The Bridge for Early Career Preachers "Preachercast"
The Bridge for Early Career Preachers "Preachercast"
Season 2, Episode 6: Rev. Dr. Mandy Sloan McDow
Could you preach in a parking lot? Rev. Dr. Mandy Sloan McDow does it each and every week as Senior Minister of Los Angeles First United Methodist Church, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, CA.
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Welcome everyone to the Bridge for Early Career Preachers Preacher Cast. The mission of the Bridge for Early Career Preachers is to provide resources, continuing education, and a supportive community for those who are moving from aspiring to active preaching ministries. The Preacher Cast is intended to profile preachers, to hear their stories, to reflect with them on their own preaching. We want to engage with preachers as they consider their identity, as they think through their own preaching experiences. And so we are really excited to have another guest this month. My name, first of all, is Rich Voelz.. I serve as Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Union Presbyterian Seminary, based in Richmond, Virginia. I am also the Director for the Bridge for Early Career Preachers. And as always, I'm joined by my co host, Reverend Mandy England Cole. Mandy, say hi, introduce yourself. Hello.
Speaker 2:Hi, everyone. Glad to be here with you guys along with helping as the program associate for the bridge for early career preachers. I also wear the hat of preaching coach for our cohort of participants and do preaching coaching as a side gig, along with all number of various and a sundry pastoral ministry type work. So cobbling together a life that is full and rich these days.
Speaker:Thanks, Mandy. Those of you who are regular listeners know that it's always a fun adventure to see how Mandy sort of narrates the various things that she does in her life as she exercises all of her wonderful gifts for ministry. We're really delighted.
Speaker 2:Narrates aka rambles.
Speaker:No, no, no. I love it. We're really excited to welcome this month, the Reverend Dr. Mandy Sloan McDowell. She is a native of Knoxville, Tennessee and ordained United Methodist pastor. She's also a graduate of Oglethorpe University, which is based in Atlanta, Princeton Theological Seminary which, where she received her Master's of Divinity. Mindy's also a 2023 graduate of Candler School of Theology's DMIN program. After serving in various congregational appointments in New Jersey and the Atlanta area, Mandy was appointed to serve as the senior minister at Laguna Beach, United Methodist Church in Laguna Beach, California. If you think that's luxurious, she describes it this way. She spent three years suffering for the Lord with an ocean view from the sanctuary and a marvelous and inclusive congregation with whom to serve before, feeling a strong call to do something strange. Plant a new church in the heart of an urban area. In July of 2017, as she writes, Mamie confirmed to most onlookers that she had, in fact, lost her damn mind when she eagerly accepted an appointment to serve Los Angeles First United Methodist Church in the heart of downtown LA. She exchanged a beautiful church with beautiful people and a beautiful ocean view for a church with a long history. But no building. I think we're probably going to hear a little bit more about that. Mandy holds a black belt in Taekwondo, makes music whenever possible, enjoys cooking, but loathes making dinner, knits to sit still and is deeply proud mother the deeply proud mother of Jackson Cooper and Sloan and three impossibly small dogs named Posey, Daisy and Dew. Together, they watch a lot of baseball. Mandy, welcome to the preacher cast. We are so glad to have you with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. It's really, really good to be here.
Speaker:So we'll start in the shallow end. Mandy, tell us about how long you've been preaching and a little bit about your current preaching context.
