Cohort 6: “A Human Homiletic: The Spirit, Race, and Preaching”
February – March 2026
Facilitator: Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School and Dean of Duke University Chapel
Dates:
- Thursday, February 5, 2026 – Online Session #1
- Wednesday, February 11, 2026 – Online Session #2
- Thursday, February 19, 2026 – Online Session #3
- Thursday, February 26, 2026 – Online Session #4
- Thursday, March 5 to Saturday, March 7, 2026 – In-Person Retreat, Durham, NC
(All online sessions for Cohort #6 will be from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm EST. Both the online sessions and the in-person retreat will be conducted only in English. Translation will not be available.)
This lab will take a pneumatological approach to the ongoing discussion about race and racism in the church by focusing on the Holy Spirit. The overarching question we will consider is, “How does the Spirit move us through and beyond racialization toward humanization, and what does this mean for preaching and ministry today? The lab will explore the following: 1) the racialized, dehumanizing history and faulty biology undergirding the history of racism 2) a pneumatology rooted in the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 as a key theological framework 3) how the Spirit can help us think, speak, and act in more humane ways in preaching, ministry, and life. The culmination of the lab will be a retreat where participants preach short sermons and receive constructive feedback from the group. Through this lab, participants will hopefully learn more than homiletical rhetoric but an ethic through which we can learn how to become more fully human and humanizing in the world through words and deeds.
Cohort 7: “A Holistic Homiletic: Toward Access and Disability Justice in Preaching”
September – November 2026
Facilitator: Dr. Sarah Jean Barton, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy and Theological Ethics at Duke University and Duke Divinity School
Dates:
- Monday, September 14, 2026 – Online Session #1
- Monday, September 21, 2026 – Online Session #2
- Monday, October 5, 2026 – Online Session #3
- Monday, October 19, 2026 – Online Session #4
- Thursday, November 5 to Saturday, November 7, 2026 – In-Person Retreat, Durham, NC
(All online sessions for Cohort #7 will be from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm EST. Both the online sessions and the in-person retreat will be conducted only in English. Translation will not be available.)
Cohort 8: “Preaching as Public Proclamation”*
**for college-aged students only
March – April 2027
Facilitator: Rev. Dr. Chelsea Yarborough, author of “Proclamation Beyond The Pulpit: The Expansive Homiletical Practice of Black Women”
Cohort 9: “Preaching as Public Proclamation”*
**for college-aged students only
June – July 2027
Facilitator: Rev. Dr. Chelsea Yarborough, author of “Proclamation Beyond The Pulpit: The Expansive Homiletical Practice of Black Women”
*These are tentative titles that can provide a general idea of what the theme of each cohort will be. The final title will be released once the previous cohort’s term has ended. If you are interested in finding more about one of the cohorts, you can reach to us through the phone numbers and emails provided in the “Contact Us” section.
