities 

Kimberly Wagner 
For many, it is growing harder to imagine how we preach an honest and authentic message of resurrection and eschatological hope in a world that is groaning, hurting, and dying. With global warming, destruction of habitat, and elimination of plant and animal species, the reality of climate trauma is on the rise. In this workshop, we will think together about how we might preach not only about the Earth, but how creation itself might preach with and among us. In seeking to “ground” our preaching in and with the Earth, we might find new ways to talk about death, resurrection, climate anxiety, and eschatological hope in ways that respond more richly to the present moment and the generations of people impacted by environmental crisis and degradation.

90-Minute Afternoon Electives

Move It! Gesturing the Sermon

Michael Brothers
Through demonstration, exercises and preaching, this workshop will explore body presence and movement in the preaching event.  Gestures that express the message, fit the context, and are natural to the speaker will be emphasized.  We will also identify the aptness and power of stillness. Fellows are to come prepared to preach two to three minutes of a sermon that calls for movement or gesture.

Play, Pray, Preach

Chelsea Yarborough 
In the hustle and bustle of sermon preparation, it’s too easy to let robust exegetical work slide. Time constraints and a feeling of being stuck can often hamper our process. This workshop offers a refreshing twist by incorporating play into biblical interpretation.  Workshop participants will explore an innovative exegetical model and move through a text together. Discover how playful methods can revitalize your sermon preparation and unlock fresh insights into your preaching.

“How Long, O Lord?”: Engaging the Power of Lament in Preaching

Kimberly Wagner 
There is much that is weighing on us and our communities these days. Whether due to political division, mass violence, challenging diagnoses, personal loss, cultural shifts, or climate anxiety, our communities struggle to give language to the various burdens they carry and the ways such experiences disrupt understandings of self, world, and even God. As people of faith, however, we have been given a language for just these moments—lament. In our time together, we will consider how lament may inform our proclamation as well as explore concrete tools for our preaching practice. We will consider the work of lament in relation to suffering, anger, hurt, hope, and even calls for justice. In exploring both the power of lament as well as lament texts, preachers will have the chance to grow more comfortable with imagining how to engage lament faithfully and well in their preaching and ministry.

Ecological Preaching  

HyeRan Kim-Cragg 
The climate crisis is the most urgent global problem we face today. Solutions are urgently needed. Yet, preachers seem to be slow in tackling this issue and seem ill equipped to address it. This workshop provides ideas for how to engage ecological issues from the pulpit by exploring the Bible from creation-centered perspectives. At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with concrete biblically-grounded ideas for how to preach ecologically.

Seminar Discussion on Intercultural Preaching

Hyemin Na 
What does it mean to preach in a diverse world? In this seminar discussion, the instructor will provide core concepts related to multicultural diversity, and an overview of emerging practices for intercultural preaching. Participants will have an opportunity to share their ministerial contexts as case studies for group thought-work.

Reframing Community Culture Through Story

Michael Dean Morgan 
What is the narrative of your congregation? What stories does your congregation tell about itself?  Some of these stories are true, some are false, some are helpful, some are harmful. These informal stories exist in every community and when revealed help understand its past joys and struggles. In this interactive lecture we will ask you to begin to unpack the hidden – or not so hidden – narratives that create the fabric of your community and how to begin to reframe them.