Speaker 3:I took my first appointment right out of seminary. So in May of 2020, sorry, I forgot how time worked May of 2003. So it's officially been over two decades. I don't understand how time works or how it's been that long. But I've been in continuous appointment ever since then. I came to preaching very reluctantly because I had never seen a female pastor. So it did not occur to me. When I went to seminary that I could be a minister I'm slow on the uptake. I meant to be a pastoral counselor. Turns out I can do both. So when I finally got to seminary, they make you serve at church. Like if you want this degree, you're going to have to serve at church. And I got into it and fell head over heels. For Heals in Love with the entire experience of being a parish minister my, I, I have served rural context. I have served suburban context. I have served very urban context. And my current context is highly unusual. It's the oldest Protestant church in Los Angeles as an incredibly rich, interesting history that, like, that's a whole other podcast. It has always been on the right side of history, which is a really fun thing to observe and identify and see what that does to the congregation's DNA, because it makes them really courageous. I would say the West Coast is really ahead of the times when it comes to trends in church decline. So, When I got here from the East Coast, I was like, Oh, wow, it is different here. I used to be able to go and talk to people and, you know, they'd ask me what I do. And I'd be like, Oh, I'm the pastor at so and so Methodist church. You're like, Oh yeah, my grandmother went there. Here, I would tell people what I did. Like, I'm the pastor at so and so Methodist church. And they'd be like, why?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It changed, it changed my whole perspective on preaching, on pastoring, not that it was any less important, just like, oh, there's a different conversation that we're having. So when I moved from Laguna Beach to LA, I did so because it was honest. The church no longer has a building. 20 years ago, the church had been in decline. Well, a hundred years ago, the church was thriving. About 40 years after that When every major urban area was going through, you know, big changes, when automobiles took over, the trolley system shut down, white flight was happening, the urban core of every major metropolitan area totally changed, as the suburbs were being built, etc. So the same was true for Los Angeles, and the church had just built this massive 40 years they couldn't afford it. So by 1981, they sold it to the gas company, the gas company turned it into lofts. In the corner of the, where the church used to be, like the vestibule is now an IHOP. The church took the money from the sale, bought another parcel of land. It was a old like office building. They converted it, retrofit it for their purposes and lived there for about 20 years and then couldn't afford that anymore. They tore it down. with the intention to raise about five million dollars to build a church, like a true church. They sold off the property to the city. They used it to create 1010 development, which built two affordable housing units on site. So the church doesn't own them, but they were participants in creating them. And they were left with a 26, 000 square foot parcel of land that they were going to build a church on. But. They never raised the money because that's really hard, especially with a small dwindling congregation. So for the last 20, well, up until 2017, when I was appointed, they met in the multi purpose room of the senior housing facility they had helped to create. It was not an ideal way to grow a church, right? There was no signage. You had to walk down a dark alley and, like, know someone to know someone to get there. I used to joke that, like, we're not a gay club. Like, you know, we should be able to be a little more obvious. I should also say the church I served in Atlanta was 90 percent LGBTQ people. So, like, seeing culturally how each context changes and shapes and forms what they are Intended to do and desiring to do is amazing. So when I took this appointment, I asked for it because the church didn't have a building. We had land with valuable land and we had an opportunity and I was really tired of sitting through trustees meetings arguing about light bulbs. Like it was. Just sucking the joy out of a lot of what I really, really, truly enjoy doing. And I asked the bishop about going to this appointment and he said yes. And that's like asking your principal for a certain teacher for your kid. Like that usually goes poorly. But he was glad to have somebody who wanted to take on this challenge. And that was seven years ago. We meet every Sunday under tents in a parking lot in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. We have since created a a breakfast ministry because we realized that the service has shut down over the weekends. So this is the one hot meal people can count on from Friday to Monday. It's also given us an ability to have an ongoing relationship with people so that we can see them and check up on them and kind of keep tabs on folks and understand best what is needed. And our resources are very limited. Our revenue comes from parking lot money. So Our tithes and offerings like we have one giver and she gives very generously and I love her for it. But that means that most of our overhead is covered by the parking lot. And that means that everything we do is essentially output. We have staff overhead and that's about it. Everything else can go directly to program ministry. So that's my setting. I'm a street preacher now.
Speaker 2:I'm fascinated by all of that. And, and, and want to ask a million questions, but I'm going to stick to where we're supposed to head. I'm going to be disciplined today. I heard in your, your telling of your story that reluctancy to shift into preaching or even maybe not reluctancy, but that snuck up on you. I'm wondering if you would talk a little bit more about when you really claimed. That calling and that awareness that you had fallen in love with the church and that you are going to be the preacher, you are going to be the pastor.
