I became a preacher quite begrudgingly. Not for what I imagine are the usual reasons, though. I’m not afraid to speak in front of people. I had a former career as a singer and musical theater performer. I’m plenty happy to step into the spotlight, so to speak. I’m an extrovert. I think quickly on my feet. I’ve got no problem keeping a conversation going. All these things would make it seem, I suppose, that I would be a natural preacher—perhaps even longing to be in the pulpit. That was never the case.
Performing on a stage is one thing. Preaching from a pulpit is something entirely different. The weight and burden of being a voice for God, the burden of giving voice to the gospel, is one I never wanted to bear. It’s still a weight that I carry somewhat heavily every time I stand to preach. I’ve come to understand that it is a gift and a privilege to preach, and I do so now with a significant amount of joy, but it will never not be a burden.
The rub for me is primarily in the prophetic sense of preaching. Must every preacher be sage, priest, and prophet?1 I take some issue with each of those archetypes, actually. A preacher as sage should not mean resident expert with all the answers but rather a wise asker of questions and facilitator of conversation. A preacher as priest does not have some magical clergy powers or direct hotline to God that isn’t also available to each of our listeners, but we do hold the lives of our people in a pastoral way that helps us experience the Word through their joys and challenges. What, then, does it look like to be a preacher as prophet?
I don’t believe every preacher is called to be a prophet in the same sense as Elijah, Elisha, Micah, or Malachi. Some certainly are, and I have been deeply impacted by prophets in my own life who seem to hear the voice of God as a clarion call, carrying the authority of that voice into their message—whether from the pulpit, at the watercooler, or across the kitchen table. God does not speak to me that way, or at least I do not hear God in that way, but I recognize the authenticity of the message as it is spoken through these contemporary prophets I know as friends and partners
in ministry.
Biblical prophets spoke truth to power, confronted idolatrous practices, declared the work of God to be a work of justice in which we must participate. Many of their sermons were confrontational: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me,” says the Lord through Amos (5:21–24). “How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—but now murderers!” declares the Lord through Isaiah (1:21).
As preachers today become more convinced of the need to speak truth to power as an act of justice, it may be these types of prophetic confrontations that are most on our mind. But this would not be true to the full voice of the prophets in Scripture. A significant portion of prophetic proclamation is good news. “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” declares Zephaniah, “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies” (3:14–15). Pastoral comfort and hope are delivered through prophets such as Jeremiah, offering the Lord’s assurance, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you” (29:11). Biblical prophets were also sage-like. In 2 Samuel 12, for example, Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s lamb wisely leads David to recognize his iniquity. And they were priestly—Jeremiah weeps for Jerusalem, Daniel is a prayer warrior on behalf of Israel, Moses returns to the Lord again and again to advocate for the people.
All of this leads me to wonder if the role of preacher as prophet, for most of us, is perhaps something more akin to the role of witness. We are witnesses who disrupt the complacency that makes us fail to smell the stench of our idolatry and unrighteousness, as well as the complacency that makes us fail to rejoice in the provision and deliverance of a God who loves us.
The Prophet as Witness
In Thomas Long’s book The Witness of Preaching, he explains, “The verb ‘to witness’ has two main meanings: to see and to tell.” To be a witness, you must first “behold” something; you must be “present and active as an observer.” You must “take something in.” But it doesn’t stop there, because a witness also has to “give something out.” What they saw they now have to say. What they perceived, they will testify.2
Every biblical prophet receives a specific message from God and then speaks it to the people. From Moses to Isaiah to Jesus, it’s always the same—they see and they tell. You could say that the role of the sage is also a witness—to learn and then teach. Even the role of a priest is a witness—to take in the experience of the people and then share God’s presence in that experience. The role of prophet as witness carries a more peculiar burden, though. The prophet beholds a message directly from God that is meant specifically for their people, the particular community to whom God has called them to speak.
The call to preach bears the responsibility of being a faithful witness, seeking the truth that may be a disruption to what we thought we already knew. We go to the text on behalf of the people, praying that we might behold a message from God, and then we have to testify. This sounds to me an awful lot like the work of a prophet.
To preach as a prophet is to embody the Word, as it lives and breathes among God’s people now, drawing us into a community of faith that began in the distant past and pointing us toward an eschatological future rooted in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a prophetic witness.
