The first hybrid Festival of Homiletics has begun!
Monday afternoon and evening we registered in person:
Or settled into our remote locations for the Festival online:
During the online Working Preacher Books podcast discussion, participants resonated with Real People, Real Faith author Cindy Halvorson’s encouragement to enter Biblical stories from the perspective of supporting characters, and preaching into the gaps.
Opening Worship
For worship, we were invited into Trinity UMC with the story of Clara Brown, an African-American church woman and ancestor in the faith in that place.
“There Is a Balm in Gilead” sung and played by Same Cloth – Joslyn Ford-Keel and Soloman Chapman – was balm, indeed.
In a sermon entitled “Sackcloth and Ashes: An Elegy for a Broken Family,” Otis Moss III lamented that we preachers were not trained to hold “horror” in one hand and “the holy” in the other. That every Tamar has been left on the cutting room floor.
“Forgive us for loving protocols over humanity” – Otis Moss III
Lecture
Roberts Wicks addressed post-traumatic growth, understanding who we are because of the serious stress we have survived. The seeds of compassion and the seeds of burnout are the same seeds.
“Life is not acute; it’s chronic.” – Robert Wicks
We need friends and alone time. May you find both this week as part of #Homiletics2022
