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