We are busy planning the 3 rd Annual Preaching Conference and recruiting new participants for our third class of emerging preachers! If you know of anyone who is discerning a call to preach, please recommend CGPI to them. We are focused on recruiting aspiring and newer preachers who have little to now formal training in preaching or graduate theological education in order to equip them for effective and compelling ministry proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. You can r

Rev. Dr. Catherine Williams Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship, and Director of Chapel Worship at the Lancaster, PA campus of Moravian University’s School of Theology.   An ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, Dr. Williams earned her BMus. in Church Music from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, her MDiv. from Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, and her PhD in Homiletics from Princeton Theolog

We are thrilled to announce that we have four of our five mentors in place. We hope to soon announce our fifth mentor, who will come from our partnership with the Justice Center for Sacred Theological Studies (JCSTS, formerly known as Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary). The four mentors who will guide our third class of emerging preachers bring years of experience and wisdom from preaching and pastoring across the Synod.  Rev. Dr. Kymberley Clemons-Jones Rev. Dr. Kymberl

In the Spring of 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany as he recognized that God was calling him to serve his home country as it suffered under the rapid rise of the Nazi Regime. By the Fall of that year, he was the head of a newly founded underground seminary – the famous Finkenwalde Seminary – founded to train pastors and preachers who had little or no previous theological education to serve in the Confessing Church (the minority of the German Church that was resist

Joseph D. Small, Proclaiming the Great Ends of the Church (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2010)  I am writing this newsletter on Shrove Tuesday, the eve before the beginning of Lent. Like many of us who are involved in the life of the church, I have been thinking about how to observe Lent – and like many a Presbyterian this means that I have been thinking about what to read for a Lent Devotional. I have a stack of half-read, withmore than one unread (!), Lent devotionals from year

We have been very busy this new year!   As of mid-January, all of our first cycle cohorts (the 2024-2025 class) have had their final retreat and have completed the program. I am delighted to report that we had a near 100% “graduation” rate, with all but one person from the first cycle completing the program. The one who did not complete it dropped out to attend seminary full time; we consider that a success! Many from the first cycle are already serving as pulpit supply preac

H appy New Year! As we begin a new liturgical year and enter into the Advent season, we are excited to share with you that the Synod will once again produce a pre-recorded post-Christmas virtual worship service for use on the Sunday following Christmas (Dec 28th).   We offer this service because we know that the Sunday after Christmas is one of the more difficult times to find pulpit supply. Our hard-working and diligent pastors, preachers, musicians, liturgists and the many

There are two resources I wish to draw your attention to this quarter:   First, one of the books that CGPI participants read, and which they have reported great enthusiasm for is Karoline Lewis’s A Lay Preachers’ Guide: How to Craft a Faithful Sermon. This book is part of the Working Preacher Book Series published by Fortress Press and Luther Seminary’s Working Preacher. Many of the other books in this series would be of great benefit for not only or CGPI preachers but other

with the CPGI Director, Dr. Matt Aragon Bruce While recruiting for the CGPI program, one of the comments I often hear from those who have been recommended to the program is that they can’t imagine themselves as a preacher. I don’t know how many times I have heard some version of, “I don’t know enough,” “I’m not a good speaker,” or “I’m not holy enough” – i.e., some form of the excuse that I am not in the same category as a pastor and thus am not qualified to preach. Yet, at t

This quarter, our inaugural group of CGPI participants will complete their program. All four cohorts will have in-person meetings sometime between November and January (two have already meet as I write this) as their final official time together. They will spend time reading and thinking about the preaching life as a type of pilgrimage wherein the preacher listens to the voice of God speaking both in the Scriptures and in the life of the Church and bringing what they hear bac

Mary Llyod-Seals shares her experiences in CGPI The Synod Assembly was held at the end of October and, as part of the CGPI report to the Synod commissioners, we invited two of our participants – Mary Lloyd-Seals (Moderator of the Presbytery of Detroit and member of Grosse Pointe Memorial in Detroit) and Sean Eaton (member of Westminster Presbyterian in Ann Arbor). Mary and Sean shared their experiences in the CGPI to the delight and encouragement to the Synod commissioners an

We are busy with a host of matters this month!   The bittersweet news is that our inaugural group of participants are nearing the end of...

This month I wanted to highlight some of our participants and their experience at the second annual Cultivating the Gift of Preaching...

We are entering our second month since the second annual Alma Preaching Conference and our participants are hard at work developing their...

What’s happening is that we are coming down from the spiritual mountain that was the second annual Alma Preaching Conference!   From June...

As I write this, we are a mere two weeks away from the Second Annual Alma College Preaching Conference! When we gather together in Alma,...

What’s Happening with Cultivating the Gift of Preaching Initiative (CGPI)?   We are in full swing getting ready to welcome a new group of...

Presently, the bulk of our attention is focused on recruiting new participants and planning the 2nd Annual Alma College Preaching...

Siblings in Christ, This month, the Rev. Christina Jensen, one of our Cultivating the Gift of Preaching Initiative (CGPI) mentors and...

I am so pleased to share this from our African diaspora group.  It was a fantastic time for us to experience the power of the Holy Spirit...