Speaker 3:I could pinpoint the date. So when I went to college, I have a music background. I grew up in church. I'm from Knoxville, right? Like you love two things and it's football and Jesus, probably in that order. Not publicly, but that's how it goes. And I did both those things really, really well. I had a wonderful church upbringing. Wonderful. I never had to contend with my faith. I did not deal with a theological framework that had to be undone. It might not have been very mature. But it also wasn't hateful. I grew up in a really loving theological and church environment, right? So when I decided to go to college, I had a pretty strong music background as a piano player. So I got a music scholarship and my first day in college, my roommate was like, Hey, I'm going to go audition for this play. Want to come? And I was like, I don't know. I'm sure. Cause you're in college and you get to totally reinvent yourself. And I did. And I was very, very shy. Higher life. I had a speech impediment as a child. I took me five years of speech therapy to get to the point where I could articulate my words correctly. So I just, you know, enjoyed my position behind the piano. Then I didn't really have to do anything, right? Like I could just be here. Then my roommate invited me to go audition for a play and I went and I got a part and by the time I graduated, I had a minor in theater. I fell head over heels in love with that craft. So when I went to seminary Princeton emphasizes in a really wonderful way, the actual presentation of the sermon we're required to go through speech classes where you stand and videotape yourself, videotape. record yourself. I'm 96 years old. For all the kids out there, there was
Speaker:this thing called video date.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then a TA would give us feedback, like, do you know that you do this with your hands and it's really distracting? Like, no, I had no idea. So after a semester of just working on presentation they were really clear about our preaching gifts, too. And we worked really hard on not just the craft of writing, but the technical approach of presentation. And were it not for my background in theater and frankly, my background in music as well, like, I had a performance background which really helped the craft of preaching. Because you can write. good sermon all day, but if you can't present it well, it's very difficult to connect to your audience. And as I mentioned, my, right before my senior year the Con Ed office was like, you have to do a church setting. I had done my year long setting in a psychiatric hospital because I wanted to be a chaplain or a clinical psychologist or something. It was fascinating. And that's a whole other, Third podcast. So they sent me to a church. It was like the next town over and I got there and the first Sunday I had to pick all the hymns. I got to plan worship. I got to have all these wonderful meetings with people who just wanted their pastor to come and sit and talk with them. And I got into the, like, I got into the pulpit basically and thought, Oh my goodness, everything I have ever done in my entire life has led me to this, because I felt confident I felt equipped. I felt warmly received by very kind people. As it happened, the supervising pastor was gone like seven of the 10 weeks I was there so it was really just me doing everything. So it was phenomenal. I didn't feel self conscious about anything, all the stuff, and the congregation was very gracious. Right. Like they were very glad to have somebody who was glad to be there and loved them. And we had a really good experience. And I went back at the end of that summer and walked up to my, I guess it's the director of Methodist studies there and was like, I think I want to get ordained. Can I do that? Like, How? He was like, yes, we've been waiting. Here's your paperwork. So it was a terrific experience to realize that like all along, all of these pieces of my life were coming together. And I felt really foolish when I was like, okay, God, you absolutely know what you're doing. And thank you for giving me time to figure it out.
Speaker:And, and all of that, and you had, had not grown up. I mean, as, as lovingly as you talk about your tradition, having not seen a role model for yourself.
Speaker 3:No. Well, I mean, and that's not to say I missed the cues, right? I was invited to preach. I was invited to and I, and I did, I was invited to, you know, I, I had roles in worship almost every week, mainly because I was a pianist. And so the organist asked me to play the hymn. So if I wasn't in some kind of speaking role with the youth group, I was like, playing the hymns on the piano. I worked in a Methodist church camp and had lots of affirmation there. I was invited to be the minister in residence one week when I was like 20. We can all ask ourselves questions as to how I missed all the cues, but I definitely missed all the cues. So some of it was just me being dense and thinking, it just never, truly never occurred to me that I, a woman could be in the role of pastor.
Speaker:Maybe sometimes when we talk about a preacher's unique preaching gifts and identity, we talk about voice and I use capital V voice when I talk about this, I think you're starting already to, to bring some of these elements to the surface, but, but how would you talk about your voice? How would you describe it? What, what makes you the preacher that you are?
