Notes
1 Lisa L. Thompson, Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018). Thompson deals in detail with challenges to Black women who are called to preach and to pastoral ministry and offers responses that enable imaginative and faithful proclamation of the gospel by Black women preachers.
2 I use a capitalized form deliberately for the “Black Church” and the common rendition of black for racial identification.
3 Thompson, xi.
4 Thompson.
5 BCWUMC is an organization that exists to provide support for Black women clergy in their life and ministry in The United Methodist Church. Members gather annually in a three-day meeting that includes training, worship and strategy sessions.
6 C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Churches in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1990), 1.
7 Lincoln and Mamiya, 276.
8 Thompson, xii.
9 Lincoln and Mamiya, 279.
10 Ibid.
11 This story is representative of an actual experience, but names have been omitted deliberately.
12 Teresa L. Fry Brown, Can a Sistah Get a Little Help: Encouragement for Black Women in Ministry (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2008), xxiv.
13 Jacquelyn Grant, “Womanist Jesus and the Mutual Struggle for Liberation,” in The Recovery of Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration: Essay in Honor of Dr. Charles B. Copher, ed. Randall C. Bailey and Jacqueline Grant (Eugene, OR: WIPF & Stock, 1995), 130.
14 Thompson, 11.
15 Brown, 32.
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Notes on contributors
Gennifer Benjamin Brooks
Gennifer Benjamin Brooks is the Styberg Professor of Preaching, Styberg Preaching Institute Director & Doctor of Ministry Program Director, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, and Dean of the Assoc. of Chicago Theological Schools DMin in Preaching.