As prophetic witnesses, each of us is being asked to speak the truth as it appears uniquely to us, as we hold in our hearts the needs of a particular community. What is the truth I perceive God to be speaking in Scripture and in the world, and that most needs to be heard at this time, among these people? Each of us sees truth in a different way, but collectively—and only collectively—the fullness of God’s truth can be revealed. We need the disruption of having to refocus our lens to see what that witness over there sees, so that we end up seeing what is going on right here more truthfully. That’s why it takes a multitude of voices to fulfill this call to preaching, and that’s why I believe preachers are called to be part of a prophetic community. One preacher cannot seek to speak for all. We are all members of the body of Christ, which allows us the gift of seeing and hearing through a diversity of voices, revealing how God’s grace and presence are moving among us in extraordinary ways.
Ultimately, this is how the preacher as prophet is equipped to preach the gospel of justice. We open ourselves to continually receive the witness of others so that we can more faithfully, more prophetically, be a witness to others. This means confronting our own relationships with power and privilege. It means learning to stand inside pain, rather than walling ourselves off from it. It means learning to discern the good news of Christ’s redeeming work in the world in the most unexpected places.
The Prophetic Witness Is Imaginative
In Walter Brueggemann’s seminal book The Prophetic Imagination, he argues that the Christian tradition, “having been co-opted by the king,” has fallen into a collective state of “numbness,” tending toward the false smiles and insincere platitudes of “crossless good news and a future well-being without a present anguish.” The prophetic imagination has the power “to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.”3 The God of endings does not deny the stench of death, but has conquered it. The prophetic ministry of Jesus did not gloss over human pain and suffering but endured it. The power of the Holy Spirit does not remove the fear of terror or injustice but comforts us within it. Siloed preaching that fails to take note of the disruptive witness from culture—the lament of artists, the fear in the marketplace, the anger of politics—will fail to cut through the numbness. It will fail to preach the gospel of justice. It will fail to proclaim truly good news.
Much of my work with preachers at Fuller Seminary is situated with the Brehm Center, which is dedicated to integrating worship, theology, and the arts for the renewal of church and culture. As a musician myself, my own approach to preaching is very much aligned with this integration, and I began to wonder if engagement with the arts might help other preachers as well—especially those with no self-described artistic abilities. What is it about the way artists move in the world that impacts our ability to witness in unique ways?
The product that an artist creates may be the medium through which they “testify,” but the way in which they “see” has much more to do with the process than with the product. Whatever the discipline—visual art, music, dance, photography, filmmaking, culinary arts, poetry, literature—an artist must learn certain fundamental practices of “making,” which they continually rehearse, refine, build upon, and fight against. As they do so, they learn how to see, how to hear, how to taste, how to feel, and eventually how to express all of that seeing and feeling into what we call art. For some, this process is mainly about learning a technique. For me, it is a spiritual discipline.
Through the process of experimenting with, and especially struggling with, rudimentary art-making practices, we have the opportunity to engage in a form of embodied spiritual contemplation that facilitates an imaginative space for embracing the invitation to be co-creators with God. You do not have to be an artist to accept this invitation! Anyone can learn to see and hear and feel in new ways by simply submitting to a repeated creative practice that expands the imagination. More specifically, when preachers submit to such a practice, it has the potential to stimulate a prophetic ministry of creativity, curiosity, and courage.4
I have come to believe that these 3 C’s are vital to a flourishing ministry at the convergence of worship, preaching, and justice, where the prophetic call to preachers requires curiosity toward what God is already doing in their community, creativity to engage new approaches to living that mission through a life of worship inside and outside the sanctuary, and courage to proclaim this disruptive, prophetic witness from the pulpit.
Curiosity
An instinct of curiosity inspires people in power to ask more questions and issue fewer dictums. Probing more deeply into the anxieties and hopes of a community, for example, can open up new avenues of dialogue and influence the manner in which decisions are made, not to mention the nature of the decisions themselves. This is itself an act of justice, as it is an opportunity to redistribute power away from a privileged few and into the hands of the full community.