Speaker 3:That's a really good question. I think truly most preachers I've ever talked to from biblical times to current have struggled with the idea that we are equipped, right? Like we, almost every person I've spoken with, my sample set's pretty high has major imposter syndrome. And that's one of the things that I'm, like, if I don't have a pit in my stomach every Sunday before I preach, I think I'm doing it wrong. That's never happened. I always feel nervous. I always feel ill equipped and unprepared. Like, what on earth do I even have to say that's going to connect with people and deepen their faith in some meaningful way? And then every Sunday, it does. So what I've learned about my own voice is, one, to trust it. Like, I didn't create it. Like, God laid this foundation for me and all I have to do is own it. And my voice is very, very different than someone else's. I'm pretty soft spoken. Some of that is probably because I had a speech impediment as a kid. And so I was really, really withdrawn and very shy, never wanted to speak in class. But I found that because of my soft spoken voice, I can actually say pretty challenging and even, you know, at times, prophetic things. And people can hear it. Mm, because. It doesn't come off as overbearing. The other challenges is I have people who tell me they can't hear me. So that's a problem. But that's funny because the whole, like for those who have ears to hear, they will, and I've learned to trust that that voice is resonant with the ears who need to hear it. And I appreciate that. Like my voice isn't like someone else's because it takes all of us. So I'm, I'm aware that my voice can actually like, can reach some people who might not have been reached otherwise.
Speaker 4:It's really helpful.
Speaker 2:I love that. How you answered that speaks a little bit to self confidence or self like it being in power, giving yourself permission, like recognizing the goodness of who you are. I love those aspects of how you answered that question about what's uniquely you is embracing what's uniquely you. We try, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And it's so easy to criticize those things that are unique and to like really admire the things we see in other people and want to emulate those. And we can, we can emulate certain things, but we can't be anyone other than ourselves. So if I wanted to preach like Paul, I'm not going to, cause I don't have Paul's experience or voice or, you know guilt. Right. I don't have the things that makes Paul Paul, but I do have the things that make me me and I've been at this long enough to realize that that actually does work. It does connect people to God in a particular way. It's beautiful.
Speaker:Yeah. One of the things we, we do with our cohort is to actually get them to list the things that they love about their preaching and, and love about themselves and their preaching. So I think it's the way that you've framed it and Mandy, how you've revisited, I think is really helpful to kind of bring that back to the service. Something we would encourage all preachers to do. It's just like, Okay, it's easy to be self critical, but name the things you really love about about who you are and in this preaching act. So, so thanks for for walking us through that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker:What's a what's a lesson you learned over the course? You've learned over the course of your preaching career That you would love to go back and whisper in an earlier version of your preaching self
Speaker 3:Almost no one remembers anything you say.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's such permission giving.
Speaker:Wow. We went, we went from the heights now all the way to the depths of despair. Guess what? You're you are you and uniquely you, but guess what? Nobody's going to remember anything.
