The Rev. Susan Sparks is a trial lawyer turned standup comedian and Senior Pastor of the historic Madison Avenue Baptist Church in NYC. Installed in 2007, she is the 15th Senior Minister of MABC and the first woman in its 175-year history. A North Carolina native, Susan received her B.A. at the University of North Carolina, a law degree from Wake Forest University, and her Master of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
An award-winning nationally syndicated columnist and best-selling author of five books, Susan is also a nationally known speaker (including TEDx), preacher, and professional comedian touring nationally with a Rabbi and a Muslim in the Laugh in Peace Comedy Tour. Her work with humour, healing, and spirituality has been featured in O (The Oprah) Magazine, the New Y ork Times, and on such networks as ABC, CNN, and CBS. For more information, check out SusanSparks.com.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Andrew Jefferson serves as the John Gladstone Chair of Preaching and the Dean of Sarah Daley Nickerson Chapel at Acadia Divinity College at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Mark has served churches in both Virginia and Georgia and more recently served on the faculty of Virginia Theological Seminary where he developed innovative courses in prophetic proclamation, homiletics, and leadership formation. His work explores the confluence of race, class, technology, contemporary cultural expressions and preaching. His forthcoming book, I, Too, Preach America: Race, Class and the Future of Christian Proclamation (Wipf & Stock, 2025) reexamines Black preaching through the perspectives of the Hip-Hop emcee and the folk preacher. His next project, The Algorithm and the Anointing: Proclamation at the edge of Surveillance and Spirit investigates the theological ramifications of preaching in an era dominated by digital algorithms.
Dr. Jefferson has preached around the globe – in South Africa, Israel, the Caribbean, and throughout the United States. He is also a member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College. Whether in pulpits, classrooms, or digital platforms, Dr. Jefferson brings a theologically rigorous and culturally resonant vision for Gospel witness.
The Rev. Dr. Sarah Han is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Director of the Tyndale Centre for Pastoral Imagination at Tyndale University Seminary and brings practical ministry experience as an ordained minister and theological expertise as an academic. Dr. Han considers herself to be “third culture” Canadian-Korean-Chinese and her formative theology was shaped on the mission field abroad. She has provided leadership in the Canadian immigrant church context for over a decade and has diverse experience in the Canadian public and private sectors. Dr. Han’s vocational commitment and theological passion are to critically observe and reflect on how ecclesiology shapes and informs missiology, and her research focuses on an intercultural, intergenerational, missional ecclesiology for Canada.
The Rev. Scott E. Hoezee is an ordained Pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. From 1993-2005 he was the Minister of Preaching and Administration at Calvin CRC in Grand Rapids, MI. In the spring of 2005 Scott accepted the Seminary’s offer to become the first Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching. He has also been a member of the Pastor-Theologian Program sponsored by the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was pastor-in-residence in the fall of 2000. From 2001-2011 Scott served on the editorial board of Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought and was co-editor of that journal from 2005-2011.
Rev. Hoezee is the author of several books including The Riddle of Grace (1996), Flourishing in the Land (1996), Remember Creation (1998), Speaking as One: A Look at the Ecumenical Creeds (1997), Speaking of Comfort: A Look at the Heidelberg Catechism (1998), Proclaim the Wonder: Preaching Science on Sunday (2003), Grace Through Every Generation (2007), Actuality: Real Life Stories for Sermons That Matter (2014), and Why We Listen to Sermons (2018).
The Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee is the senior minister of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, Ontario. He previously served as the professor of Homiletics and Biblical Hermeneutics at the Vancouver School of Theology. His primary vocation is to reinvigorate today’s church with the best of ancient and contemporary wisdom for creatively faithful living.
Jason is the author or editor of a number of books, including, most recently, Northern Lights: Resurrecting Church in the North of England, with Ross Lockhart, Better than Brunch: Missional Churches in Cascadia (both with Cascade) and Surprised by Jesus Again (Eerdmans).
He was previously senior pastor of Boone United Methodist Church in Boone, North Carolina. He has also served as pastor of a small, rural congregation in NC, as interim preacher at First Baptist Vancouver, and as preacher to the English-speaking congregation at Chinese Presbyterian in Vancouver. He is married to Jaylynn and together they have three boys.
The Rev. Dr. Emily Bisset has been the minister of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Toronto for 13 years, where Calvin shares in ecumenical shared ministry with Deer Park United Church. Emily has her Th.D. in Homiletics from Knox College/The University of Toronto. She was raised and ordained in the PC(USA). Emily was received into The Presbyterian Church in Canada in 2007 and became a Canadian citizen in December 2020. Emily has been involved in the life of The Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC) in a variety of ways including preaching and coordinating worship for the General Assembly, National Women’s Gatherings, and national Stewardship conferences. Emily has written curriculum and worship liturgy for the PCC on issues such as what it means to be the church in today’s society, human sexuality, and preaching/sacraments. She has led congregational renewal retreats and women’s gatherings for local and regional groups. She is an adjunct faculty member at Knox College, where she teaches a course in advanced preaching. She is married to another Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Alex Bisset, and is mom to a wonderful teenager.
