Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy 2020

Vice-Presidential Address Irrelevant Wisdom: NAAL at the Margins Rev. Dr. Gennifer Benjamin Brooks Gennifer Benjamin Brooks holds the Styberg chair in Preaching and is the tenured Ernest and Bernice Styberg Professor of Preaching, Director of the Styberg Preaching Institute and the Doctor of Ministry Program at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She is also the Dean of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools (ACTS) Doctor of Ministry in Preaching program. An ordained elder and full clergy member of the New York Conference of the United Methodist Church, she has pastored local churches in rural, suburban, urban and cross-racial settings.

Thank you, Bruce, for your kind introduction and for the graceful spirit that shines through you. Let me also express my thanks to the members of the AC with whom I’ve had the privilege of working this past year, as well as the presidents and AC with whom I served previously as delegate for Membership. And I guess I should thank Richie Braidenstein for this position in which I find myself. It was she who approached me with the request to allow her to put my name forward for Vice President. I really agreed just to stop her whining about why I had to do it, and also to get Andrew Wymer, who insisted that I could not say no to the request, to stop nagging me about it. Thanks both of you, my dear friends.

I owe my introduction to this academy to Ed Philipps, who was my colleague at Garrett-Evangelical; in fact, he was a member of the Search Committee that hired me, and the first person to tell me about NAAL. Not only that, but he brought me to my first meeting. I don’t remember where it was, perhaps Louisville, but I met him in Garrett’s parking lot and we drove there. He welcomed me into his seminar and ensured that I knew the ropes. Because so many walked by without a smile or a glance for someone who was obviously a newcomer, I remember well those who spoke to me at those early meetings—Glen Byer, who approached me with his beautiful smile, and has continued to do so at every meeting; and Michael Prendergast, who took pity on me when I lingered at his booth and even invited me to sit at the same table at the banquet, and has always taken time to say a word to me at these meetings. It took a lot of determination to decide to not stay away after I ran the gauntlet of a body of people to most of whom I was totally oblivious,