Magazine Spring 2024 The Value of Preaching in Person
At a time when much communication takes place online, remotely and impersonally, Lilly Endowment Inc. awarded Westmont a $1.25 million grant to create a unique program exploring the meaning and value of Christian preaching in person. The Incarnational Preaching Project will invite active and aspiring preachers to investigate the value of preaching live to a church community. The Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts expects to launch the program in summer 2025.
Aaron Sizer, who co-directs the Gaede Institute, says Christian theology depends on real human connection. “Christianity asserts, quite distinctively, that God became incarnate, became human,” he says. “God doesn’t ask us to think our way up to heaven but rather meets us in the tangible stuff of human life. That should inform everything we do in the church, especially our preaching.”
Westmont’s project will gather pastors, liberal arts professors and others to think together about how incarnational preaching comes alive in particular communities. Rather than focusing on the development of better technical skills, as many preaching programs already do, this project will explore the people, relationships, needs and challenges that make preaching meaningful.
“Westmont lives and breathes relational learning,” says President Gayle D. Beebe. “With support from Lilly Endowment, we’re excited to expand that work to make our Christian liberal arts resources directly available to clergy and congregations.”
Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative funds the Incarnational Preaching Project. The initiative fosters and supports
preaching that inspires, encourages and guides people to know and love God and to live out their Christian faith more fully.
Lilly Endowment awarded grants to 81 organizations that reflect the diversity of Christianity in the United States, including affiliates of mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist and Pentecostal communities. Many of the organizations are rooted in the Black church and in Hispanic and Asian American Christian traditions.
“Throughout history, preachers have often needed to adapt their preaching practices to engage new generations of hearers more effectively,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “We’re pleased that the organizations receiving grants in this initiative will help pastors and others in ministry engage in the kinds of preaching needed today to ensure that the Gospel message is heard and accessible for all audiences.”
Lilly Endowment launched the Compelling Preaching Initiative in 2022 because of its interest in supporting projects that nurture the religious lives of individuals and families and foster the growth and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States.
Through its Gaede Institute, Westmont continues to cultivate relationships with faith communities across the broad spectrum of ecclesial traditions. The Gaede Institute’s Trailhead, Frontiers, Thriving Communities and Young Adult Leadership Lab programs offer resources and relational learning for high school youth, pastors, congregations and young adults.