On a recent Sunday, I confessed to my suburban Washington, D.C. congregation something I had never done before in nearly 20 years of preaching and pastoring: I scrapped the previously written sermon and started over on Saturday night. Sure, I have altered sermons the night before or morning of, but I had never stared at a blank screen this close to preaching time.
Why? Because the previous week, the current administration called in the national guard, destroyed the belongings and space of unhoused people, targeted Black and brown teenagers with random checkpoints, arrested innocent people, and led an all-out assault on fundamental rights in Washington, D.C., the city that shapes much of our daily life.
In the previous week, I heard these questions and comments from my congregation:
- The news is scary and overwhelming,
- We’re worried about D.C. and the calling in of the national guard and law enforcement, and what they will do to unhoused people.
- What papers and documents should I carry with me at all times?
- How will our government withstand this kind of fascist presence, which leads with white supremacy?
- Will my marriage be safe anymore?
- What can we do to support immigrants as they navigate daily life, especially as school starts?
- Will there be anyone left in Gaza?
- Where is God in the midst of everything happening, and what is ours to do?
- What happens when the federal government tries to withhold funds from local school districts because they continued to follow the law to protect trans kids?
As I pondered this, I gave thanks that the sermon was not entirely up to me and Holy Spirit. There were others involved, too. In preaching, we say the congregation is always part of the preaching moment and that’s true.
For the last two summers, my congregation has practiced dialogical preaching, first introduced to me by Rev. Molly Brummett Wudel and her congregation, Emmaus Way. In this preaching model, the preacher introduces a topic and then the congregation discusses it.
Sometimes the preacher asks questions or invites people to write a response to be shared. Sometimes the congregation asks one another questions or discusses a topic with the preacher. This summer, we’ve discussed topics like “Is the biblical canon closed?” and, recently, from Good Faith Media’s CEO, Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, “How do we decolonize Christianity?”
We have the luxury of chairs in our sanctuary so we rearranged our worshipping space into a circle, with all of us on the floor, including the worship leaders. We have found in this set up, we sing louder and really look at each other. We have conversations we’d never have if we were physically arranged another way.
Folx shared their one sentence prayers for our congregation, our community, and our country. Those prayers were deeply confessional and full of the liberating love of God. Others talked about how they understood God as disruptor and our call to do the same.
We recommitted ourselves to hyperlocal work and to being a space where we truly live into our calling to share love, do justice, and build community. Some of the hyperlocal work means we call out the places and people that lead with white supremacy, fascist policy, and hate-fueled practices, like the targeting of our local school systems that support trans kids.
Preaching together each week invites us to co-create with God in a new way. Our conversational sermons bring the congregation into the preaching moment because we are all proclaiming the truth we know and the gospel we embody.
It’s not so much that we are making sense of what’s going on, but we are trying to make meaning of it for our community of faith and for the community in which we live and serve.
On that Sunday of the re-created sermon, I heard the most powerful sermon that I’ve ever heard preached and it came from the congregation. Preaching together healed our souls that day.
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Rev. Dr. Leah Davis is the pastor of Ravensworth Baptist Church in Annandale, Virginia.
