2025 Annual Meeting:

Preaching and Place (2025)

This year’s theme extends the theme from 2024: “Preaching Builds Bridges.” Our 2024 theme prioritized the work stemming from our 2019 theme “Preaching and Homiletical Whiteness,” as well as the 2022 Wabash-funded self-study of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Academy of Homiletics. As a guild, AOH members have made considerable efforts to be more inclusive, expansive, and just in their teaching, research, and practice of preaching. And while real-life bridges connect people and perspectives, we cannot do so without also accounting for place.

In the biblical witness, place serves a variety of functions: naming God’s presence and activity, defining God’s presence and judgment, marking socio-cultural and religious difference, accounting for the formation and maintenance of identity, charting the faithfulness and faithlessness of God’s people, mapping God’s present and future promises, and much more. Throughout history, place has been a way that identity, conflict, community, and interactions with the Holy have been mediated.

In recent years, we have become more accustomed to accounting for the ways that place affects our homiletical theory and practice, and the ways that homiletical theory and practice affects place. Contextuality, globalization, coloniality, migration, ecological crisis, war, the changing nature of sacred spaces and spaces from which preaching happens, digitality, place-based pedagogy, and more have all become integral to our collective work as it relates to place. And we have more work to do.

This year’s theme invites us to reflect on “place” in our research, teaching, and practice of preaching, especially as we continue our collective commitment to seeking justice in our scholarship.

Meeting Schedule

(subject to change at this time)

Wednesday, December 3: Pre-meeting Affinity Groups

Premeeting Arrivals

2:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Black Caucus Meeting

Convener: Chelsea Brooke Yarborough

4:00 pm – 9:00 pm — CATH Meeting

Convener: Fr. Benjamin Roberts (2025 CATH President)

6:00 pm — Executive Committee Meeting

Thursday, December 4: Day 1

8:30 am – 9:30 am — Executive Committee Meeting

9:00 am – 4:00 pm — CATH Meeting

Convener: Fr. Benjamin Roberts (2025 CATH President)

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm — Early Career/Adjunct Faculty/Independent Scholars Gathering

Convener: Courtney Buggs

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm — Queer Affinity Group Gathering

Convener: Karyn Wiseman

3:00 pm — Registration Opens!

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm — Graduate Student Gathering

Convener: Seyeom Kim

6:00 pm – 7:00 pm — Opening Worship and Memorials

Preacher: Jerusha Matsen Neal
Worship Designer: Casey Sigmon

7:15 pm – 8:30 pm — Plenary Session # 1

Title: “Proclamation and the Public Square”
Presenter: Liz Theoharis

8:30 pm – 9:30 pm — President’s Reception

Graduate Student Posters Presentation

Friday, December 5: Day 2

7:30 am – 8:30 am — Breakfast (on your own)

8:30 am – 9:00 am — Transportation to Union Presbyterian Seminary

9:15 am – 11:45 am — Workgroup Session # 1

11:45 am – 1:00 pm — Luncheon

Lifetime Achievement Awards
Recognition of Retirements

1:00 pm – 3:30 pm — Workgroup Session # 2

3:45 pm – 5:15 pm — Plenary Session # 2

Title: “Borders, Migration, and Preaching Place”
Panelists: Safwat Marzouk, Rubén Arjona, Catherine Williams, Wing Yi Wong
Moderator: Eunjoo Mary Kim

5:15 pm – 5:30 pm — Transportation to Hotel

5:30 pm — Dinner (on your own)

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm — Korean Caucus Business Meeting and Special Seminary with Korean Immigrant Churches in the Richmond Area

Venue: Richmond Korean Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm — Black Caucus Worship Service

Venue: Virginia Union Proctor School of Theology (in their chapel)

8:30 pm — Transportation to Hotel

Saturday, December 6: Day 3

7:30 am – 8:30 am — Breakfast

Workgroup Convener Breakfast

8:30 am – 10:00 am — Plenary Session # 3

Title: International Panel
Presenters: Christine Böckmann (Heidelberg, Germany), Taniela Baleinakorodawa (Fiji)
Moderator: HyeRan Kim-Cragg

10:00 am – 10:15 am — Break

10:15 am – 11:30 am — Annual Business Meeting, Passing of the Gavel

11:45 am – 12:30 pm — Closing Worship

Preacher: Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm

Academy of Homiletics Workgroups

When an Academy member has a paper that meets the submission guidelines for a workgroup, she or he should submit it directly to the workgroup convener. Conveners are not editors and will return papers that do not strictly follow the submission guidelines. Qualified doctoral candidates, those who have completed all coursework in a homiletics-related field, must work through their doctoral advisers in making workgroup submissions.

Access the 2025 Call for Workgroups Papers Here

Scholarship Application

The Academy of Homiletics is pleased to offer a number of scholarships for the 2025 Annual Meeting to students and retirees. A successful application for the scholarship will result in a payment from designated AoH funds for the student or retiree’s registration fee for the Annual Meeting. Scholarships are limited and will provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Applications are confidential. To apply for a Scholarship and Registration Code to cover the registration fee for the 2025 annual meeting, please submit your application to AoH Secretary, Sunggu A. Yang. All applications will remain confidential and your request will not be shared beyond the Executive Committee. Applications are due by Wednesday, October 1. Three members of the AOH Executive Committee will determine the recipients of the scholarships no later than Friday, October 31.