What is Happening with Cultivating the Gift of Preaching?

Happy 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 others who plan and lead worship services may need a time away to be with family or a much needed break after the busy Advent and Christmas season. The service will be available on the Synod’s website along with a downloadable bulletin by December 18th. The service may be viewed by congregations gathered together on Sunday, December 28th or by individuals/families in their homes.

This year the worship service will showcase participants from the Cultivating the Gift of Preaching Initiative (some of whom have just completed the program this month!), CREs (Certified Ruling Elders), and other leaders from the Synod. We are most excited to highlight the talents of these leaders who serve congregations across the Synod and pray that it will be a blessing to those who view it and those who serve by participating in it.

As we await the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ this Advent, I invite us all to contemplate these words of Howard Thurman: “May the sounds of Advent stir a longing in your people, O God. Come again to set us free from the dullness of routine and the poverty of our imaginations. Break the patterns which bind us to small commitments and to the stale answers we have given to questions of no importance. Let the Advent trumpet blow, let the walls of our defenses crumble, and make a place in our lives for the freshness of your love, well-lived in the Spirit, and still given to all who know their need and dare receive it. Amen”

Matt Aragon Bruce, Ph.D.

Director, Cultivating the Gift of Preaching Initiative

matt@synodofthecovenant.org