Nuggets

a few thoughts as a short hiatus begins in earnest

As noted last week, I’ll be taking the next three weeks off from Hold My Chalice, as the Thirty-One Days of Ridiculous Awesomeness gets even more ridiculous and awesome.

But before I go, I wanted to share a few of the many nuggets of wisdom I’m carrying with me from The Distillery: A UU Preaching Conference:

Overall, well holy cow. The organization and vision of Erol Delos Santos, a third-year seminarian at Union Theological Seminary, was spot-on. Everyone was able to attend all the sessions, so we wound up in a four-day conversation with one another about preaching, yes, but also about theology, the future of our faith, identity, and depth of process and meaning. Those conversations - both in and outside of the sessions changed us, and by extension I hope change our faith for the better.

The fact that all of us were able to attend all the sessions means that even presenters (like myself) were able to be in conversation with the other presenters and attendees not just outside but within our presentations, which allowed some threads to emerge: what is our faith’s story, how are we talking about theology as OUR theology, what is the role of our preaching (no matter the form), what is performative versus authentic, how are we meeting people where they are on a deeper, spiritual level.

from Sadie Landsdale:

• We must identify both the grace AND the trouble in our texts/in our situations for our preaching to connect more deeply

from Adam Dyer:

• We can’t ACT like who we are in the pulpit; we have to BE who we are

• We have to be the raw nerve

from Darrick Jackson:

• What happens when we drop the performative modalities of worship and lean into substance

• We must reflect a resistant resiliency

from Ali KC Bell:

• Doing things ‘right’ or being ‘intellectual’ too often means ‘white’

from Verdis Robinson:

• What does it mean for white preachers to bring their ancestors to the pulpit?

• We must feed the spirit, not just the mind

from Tyler Coles:

• We need theologians in the pulpit, not self-help gurus

• quoting Toni Morrison: ‘Sometimes you don’t survive whole… sometimes you survive in part.”

from Matthew Johnson:

• Preaching is about sharing our good news: inviting, provoking, persuading people to that good news

• Preaching is not about trying to make people happy

from Amy Zucker Morgenstern:

• Speaking to the heart requires deep preparation to speak from the heart

from Robin Tanner:

• No one has ever thought themselves to resurrection

• Preach hope.

I suspect there are people who could add any wisdom I might have brought in my presentation, but I’ll leave it to them to identify those bits that might have been memorable.

There’s so much more I scribbled on my notes - so much to think more deeply about, to talk to others more deeply about, but I wanted to offer these brief snippets, because it matters what we preach. Whatever your faith or denomination, it matters what we preach, because preaching is part of our faith formation. If we are to be taken seriously, we must take the work of studying, considering, troubling, seeking, and expression ourselves seriously. We have to stop filling our sermons with other people’s words and do the work to proclaim our own. We have to know what our grounding theologies are in order to preach them well. We have to know what story we are telling and tell it well… and tell it again and again. We have to know what our good news is and embody it. And if we are to challenge the forms/theology/story, we have to know them in order to subvert them.

There is so much more to come on this.

And I expect the conversation to continue. We started the conversation last week, and it’s one I know we want to continue, because it matters.

Let’s talk.

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But… give me a few weeks, eh? 31 Days, remember? Maybe… talk amongst yourselves.

See you on May 22.