Engaging Social Issues from the Pulpit with Rev. Dr. Leah Schade | Reimagining Preaching

by Mar 18, 2025Transforming Engagement: the Podcast

 

If you’re a pastor wrestling with how to address social issues from the pulpit without dividing your congregation – or putting your job at risk – this episode is for you. Rev. Dr. Leah Schade brings practical wisdom and thoughtful insights on how to preach with courage and compassion in today’s polarized climate. Drawing from her extensive research and her new book Preaching and Social Issues: Tools and Tactics for Empowering Your Prophetic Voice, Leah shares insights on navigating difficult conversations from the pulpit. 

She offers practical strategies for pastors seeking to address social issues in ways that build bridges rather than deepen divisions. With a focus on dialogue, Leah encourages pastors to invite their congregations into thoughtful conversations that uncover shared values and inspire collective action. This episode is a must-listen for pastors who want to speak boldly about justice and social issues while still nurturing connection and trust within their congregations. Leah’s insights offer both encouragement and practical tools to help you engage your community in meaningful ways — without losing your voice or your pastoral relationships.

About This Season, “Reimagining Preaching”:

This season, we’re exploring how the church can proclaim the good news in our time by reimagining preaching. Host Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas is joined by experts in the preaching craft—leaders who think deeply and dream boldly about how we can bring a liberated witness to the pulpit and the world. As you listen to this season, please let us know what you think. We value your feedback and questions!

About Our Guest:

Rev. Dr. Leah Schade is an Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary She was also the President of the Academy of Homiletics for the 2024 term. An ordained Lutheran minister (ELCA) for nearly twenty-five years, Leah earned both her MDiv and PhD degrees from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (now United Lutheran Seminary).  She has pastored congregations in suburban, urban, and rural contexts and has been a community organizer and activist for environmental issues for more than a decade. Dr. Schade served as President of the Academy of Homiletics in 2024.  She has authored seven books and is conducting a longitudinal research study about ministry, preaching, and social issues that has surveyed nearly 3,000 clergy and 1,000 laity since 2017. She is the EcoPreacher blogger for Patheos writing about religion, culture, politics, environmental justice and other social issues. She is also co-founder of the Clergy Emergency League, a network of more than 3,000 pastors throughout the U.S. who provide support, accountability, resources, and networking for clergy to prophetically minister in their congregations and the public square in this time of political upheaval, social unrest, and partisan division.  

You can connect with Leah on the following social media accounts:

Related Resources:

  • Are you a preacher in the U.S.? You can help Dr. Schade and her team with their research studying ministry, preaching, and social issues by filling out this survey.

  • Thinking of addressing social issues in a sermon? Preachers can take this 5-minute assessment of their strengths and vulnerabilities here.

Continue the Conversation at the Reimagining Preaching Conference: May 3, 2025

Join the Center for Transforming Engagement in Shoreline, Washington, for this skills-based conference equipping clergy, church staff, and lay preachers to bring the Word to life in Cascadia. Learn more and register at: https://transformingengagement.org/preaching-conference/. 

 

Episode Transcript

Seth: Welcome to Transforming Engagement, the podcast where we hold conversations about changes that serve the common good and the higher good. Hi, I am the Reverend Dr. Seth Thomas, and This season we’re hosting conversations about how the church can proclaim the good news in our time as we explore re-imagining preaching. I’m joined by experts in the preaching craft, folks who think deeply and dream boldly about how we can bring a liberated witness to the pulpit and to the world. 

Today I’m joined by the Reverend Dr. Leah Schade. Leah is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary. In 2024, she also held the role of President of the Academy of Homiletics. Leah is the author of a number of books on preaching and its role in speaking to social issues in our world today. One of her books, Preaching in the Purple Zone, is popular title, ministry in the red-blue divide, and her newest book, Preaching and Social Issues: Tools and Tactics for Empowering Your Prophetic Voice. It’s just released this year, 2025. Leah, welcome to the podcast and I’m excited to chat today.

