Bearing Witness in 200 Pulpits

In 2023, Virginia Theological Seminary will be celebrating its bicentennial. (Congratulations, VTS, on 200 years!) As part of preparing for that celebration, they've cooked up an interesting project. Send a preacher all around the world to preach in 200 pulpits. And along the way, as you're preaching and teaching, see what you can see, learn what you can learn. What kind of survey do you get of the state of the church that way?

Today we'll talk with the very man who's been finding this out, the Rev. Dr. Mark Andrew Jefferson.

Mark is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and the Associate Director of the Deep Calls to Deep Preaching Program at VTS. He has also taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Candler School of Theology at Emory. He has been a director of Christian education, and his academic work focuses on critical engagement of the American social imagination and African American socio-political enfranchisement and empowerment. He has an upcoming book, tentatively titled, The Mis-education of the African American Preacher. He is an internationally respected preacher and teacher of preachers.

We talk about this preaching project, the importance of history and place, Christian unity, preaching in Cape Town after the death of Archbishop Tutu, and what revival might be looking like.

Most of us are ministering week by week in a local parish, getting that intimate, zoomed-in view of what God is doing here, in this spot. But what do we get from a bird's eye view? What do you see particularly when you're a guest preacher?

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