The WomanPreach! Collaborative Way
I encountered the work of WomanPreach! in its embryonic stages because of the relationship I had with its founder Dr. Valerie Bridgeman and its first executive director Rev. Charisse R. Tucker. Relationship brought me to WP! and relationship is the gift of the WP! way.
From my seminary days, I have made it a practice to engage friends and colleagues in conversation as a part of my sermon preparation process. Whether it involved discussing a text or engaging contemporary challenges for church and world with seminary colleagues before sermon writing began or calling a friend on the West Coast in the middle of the night (or early Sunday morning) to see whether my final product was worth the hearing, I have always regarded collaboration as integral to my process. Perhaps it’s the extrovert in me; I hear myself and my ideas better when I hear them out loud and restated by the person listening.
What the WomanPreach strategy does—whether experienced in a concentrated form over a weekend through Sophie’s Table or expanded in the flagship event of the Jarena Lee Preaching Academy—is to normalize collaboration in the sermon development and delivery process. We interrogate the text together, kick around interpretation and ideas, and then after the preaching, we offer one another constructive feedback.
This way builds competence and confidence in preachers, who learn to hear and trust their own voice in the context of mentor and peer encouragement. And one of the best byproducts of WP is the way it initiates and grows relationships of value for participants. WP alums get into the habit of collaborating and relating. Once you start, you never want to stop.
