Preaching that 5 minute Sermon by Mary Kate Myers

Three months into my first pastoral appointment, I learned WomanPreach! Inc. was coming to town. My former homiletics professor (as well as the President and CEO of the organization), Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman, invited me to attend the program just up the road at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I remember feeling nervous—like I didn’t know how to do the work of meaningful preaching (even though she had taught me less than a year prior). The sermons I learned to create and speak into existence during seminary, however, were quite different from what I felt I had the capacity to do each Sunday in my white, rural, and mostly conservative churches. I was fearful in some way that if I chose to attend, I would embarrass her for my lack of ability in front of the team who helps make the organization the force that it is. Needless to say, I was almost relieved when I began to feel unwell on the Friday the program was set to begin. When I reached out let her know, Dr. V told me if I felt better in the morning to come for what was left of the intensive. Sure enough, I awoke the next day feeling better and reluctantly made my way to Nashville.

Beyond Dr. V and one former classmate who was helping run the program that weekend, I didn’t know a soul in the room where we gathered prior to the opening session. Around the small talk with a couple of kind strangers, I began to recognize some familiar faces of those whom I had heard Dr. V praise for their preaching or writing in the past. Despite being incredibly anxious, I gradually began to settle in and became content listening to and taking notes on lectures given by Dr. V and other scholars brought in to help us with the work. [It’s important to note here that “the work” to which I’ve referred thus far in this essay has little to do with the logistics of creating the sermon itself. Rather, much of this work is a deep dive into the biblical texts for historical, cultural, political, social, and spiritual context. In WomanPreach!, we call this work “interrogating the text.” It is the vital and involved process that we believe enables us to preach biblically sound, justice oriented sermons as we seek to minister within our various contexts.] I eventually found my groove in being quiet and reserved, soaking up as much information as I could from those around me. And as the day drew to a close, I was relieved to learn that I was not one of the individuals selected to preach the five minute sermon every participant was instructed to write as the compilation of our time together.

As we all settled in the lecture hall where the sermons were soon to be preached, I breathed deeply, thankful that I would not have to speak in front of the group. Just before the sermons began, however, Dr. V made her way to where I was sitting, and my heart sank as I somehow knew what she was going to say: Will you preach your five minute sermon? As much as I wanted to say no, you just don’t say “no” to Dr. V, so I held my breath and waited my turn. While in the queue, I heard some of the most powerful and passionate preaching, and I just knew what I had to offer was going to pale in comparison. My name was eventually called, and I made my way to the front. From there, all I know is (as one of my now good friends later defined it for me), I “preached for [my] life.” As the words flowed, people around the room yelled “Amen!” and “Tell ‘em!’” and “Say that!”. I have never felt so supported and compelled to tell the truth in my preaching as I did in those five minutes made holy by my peers. I barely recognized myself as I passionately and persuasively preached in a way I had yet to do in the first few months of pastoring churches since graduating seminary. It was clear to me at the conclusion of that sermon, as my body returned to herself, that because of this organization and the people who MAKE this organization what it is, I was leaving an altogether different preacher than the one I had timidly entered as earlier that morning. That is the power of WomanPreach! Inc.—that you will never leave the programs or the events the same way you came into them. And I think that’s precisely the hope God has for the impact of God’s word on our lives. Thanks be to God for WomanPreach!, the organization that saved my vocation.

The Rev. Mary Kate Myers serves as the pastor of Bethesda-Wesley Chapel UMC in Franklin, Tennessee. She is married to Bo who is also a United Methodist pastor, and they are proud parents to their son, Foster. Mary Kate has had the honor of being a cohort leader with WomanPreach Inc. since 2019.