Furthermore, curiosity engages a sense of empathy that aids in moving people through the discomfort of change. This sense of curious empathy is especially critical in the work of justice, where conflict often leads to polarizing ideologies that attempt to simplify one another’s narratives through assumption and stereotyping rather than wading into the deeper complexities of the issue. Empathetic curiosity leads not only to asking more questions but also to asking better questions: What is a personal experience that may be impacting your feelings about this? What is most mystifying to you about people who hold this view? What would you like to know about them? What do you want them to know about you?5
Preaching from this place of empathetic curiosity can particularly help to expose biases within a church community and begin to remove barriers that prevent shared visioning and decision-making in a church’s collective witness.
Creativity
God has called us to be agents of a changing world, a yet-unforeseen new creation, and yet we are not the ones responsible for the final reality. Creativity, then, must be understood as a joint effort between God and God’s people in which we are to be more concerned with the journey than the destination. This means making space, giving time, and fostering an environment of learning, failure, and practice. Embracing creativity is not about producing something new or beautiful, but rather immersing yourself in a process of allowing curiosity to lead into exploration.
As a preacher grows in their personal expression of creativity, their imagination will likely become more and more generative. This may begin from the essentially narcissistic place of experiencing God through a very personal creative lens, but the more our creativity grows, the more we become aware of the dominant symbols and metaphors emanating from our own aesthetic preferences. From here, a church leader is better equipped to critically assess the dominant symbols and metaphors within their worship space.
Does the imagery used in bulletin covers, worship slides, banners, and church websites reflect a vibrant imagination for the past, present, and future of God’s kingdom? Do the hymns, praise songs, and other musical offerings not merely reflect the taste or preference of dominant voices in the community but also draw worshipers into the history of our faith and the future of a mission both local and global? Do sermon illustrations and references reflect a broad range of voices and interests rather than tending toward particular affinities?
Moving toward an emphatic “yes” to each of these questions is a big step toward creative leadership that is rooted in the gospel of justice.
Courage
Courage is, arguably, an important characteristic for any type of leader, but it is particularly vital to a preacher seeking to be a prophetic witness. It is one thing to develop one’s own ability to see and sit with uncomfortable truth, but it is quite another to give voice to it and to call others to see and sit with it. Strengthening muscles of curiosity and creativity helps foster courage to step outside our comfort zones and engage with others as an exercise of vulnerability.
The church is meant to be an institution where this type of courageous, curious, creative engagement is an ongoing part of formation and discipleship, but all too often, churches (and perhaps especially church leadership) are more invested in promoting their communities as “safe” or “peaceful” or an “escape” from the affront of the outside world. This is the trap of numbness called out by Brueggemann. It takes courage to facilitate a disruption that stirs up the prophetic imagination of a community more inclined toward stagnant pew sitting and silencing of critical voices than toward loving God and neighbor according to the gospel of justice.
Conclusion
Prophets are witnesses to truth—the truth of humanity’s preference for chasing the power of empire rather than the power of grace, and the truth of God’s persistent love and mercy that offers the greater freedom. Jesus prophesied to these dual truths in the Sermon on the Mount, demonstrating the good news of blessings that rest on those who are fortified by the alternative power of the kingdom of God. The preacher’s burden is to be a prophetic witness to this gospel of justice, and especially to its particular call to each particular community that is listening to our particular voice.
No matter the congregation, God has already provided the blessings needed for each community to live out its particular mission in God’s kingdom. This is a call, in one form or another, to do justice by loving God and neighbor more than self and empire. The prophetic witness must be a disruption to the numbness of stagnant pew sitting that may suggest otherwise. Disruption is uncomfortable. We protect ourselves by refusing to receive the disruption, pushing away the discomfort. Preaching as a prophetic witness helps point to the discomfort, and instead of shutting it down, asking “How might God be speaking to us if we keep listening?”
Jennifer Ackerman is assistant professor of preaching and director of Brehm Preaching–A Lloyd John Ogilvie Initiative. She holds an MDiv and a PhD in Theology and Culture from Fuller and is a member of the Academy of Homiletics, the American Academy of Religion, the North American Academy of Liturgy, and the Presbytery of the Cascades. Dr. Ackerman has nearly 30 years of experience facilitating the worship and preaching efforts of churches in multiple denominations across the US, and as an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she serves as the seminary’s liaison to the denomination.