Speaker 3:When they shake your hand at the door, they're like, I have a cat. You're like, I didn't mention cats. I don't know why you're telling me this. People will take from your sermon what they want. That is really what I mean. And so we like, just fall all over ourselves to choose the right words and say the right things. And turns out, I found that my preaching connects best with people when I preach to what I need. Not to be self serving about it, we're not here to be our own therapist or work things out, but when I understand that there are elements of my faith life that I'm really struggling with areas of doubt, lack of self confidence, imposter syndrome, like these things that are universal across any age group. Ethnicity, any, any designation we could imagine when I realized that like the text here this week has something to say to that, to, to the war and fighting we're seeing in the world, the text is something we can see and apply to that. And I can, the, the answer I was kind of working on for this question was like, well, there's a difference between writing for the page and writing for the ear. And I wrote for the page for a really long time. And then when I went from being an associate preaching quarterly to being a senior pastor where I preached weekly, if not more, I ditched a manuscript so fast cause I couldn't, I couldn't, I just could not write 8, 000 words every day. single week. And what I found was I would work on these sermons and I would craft them and they would be like lovingly word over. I wouldn't sleep Saturday night and I would stand up in the pulpit and look at my congregation. And I would see someone who had had a conversation with me that week about how their wife was sick, or the chemo diagnosis had come back, or their daughter came out to them and they want to support them, but they don't have the framework and they're struggling with something. And the second I. saw my congregation, the manuscript went out the window because I knew what I had written. I heard somebody else, and I'll be honest, I can't remember who it was, say that, oh, oh, it was a rabbi who was talking about her preparation. She said, I write to prepare, but when I preach, that manuscript is nowhere near me because it's an encumbrance. So I found my sermons to be much more honest and connected. When I can do the work to prepare, I still prepare and frankly, I still write a lot, but I'm not expecting that manuscript to be my script. I'm just expecting it to be like, it's got to be as in me as the word. Right. And I don't memorize it. I don't try to do any of that. I just try to articulate very clearly and thoughtfully what I understand the text is communicating to this congregation today.
Speaker:And I that's so important. And I think connects to what you were saying earlier. About, no, no one remembering what, what you say. I,'cause I think we place a lot of emphasis on this is the week when I'm gonna hit a home run and everything's gonna click for everybody else. And, and doesn't necessarily connect to like the long, slow work of formation that is preaching.
Speaker 4:And I
Speaker:think, I think that's part of what you're talking about when you talk about this move away from a manuscript, which works for some people and doesn't work for others, but like You're, you're. It's an investment in the pastoral work of preaching for you, like this, this both immediate and long haul work of formation that happens is, is what you were recognizing was like creating distance between you and the congregation in the work of formation. So I just, like, I really appreciate the way that you framed that.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Mandy, we believe that every preacher should be growing. And our hope is that they are. What's something that you're working on in your own preaching? What's the growing edge for you right now in your preaching?
Speaker 3:Well, I, I feel like my, some of my answers to these questions are very hyper contextual. Most of the answers I've given you have been from my experiences in typical context, but now I preach outdoors every Sunday in the Elements, and I have had a lot of interesting experiences where worship has been disrupted by a downpour and the tents start like collapsing because all of a sudden it's creeping in and we have to clear out. I've had sermons interrupted because someone's car was getting towed and they wanted to yell at me about it while I was preaching. That's, that's a pretty fair gamut of things I've now experienced. So being an outdoor preacher took a year of mental and practical preparation because the idea of like, yeah, I'm just going to go out and preach and I'm just going to, it's terrifying. I had to get really, really clear on what I, a pastor, could do in a worshipful setting that would be authentic to my tradition, that would still be worship, that would be meaningful and rich and fulfilling. That would give people a true theological opportunity to deepen their faith and get to encounter God and the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ. But also didn't feel like I was crazy. Because I'm like, Oh, if I'm walking by and looking at this tent full of people, when I see this lady, like talking to folks in folding chairs, I, I need to be very confident. In what I'm doing so that I can withstand the, the, the gaze. A lot of my preaching right now is centered around what can I say outdoors? We have an opportunity in this incredibly, like, literally transparent environment to say things that people would not normally hear because they wouldn't set foot in a church building. And my preaching is geared for making sure that people, even as they pass by casually, or if they're parking for the Lakers game, and they happen to walk by, that they hear something that catches their attention, that might lead them to further questions about their relationship with God.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm making the connection to that. I think so many of us think that our audience is smaller than it is, and it might behoove so many of us to be thinking about the people that overhear or catch a glimmer, a soundbite on. Social media or on whatever platforms that you have particular challenges. being outside in your contextual setting. But gosh, it seems like a good invitation to be mindful for all of us of who's listening, who catches a
Speaker:tidbit. We're not into giving advice on, on this show, but but
Speaker 2:that's good advice.
