Sunday night, May 31, twelve young preachers, three coaches, and two Academy staff members gathered at the beautiful Country Lake Christian Retreat Center Lodge in Henryville, Kentucky, for five days of concentrated attention to preaching. Beautiful weather allowed an early morning walk around the lake and an after dinner canoe ride on the lake (except for Winterbourne Jones and Brandon Perkins, who ended up in the lake!!).
David Emery, pastor of Middletown Baptist Church in Louisville, opened our program with a splendid talk on Collaborative Preaching. The young preachers were divided into three groups: preaching circles, we call them; they met to discuss their texts and sermons for the Monday morning.
Each young preacher had selected a group of five questions from the Bible (from Genesis, or Psalms, or Romans, or the words of Jesus). These five questions will form their preaching text for the five mornings of the week. Each group agreed to select one text from which each person in the group will preach on Thursday.
Monday morning all twelve of these young preachers stood to preach. Each was allotted no more than eight minutes. All were video-taped. With attire ranging from liturgical robes to shorts and sandals and styles ranging from manuscript-reading to casual conversation, we were all treated to an inspirational morning of wonderful preaching.
Tomorrow morning–Tuesday–Bob Russell from Southeast Christian Church will speak on the priority of preaching in the life of both the minister and the church; and in the afternoon, each will stand again to preach. The pressure and discipline of preaching five short sermons on five successive days makes this truly a working camp; all are being stretched and pushed; all will leave the camp on Friday better preachers, better friends, and better leaders.
Already it is a good week. Check the Facebook site for some videos.