I became a preacher quite begrudgingly. Not for what I imagine are the usual reasons, though. I’m not afraid to speak in front of people. I had a former career as a singer and musical theater performer. I’m plenty happy to step into the spotlight, so to speak. I’m an extrovert. I think quickly on my feet. I’ve got no problem keeping a conversation going. All these things would make it seem, I suppose, that I would be a natural preacher—perhaps even longing to be in the pulpit. That was never the case.
Performing on a stage is one thing. Preaching from a pulpit is something entirely different. The weight and burden of being a voice for God, the burden of giving voice to the gospel, is one I never wanted to bear. It’s still a weight that I carry somewhat heavily every time I stand to preach. I’ve come to understand that it is a gift and a privilege to preach, and I do so now with a significant amount of joy, but it will never not be a burden.
The rub for me is primarily in the prophetic sense of preaching. Must every preacher be sage, priest, and prophet?1 I take some issue with each of those archetypes, actually. A preacher as sage should not mean resident expert with all the answers but rather a wise asker of questions and facilitator of conversation. A preacher as priest does not have some magical clergy powers or direct hotline to God that isn’t also available to each of our listeners, but we do hold the lives of our people in a pastoral way that helps us experience the Word through their joys and challenges. What, then, does it look like to be a preacher as prophet?
I don’t believe every preacher is called to be a prophet in the same sense as Elijah, Elisha, Micah, or Malachi. Some certainly are, and I have been deeply impacted by prophets in my own life who seem to hear the voice of God as a clarion call, carrying the authority of that voice into their message—whether from the pulpit, at the watercooler, or across the kitchen table. God does not speak to me that way, or at least I do not hear God in that way, but I recognize the authenticity of the message as it is spoken through these contemporary prophets I know as friends and partners
in ministry.
Biblical prophets spoke truth to power, confronted idolatrous practices, declared the work of God to be a work of justice in which we must participate. Many of their sermons were confrontational: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me,” says the Lord through Amos (5:21–24). “How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—but now murderers!” declares the Lord through Isaiah (1:21).
As preachers today become more convinced of the need to speak truth to power as an act of justice, it may be these types of prophetic confrontations that are most on our mind. But this would not be true to the full voice of the prophets in Scripture. A significant portion of prophetic proclamation is good news. “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” declares Zephaniah, “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies” (3:14–15). Pastoral comfort and hope are delivered through prophets such as Jeremiah, offering the Lord’s assurance, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you” (29:11). Biblical prophets were also sage-like. In 2 Samuel 12, for example, Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s lamb wisely leads David to recognize his iniquity. And they were priestly—Jeremiah weeps for Jerusalem, Daniel is a prayer warrior on behalf of Israel, Moses returns to the Lord again and again to advocate for the people.
All of this leads me to wonder if the role of preacher as prophet, for most of us, is perhaps something more akin to the role of witness. We are witnesses who disrupt the complacency that makes us fail to smell the stench of our idolatry and unrighteousness, as well as the complacency that makes us fail to rejoice in the provision and deliverance of a God who loves us.
The Prophet as Witness
In Thomas Long’s book The Witness of Preaching, he explains, “The verb ‘to witness’ has two main meanings: to see and to tell.” To be a witness, you must first “behold” something; you must be “present and active as an observer.” You must “take something in.” But it doesn’t stop there, because a witness also has to “give something out.” What they saw they now have to say. What they perceived, they will testify.2
Every biblical prophet receives a specific message from God and then speaks it to the people. From Moses to Isaiah to Jesus, it’s always the same—they see and they tell. You could say that the role of the sage is also a witness—to learn and then teach. Even the role of a priest is a witness—to take in the experience of the people and then share God’s presence in that experience. The role of prophet as witness carries a more peculiar burden, though. The prophet beholds a message directly from God that is meant specifically for their people, the particular community to whom God has called them to speak.
The call to preach bears the responsibility of being a faithful witness, seeking the truth that may be a disruption to what we thought we already knew. We go to the text on behalf of the people, praying that we might behold a message from God, and then we have to testify. This sounds to me an awful lot like the work of a prophet.
To preach as a prophet is to embody the Word, as it lives and breathes among God’s people now, drawing us into a community of faith that began in the distant past and pointing us toward an eschatological future rooted in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a prophetic witness.
