Introduction to the Vice-Presidential Address

Bruce T. Morrill, S.J.

Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, is the Edward A. Malloy Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Gennifer Benjamin Brooks holds the Styberg Chair in Preaching and is the tenured Ernest and Bernice Styberg Professor of Preaching at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. With that appointment she became the first black clergy woman to hold a chair at a United Methodist seminary. At Garret, she is Director of the Styberg Preaching Institute and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program, while also serving as Dean of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools’ Doctor of Ministry in Preaching program. Earlier, she served four years as Assistant Dean of New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

After a years-long, successful career in design and development-management of business computer systems, Gennifer turned to a vocation in full-time ministry. As 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. She pursued her scholarly career in the Liturgical Studies program at Drew University, where she was awarded the degrees, Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy.

The Rev. Dr. Brooks is a well-known and sought-after workshop and retreat leader in the area of homiletics and worship, which work has most recently taken her to Myanmar, South Korea, and Sweden. She developed a training program for local preachers in the North Trinidad Circuit of the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas, while her own preaching voice has been heard in several of those countries, as well as such farther reaches as South Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Scandinavia.

Dr. Brooks has authored four books and edited a fifth, in addition to contributing to numerous lectionary commentaries and collective volumes on worship and preaching. She has exercised her artistic creativity as lyricist for several songs in two worship books, while her practical-pastoral passion has her actively researching the worship rituals of a community of the African diaspora.

Our colleague Gennifer is currently completing two preaching manuscripts, one addressing the subject of Preaching and the Margins, and the other, Preaching and the Holy Spirit. This evening she brings her present scholarly focus on marginality in relation to ecclesial mission and preaching to bear on the life and work of our Academy. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Gennifer Brooks as she delivers the Vice-presidential Address, “Irrelevant Wisdom: NAAL and the Margins.”