Paula Gooder – Bio
The Bible, Imagination and Storytelling
One of Jesus’ favorite methods of teaching was storytelling. He used parables of many different kinds to bring to life all sorts of ideas and questions. In this seminar we will explore the power of storytelling and the Bible— looking both at Jesus’ parables and at how we can use storytelling today both to understand the Bible better but also to communicate its message.
Jason Byassee – Bio
Preaching in the Future Perfect Tense
When we write or preach, we usually speak of Jesus in the past tense, but Jesus isn’t just a long ago figure far, far away. His words and deeds are not just set down for the historical record. He is raised, alive, and going ahead of us. He did not just say and do certain things once upon a time. He still does them, present-tense. And he dreams about a future-perfect tense, when the nations will have been healed, by his work and word first, not ours. In this seminar we will imagine the possibilities, and risks, of preaching of Jesus in the future perfect tense—whether it can take the pressure off of us, in our work, and place it upon much more capable shoulders.
Jeff Crittenden – Bio
Pilgrimage Preaching
With the rise of people engaging in pilgrimages throughout the world, Jeff will explore Greek, Roman and Jewish expressions of pilgrimage juxtaposed with the early churches’ practice of pilgrimage. A Homiletic of Pilgrimage, ancient and today, will then be explored.
Laura de Jong – Bio
Body and Soul: Enacting the Gospel at a Christian Funeral
The hope of new life and new creation is professed nowhere so much as at a funeral. Over the last few decades, however, funerals have increasingly come to be seen primarily as a means of grief management and comfort for the bereaved, and less about a community of faith rehearsing the drama of the gospel story of life out of death. In this workshop we will explore how not only our preaching, but also the rituals of the funeral liturgy, can help the worshipping community declare the hope of the resurrection for the deceased in such a way that the living are called into a deeper eschatological hope.
Michael Knowles – Bio
The Spirituality of Preaching
In contrast to strategies that emphasize rhetoric and the responsibilities of the speaker, this workshop will invite participants to consider the role of God in preaching. Focusing on Paul’s cruciform vision of Christian ministry, we will explore spiritual identity as an essential feature of the homiletical task and reflect together on ways of listening for the voice of God in prayer, Scripture, and the world around us.
R.H. Thomson – Bio
Searching for our Authentic Voice
Public speaking is in many ways a private experience―the speaker must experience and live into what is said. R. H. Thomson will attempt to describe the actor’s tools for speaking, not loudly but authentically. The pursuit to find moments when mind, emotion, spirit and body are united through the words we speak, is lifelong. Poems will provide the gymnasium for the workshop’s word work.
Maximum: 12 participants