As prophetic witnesses, each of us is being asked to speak the truth as it appears uniquely to us, as we hold in our hearts the needs of a particular community. What is the truth I perceive God to be speaking in Scripture and in the world, and that most needs to be heard at this time, among these people? Each of us sees truth in a different way, but collectively—and only collectively—the fullness of God’s truth can be revealed. We need the disruption of having to refocus our lens to see what that witness over there sees, so that we end up seeing what is going on right here more truthfully. That’s why it takes a multitude of voices to fulfill this call to preaching, and that’s why I believe preachers are called to be part of a prophetic community. One preacher cannot seek to speak for all. We are all members of the body of Christ, which allows us the gift of seeing and hearing through a diversity of voices, revealing how God’s grace and presence are moving among us in extraordinary ways.
Ultimately, this is how the preacher as prophet is equipped to preach the gospel of justice. We open ourselves to continually receive the witness of others so that we can more faithfully, more prophetically, be a witness to others. This means confronting our own relationships with power and privilege. It means learning to stand inside pain, rather than walling ourselves off from it. It means learning to discern the good news of Christ’s redeeming work in the world in the most unexpected places.
The Prophetic Witness Is Imaginative
In Walter Brueggemann’s seminal book The Prophetic Imagination, he argues that the Christian tradition, “having been co-opted by the king,” has fallen into a collective state of “numbness,” tending toward the false smiles and insincere platitudes of “crossless good news and a future well-being without a present anguish.” The prophetic imagination has the power “to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.”3 The God of endings does not deny the stench of death, but has conquered it. The prophetic ministry of Jesus did not gloss over human pain and suffering but endured it. The power of the Holy Spirit does not remove the fear of terror or injustice but comforts us within it. Siloed preaching that fails to take note of the disruptive witness from culture—the lament of artists, the fear in the marketplace, the anger of politics—will fail to cut through the numbness. It will fail to preach the gospel of justice. It will fail to proclaim truly good news.
Much of my work with preachers at Fuller Seminary is situated with the Brehm Center, which is dedicated to integrating worship, theology, and the arts for the renewal of church and culture. As a musician myself, my own approach to preaching is very much aligned with this integration, and I began to wonder if engagement with the arts might help other preachers as well—especially those with no self-described artistic abilities. What is it about the way artists move in the world that impacts our ability to witness in unique ways?
The product that an artist creates may be the medium through which they “testify,” but the way in which they “see” has much more to do with the process than with the product. Whatever the discipline—visual art, music, dance, photography, filmmaking, culinary arts, poetry, literature—an artist must learn certain fundamental practices of “making,” which they continually rehearse, refine, build upon, and fight against. As they do so, they learn how to see, how to hear, how to taste, how to feel, and eventually how to express all of that seeing and feeling into what we call art. For some, this process is mainly about learning a technique. For me, it is a spiritual discipline.
Through the process of experimenting with, and especially struggling with, rudimentary art-making practices, we have the opportunity to engage in a form of embodied spiritual contemplation that facilitates an imaginative space for embracing the invitation to be co-creators with God. You do not have to be an artist to accept this invitation! Anyone can learn to see and hear and feel in new ways by simply submitting to a repeated creative practice that expands the imagination. More specifically, when preachers submit to such a practice, it has the potential to stimulate a prophetic ministry of creativity, curiosity, and courage.4
I have come to believe that these 3 C’s are vital to a flourishing ministry at the convergence of worship, preaching, and justice, where the prophetic call to preachers requires curiosity toward what God is already doing in their community, creativity to engage new approaches to living that mission through a life of worship inside and outside the sanctuary, and courage to proclaim this disruptive, prophetic witness from the pulpit.
Curiosity
An instinct of curiosity inspires people in power to ask more questions and issue fewer dictums. Probing more deeply into the anxieties and hopes of a community, for example, can open up new avenues of dialogue and influence the manner in which decisions are made, not to mention the nature of the decisions themselves. This is itself an act of justice, as it is an opportunity to redistribute power away from a privileged few and into the hands of the full community.