Speaker:It's good advice. Like prepare, like you're preaching outside, like preach, like you preach as if everybody can hear you. Yeah, love that. Well, that
Speaker 3:was one of the big learning things for me. I served a church that had a really wide range of socioeconomic stati. Well, and I still do, right? Like a good number of people who come to my church are unhoused. And my bias is if I can't preach to the person who has nothing, I know business preaching to the person who has everything. My, my bias for my sermons and for the gospel is like, this has to preach to this person in particular. I can imagine in my mind. And if it doesn't preach to him, and like, maybe it misses the guy who's very wealthy and has everything he needs and is here because he's, you know, really, really drawn to try and deepen his faith, but his life experience is totally different. If my sermon can't connect with both of them in some way, even if it's comforting for one and convicting for the other then I don't feel like I've done a good job.
Speaker:So we do our homework on the, on the show. We, we tune in, we actually listen to the preachers that we invite on to preach. So as we make our turn to the next question what you've just described about your setting, like, so I watched, I think two sermons of yours, Mandy, and there was an interruption by, you said it was like, Hey, it's Oscar's weekend, we should expect all of these interruptions. And then like I heard. And you would just like, there were places that were Paul, you, you just stopped. So I'm sure you have plenty of these saved up. So what's your strangest or funniest preaching moment?
Speaker 3:I it's, it's kind of hard to narrow down. What you see on the live stream is so different because it doesn't pick up the external noise all the time. A lot of times we have to stop for sirens or fire engines because we're right on a major thoroughfare. And there's no way I can reach over that. We pause and then we use it as a chance to pray, right? Like there's a situation going on in the city right now. These are the people racing into the heart of it to go help someone who's in distress. So we're gonna pray for them in that situation, and that's how we like bite our time. So there was a woman who came to church well, no, she didn't come to church. There was a woman who had gone to a concert the night before. She'd had too much to drink and left her car in the parking lot very responsibly and took an Uber home. And the next morning when she returned to pick up her car, it had been towed because she was parked in the area that we segment off to set up worship. And she was furious. And No one was able to talk her down, and I literally had to stop mid sermon and go over and have a conversation with her about what we could do, where her car was, to thank her for being responsible, but also be like, I'm also, like, working, like, right now. The whole congregation of people are expecting me to wrap this up. So could we maybe talk about it in about 10 minutes? Would that be okay? I never expected to be interrupted by Like a semi, you know, very hungover, angry woman mid sermon who was like, relentless. And God bless her. She got her car back, but that was among the things I wasn't entirely prepared for.
Speaker 2:My goodness. I could probably listen to all your stories because I bet there are a million good, good, colorful ones. But I'm going to take it to a little bit of a more serious tone again for us. I'm wondering if there's something that you weren't taught that you've adopted into your preaching practice, maybe in the rhythm of your weeks of your development, definitely you're incorporating lots of things you weren't taught into your delivery and coping with interruptions or maybe it's something that's become significant to you in your post delivery routine. Is there something that you might share with us that you You weren't taught, but that you've adopted into your preaching life that's vital.
Speaker 3:This sounds really obvious, but like, when I stopped trying to take so much control over the direction of the sermon and trusted that the Holy Spirit would guide me in the preaching moment, I My sermons got so much better. Every now and then, I write plenty of sermons. I write them out. But most of the time on Sundays, especially in my setting, it's gotta be really fluid. And there have been a handful of times where like I've written a really good sermon and I thought, Oh, I've got a great sermon and I'll, I'll bring it and I'll use it. And if it's written, I tend to read more of it because I like that craft, right? Like I worked hard on those words. My son is a freshman in college and he's a cinematography student. So he runs our video department. So he runs the live streams, sets up everything and we'll be in the car on the way home. And he was like, mom, I didn't like it today. No one will be more honest with you than your immediate family. And I was like, really, you didn't? I was like, I was really proud of that. And he was like, yeah, but like, it's not the same. And I realized, like, I left no room for the Holy Spirit to interact in that preaching moment. I took total control of it. I was like, this is my manuscript and my words, and this is how it needs to sound. And I really appreciated that he was that honest and frankly, affirming, like my typical preaching style, which again is. Like we tailor it in the moment, when you look at your congregation and you see the people who you've spoken with all week long and you know are hurting or celebrating, right, like the seven year old who just lost their first tooth finally or whatever you want to have a good word to connect with them. And if I could go back and tell a former self, like, don't struggle over the manuscript, like do the work, do the prep, write out your notes, create an outline and trust that the Holy Spirit will guide you through this. This is also 21 years of experience, right? So I also trust my own experience that the good work I put in early on and continually is still there. Lovely.
