Preaching during Crisis: Igniting Pastoral Imagination in the Face of Fatigue, Injustice and Collective Trauma

Preaching during Crisis: Igniting Pastoral Imagination in the Face of Fatigue, Injustice and Collective Trauma

Co-presented by Odyssey Impact and Day1.org

Additional partners include: Alban at Duke Divinity School and The Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary

Join us for a critical conversation with preaching colleagues from across the U.S. whose wide-ranging experiences in responding to these unprecedented and compounding crises are inspiring healing, transformation and hope.

As preachers look ahead to creating sermons in 2020, the national context of interrelated crises is impossible to ignore: pandemic, racial injustice, and economic fallout, and escalating pastoral care needs. What does this mean for the task of preaching? Which theological frames and homiletical strategies do we consider, as the backdrop for many in the “pews” includes trauma, fatigue, depression, anxiety, grief, despair? How do we pair our need for healing from the collective trauma of the pandemic, with the urgent opportunity to face and address systemic racial injustice in America?

Panelists:

Rev. Dr. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., Senior Pastor Emeritus of the Riverside Church (NYC), Founder of the Healing of the Nations Foundation, North Carolina

Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, Ph.D., Middle Collegiate Church, New York, NY

Rev. Dr. Gina M. Stewart Christ Missionary Baptist Church Memphis, TN

Rev. Mandy Sloan McDow, Los Angeles First United Methodist Church, Los Angeles, CA

Rev. Matt Fitzgerald, Saint Paul's United Church of Christ, Chicago, IL

Moderators:

Rev. Dr. Katie Givens Kime, Odyssey Impact

Rev. Peter Wallace, Day1