Furthermore, curiosity engages a sense of empathy that aids in moving people through the discomfort of change. This sense of curious empathy is especially critical in the work of justice, where conflict often leads to polarizing ideologies that attempt to simplify one another’s narratives through assumption and stereotyping rather than wading into the deeper complexities of the issue. Empathetic curiosity leads not only to asking more questions but also to asking better questions: What is a personal experience that may be impacting your feelings about this? What is most mystifying to you about people who hold this view? What would you like to know about them? What do you want them to know about you?5
Preaching from this place of empathetic curiosity can particularly help to expose biases within a church community and begin to remove barriers that prevent shared visioning and decision-making in a church’s collective witness.
Creativity
God has called us to be agents of a changing world, a yet-unforeseen new creation, and yet we are not the ones responsible for the final reality. Creativity, then, must be understood as a joint effort between God and God’s people in which we are to be more concerned with the journey than the destination. This means making space, giving time, and fostering an environment of learning, failure, and practice. Embracing creativity is not about producing something new or beautiful, but rather immersing yourself in a process of allowing curiosity to lead into exploration.
As a preacher grows in their personal expression of creativity, their imagination will likely become more and more generative. This may begin from the essentially narcissistic place of experiencing God through a very personal creative lens, but the more our creativity grows, the more we become aware of the dominant symbols and metaphors emanating from our own aesthetic preferences. From here, a church leader is better equipped to critically assess the dominant symbols and metaphors within their worship space.
Does the imagery used in bulletin covers, worship slides, banners, and church websites reflect a vibrant imagination for the past, present, and future of God’s kingdom? Do the hymns, praise songs, and other musical offerings not merely reflect the taste or preference of dominant voices in the community but also draw worshipers into the history of our faith and the future of a mission both local and global? Do sermon illustrations and references reflect a broad range of voices and interests rather than tending toward particular affinities?
Moving toward an emphatic “yes” to each of these questions is a big step toward creative leadership that is rooted in the gospel of justice.
Courage
Courage is, arguably, an important characteristic for any type of leader, but it is particularly vital to a preacher seeking to be a prophetic witness. It is one thing to develop one’s own ability to see and sit with uncomfortable truth, but it is quite another to give voice to it and to call others to see and sit with it. Strengthening muscles of curiosity and creativity helps foster courage to step outside our comfort zones and engage with others as an exercise of vulnerability.
The church is meant to be an institution where this type of courageous, curious, creative engagement is an ongoing part of formation and discipleship, but all too often, churches (and perhaps especially church leadership) are more invested in promoting their communities as “safe” or “peaceful” or an “escape” from the affront of the outside world. This is the trap of numbness called out by Brueggemann. It takes courage to facilitate a disruption that stirs up the prophetic imagination of a community more inclined toward stagnant pew sitting and silencing of critical voices than toward loving God and neighbor according to the gospel of justice.
Conclusion
Prophets are witnesses to truth—the truth of humanity’s preference for chasing the power of empire rather than the power of grace, and the truth of God’s persistent love and mercy that offers the greater freedom. Jesus prophesied to these dual truths in the Sermon on the Mount, demonstrating the good news of blessings that rest on those who are fortified by the alternative power of the kingdom of God. The preacher’s burden is to be a prophetic witness to this gospel of justice, and especially to its particular call to each particular community that is listening to our particular voice.
No matter the congregation, God has already provided the blessings needed for each community to live out its particular mission in God’s kingdom. This is a call, in one form or another, to do justice by loving God and neighbor more than self and empire. The prophetic witness must be a disruption to the numbness of stagnant pew sitting that may suggest otherwise. Disruption is uncomfortable. We protect ourselves by refusing to receive the disruption, pushing away the discomfort. Preaching as a prophetic witness helps point to the discomfort, and instead of shutting it down, asking “How might God be speaking to us if we keep listening?”
Jennifer Ackerman is assistant professor of preaching and director of Brehm Preaching–A Lloyd John Ogilvie Initiative. She holds an MDiv and a PhD in Theology and Culture from Fuller and is a member of the Academy of Homiletics, the American Academy of Religion, the North American Academy of Liturgy, and the Presbytery of the Cascades. Dr. Ackerman has nearly 30 years of experience facilitating the worship and preaching efforts of churches in multiple denominations across the US, and as an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she serves as the seminary’s liaison to the denomination.
Oscar García-Johnson, professor of theology and Latino/a studies, discusses some ways theological education must be reshaped and transformed as we move into the future.