Speaker:I love that. I'm going to ask you a question that, that's not in our the list of questions that we, we sent you, but I promise it's, it's an easy one. I'm thinking about just the different setting in which you preach. I'm wondering about your favorite place to prepare a sermon and what does that say about you?
Speaker 3:It's my car. My car is my office because my church doesn't have a building. And that's why, you know, You can see me. That's why I'm calling you from my home. So I don't have a church office. I wouldn't trade that for the universe because I love being one, able to do work from home is wonderful, but also it means I have to be out. in the community, interacting with people. I don't get bogged in and locked down into an office. It's expected for me to go out into the world. And I have a good relationship with my car. You know, like that's a quiet place for me. It's a sanctuary for me. It's where I scream. It's where I sing. It's where I pray. And so before the service if, if I don't have a full complete manuscript, I just want to review my notes in the outline. I'll go sit in the car in the parking lot. And wait, because I don't have anywhere else to go. But it's a, it's already a comfortable space for me. That's a, that's a little sacred spot where I can go and kind of self centered. I do a lot of preparation. My friend, Anna Carter Florence talked about dislocated exegesis, go and read the text in different places around town that always like worked on me. And in my setting, like everything is dislocated exegesis. So I'm grateful for that.
Speaker:Thanks for answering my softball or my wild card for you. So Mandy, as we start to draw our time to a close, the, the bridge serves preachers who are early in their career. What, what word would you like to leave for them?
Speaker 3:You were fully and completely equipped for this work. If you were not, you would not have been called. I don't know if you watched the documentary on We Are the World. It's phenomenal. I did. I loved every second of it. And there's a moment where Huey Lewis of all people, like you can just see people's imposter syndromes coming up person after person after person. I thought if the greatest singers of their time were all gathered in a room and they didn't feel like they had it, Bob Dylan wouldn't sing a note until Stevie Wonder like coaxed it out of him. Like we know they're talented. We should give ourselves the same credit that we are preachers. that's ever been called has said, No, Lord, not me. I don't have it. And God always says, Yes, you do. I made you wouldn't have called you to this work. You didn't have the gifts necessary. So trust yourself, trust the Holy Spirit, believe that your voice will speak uniquely to everybody who's got an ear to hear it may not be the people you expect. And in fact, that's kind of the beauty of it is that you're able to communicate something good about the love of God to people who might never have heard it before. That's
Speaker 2:such a good word.
Speaker:Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Thank, thank you for that. Oh, and thanks for that connection. I, I I watched that documentary maybe a month or two ago and I had not thought about it in that way. So thanks for making that connection. Now I want to go back and watch it again. Because that, that scene that you're describing where he's kind of bugging out is, is really poignant, right? Yeah. Oh, wow. Kind of bowled over here. So thank you for that. Thanks for joining us. We really appreciate the time that you've taken to, to hang out with us, to have this conversation, to reflect on your own preaching. So thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the invitation. This is such a gift. It's a gift for me to be invited. Thank you for asking my insights, but it's even more of a gift for the people that you are encouraging. So I appreciate being part of it. Thanks, Mandy.
Speaker:Lovely. Colleagues, friends, we would refer you to our website to find out more about the bridge Go to upsem. edu slash bridge. You can also find out more about us and connect with us online through social media on our Instagram and Facebook sites. The bridge is funded by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment's Compelling Preaching Initiative. You can find out more about that initiative and the lovely other grant programs that they have going now at compellingpreaching. org. We'll be back next month with another episode, and so until next time, we encourage you to preach faithfully, to preach boldly, to know that you are fully and completely equipped for this work, and that we are here for you in these early years of preaching. Take care.