By Ernest Brooks, AoP’11
Depending on whom you ask and what day it is, I’m either a preacher in love with the academy or an academic who can’t resist the magnetic pull of the pulpit. In either case, I am convinced that I was destined to become a part of The Academy of Preachers, even before the formal conception of the organization itself.
Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., Dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, introduced me to this new organization called the Academy of Preachers in late 2009. The task of developing a national ecumenical network of colleges, seminaries, congregations, denominations and others interested in “identifying, networking, supporting and inspiring young people in their call to gospel preaching” was—and remains—an idea whose time has come.
It is most fitting that the King Chapel at Morehouse is a Founding Partner with the Academy of Preachers. At the time of the College’s founding in 1867, African-Americans faced an almost unfathomable road from slavery to freedom that included the rapid building and development of religious institutions and denominations. Thus Morehouse’s historic legacy of taking seriously the social significance of preaching and the preparation of well-educated clergy to provide spiritual, institutional, intellectual and moral leadership for African-Americans makes it a natural fit with the AoP.
While an undergraduate student at Morehouse, I served for three years as an active member of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel Assistants program. During these formative years as a MLK Chapel Assistant I discerned my call to ministry, preached my first sermon from the Cornell Everett Talley Pulpit in King Chapel, read the great preachers of history, caravanned to revival services, participated in sermon talkback sessions with guest preachers and immersed myself in the deep and expansive river of preaching in its many forms, styles and traditions. Upon graduating from Morehouse in 2005, in addition to becoming a Morehouse Man, I also joined a network of Morehouse alumni clergy and former Chapel Assistants who are pastoring, preaching, teaching and leading all around the world. This informal, but tight-knit network has become for me a circle of treasured friendships, an affirming yet challenging community of mentors and an invaluable system of support for life and ministry.
Having just been elected, and not yet installed, as the senior pastor of my first congregation (which also happened to be the church of my childhood formation), I was unable to participate in the inaugural National Festival of Young Preachers in 2010. Driven by a fate that I knew not of at the time, I was thrilled to participate as a Young Preacher with the Morehouse College contingent of students and alumni at the 2011 National Festival in Louisville.
The experience of preaching and participating in the National Festival of Young Preachers was personally and professionally transformative. Considering myself a relatively seasoned preacher by this time who delivered several sermons a week as a pastor, revivalist, conference preacher and special occasion speaker, I viewed the National Festival as an opportunity to broaden my ministerial network, to have a professionally produced sermon video and to have my first sermon published by a national publishing house in an edited volume. All of this was valuable, but I could never have imagined that national exposure, publishing and production would become secondary or even tertiary benefits.
At the 2011 National Festival of Young Preachers, I was reminded that preaching is more than a professional skill—it is a sacred calling and a sacred trust shared between the preacher, the divine, and the world. There were no beginners, intermediate and advanced preaching sections at the National Festival. We were all Young Preachers seeking an opportunity to strengthen the tools of our craft, build new friendships, receive expert feedback and become more effective preachers for a diverse world. As a 25-year-old seminary trained pastor, I found myself preaching on the same stage with a 16-year-old high school student who was preaching for the very first time—and she had just as much, if not more, to offer me as I did her. The spiritual renewal was an unexpected blessing!
Vibrant, participatory, ecumenical, collaborative, grace-filled, dynamic, developmental: these words are accurate, yet insufficient, descriptions the National Festival experience. I left the 2011 National Festival with a renewed sense of call to the vocation of preaching and a palpable desire not only to preach, but to mentor and support others who had become captivated, as I had as a college sophomore, by the sacred rhetorical artistry and transformative power of preaching.
In July 2011, I returned to my alma mater, Morehouse College as Associate Campus Minister and in 2013 assumed the role of Assistant Dean of the Chapel. In these roles, I mentored students who participated as Young Preachers in 2012, 2013 and 2014 National Festivals, served as a session convener, sermon evaluator, exhibitor, Preachapalooza speaker and member of the Academy of Preachers’ Board of Directors.
Most recently, I joined AoP’s team of staff and consultants as Director of AoP Chapters. Over the past six years I have seen the Academy of Preachers from almost every vantage point and I can affirm that the view has remained consistent from each perspective: it is a view of the Beloved Community at its best—diverse, dynamic and hope-filled, driven by missional purpose and holy possibilities.
My AoP story is one of reconnection and renewal…over, and over and over again. “..And it does not yet appear what we shall be..!”