Center for Excellence in Preaching Marks 10 Years

Now entering its 10th year, the Calvin Center for Excellence in Preaching offers pastors continuing educational opportunities and a wealth of online preaching resources.

Its focus is to spur preachers toward the common goal of proclaiming God’s Good News with the convicted clarity it deserves.

Rev. Scott Hoezee, a veteran preacher and teacher of preaching, has directed the center almost since its inception.

Hoezee says his greatest joy has been direct contact with pastors and future pastors, “talking about real-life challenges for preaching and then find[ing] ways to address those [issues].”

As the center has grown, web traffic visits to the center have become plentiful. An average of 400-600 pastors come to the site each day.

In 2013, the site reached 11,000 unique visitors each month and tallied more than 210,000 total visits for the year.

Although he does not see nor hear from from more than one percent of the people who come to the website, Hoezee says he is gratified that “those resources are being used in hundreds if not thousands of congregations every week. That is a deeply satisfying thing—a source of great gratitude to God.”

The center has several other accomplishments.

From 2009-2011, the center used a $200,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation to build a website of science-for-ministry related resources; continuing education events, and a book of essays entitled Delight in Creation: Scientists Share Their Work with the Church.

More recently, the center received a three-year grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The $500,000 grant begins this year and will focus on peer-learning groups for pastors and homiletical education for M.Div. students.

Especially significant has been the center’s flagship summer seminar, “Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching.”

More than 200 pastors from a variety of denominational backgrounds have attended throughout the seminar’s 10-year history.

Rev. Neal Plantinga, sixth president of Calvin Seminary, leads the seminar. His years of work with the seminar have culminated in a new book, Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists (Eerdmans, 2013). The book has just received a Christianity Today book award in the Church/Pastoral Leadership category.

“The seminars have changed my life,” Plantinga writes in the preface to Reading for Preaching. “Nothing in over 30 years of theological education has given me the joy of watching preachers discover the wonders within general literature and then imagine how to strengthen their preaching with them.”