Leah: Thanks so much, Seth. It’s great to be with you.

Seth: Great. Well, I would love to dive in and simply just open up a conversation about your book because I think that’s going to lead us in lots of interesting directions, but preaching and social issues. How do we preach in a time like the one we live in and how do we speak to our congregations about issues that really matter to them while also tying this deeply to our professed faith? 

Leah: Thanks for that question, Seth. I’ve been researching preaching and social issues for, oh my gosh, probably about eight or nine years now, and I’m very interested in how preachers navigate the red-blue divides, so the political divides in congregations in order to talk about the issues that are important to their congregants, to their communities and to the larger world. We know that the Bible compels us to talk about the issues that affect God’s people and God’s creation, and yet when preachers talk about these issues, they often get backlash from either their own congregants or people in power who are not happy with being held accountable or being shown a different way to think about things that have to do with God’s justice and righteousness. And pastors are sometimes stuck in a position where they really, they want to preach the gospel, they want to preach about God’s justice, but they also want to keep their jobs and they want to maintain their pastoral relationships with their congregants so that there is a good exchange and there isn’t a stopping of the ears and a shutting of the heart from these messages.

So I have been studying what is effective and helping pastors not just preach about these issues, but also have dialogue with their congregations about the topics that matter to them in a way that helps to identify common values, common ground, shared goals, discern how the Bible and theology and ethics inform that, and then how to craft a sermon in such a way that it will be heard by the congregation and not just refused because well, the pastor is “preaching politics.” So that’s the kind of thing that I’ve been researching and been conducting surveys and talking with pastors for many years to find out what’s useful in different contexts given all of these different variables.

Seth: Leah, I mean, what I hear in this is it’s almost like a game of chess. We’re trying to understand how to move the pieces in a proper way that allows the moves to flow and our preaching to be actively engaged by our congregants, but within some rules or some boundaries that allow them to hear it and play well together. That’s the image that comes to mind a little bit.

Leah: That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about it like that before. I definitely like the idea of there being boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not helpful. Probably wouldn’t go all the way with the metaphor of chess because chess informs winners and losers. But instead, what we’re trying to do in preaching about social issues is to follow God’s call to discern what is the word that needs to be proclaimed? How can we inspire our congregants to act in a way that furthers the beloved community and how can we do that so that we can build relationships with each other and not be split apart the way our culture and our society right now is trying to do? We’re seeing polarization weaponized at such an extreme level that it’s very hard to find ways to bring people together, even to have civil conversation, even to sit through a sermon that might be challenging initially, but is faithful and it’s biblical and it’s spiritual. So how can we build those bridges, invite people back to the table in order to encounter God’s presence and God’s word through preaching and ministry?

Seth: I love it. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways you’re seeing people engage those opportunities for dialogue? How are people calling people from their congregations together? How are pastors forming these spaces with their congregants? Talk a little bit about that.

Leah: One of the ways that pastors are bringing people together is through their connections in the community. Pastors will connect with other clergy either through interfaith, multifaith or ecumenical ways, and they might share a common goal of helping those most vulnerable in their community, whether that’s through building houses or a community feeding program or helping international citizens who are just coming to this country and need to be welcomed. So partnering along the lines of faith so that we can see where are the connections that help us to expand and develop our ministry beyond a single congregation, because we can do so much more together than we can ever do alone.

Another way in which I’m seeing pastors do this is by talking with other leaders in the community outside of the realm of faith. So talking with, say, the local mayor or local elected officials or leaders of other groups that are helping others. So immigration and refugee resettlement services. The local police actually can sometimes be helpful for congregations that maybe are getting some backlash in the community and they need to figure out how can we protect ourselves while still doing this work. So making those connections along the way helps to create, create a web of connectedness and solidarity so that when pastors are engaging these topics and congregations are doing this work, it’s not just a lone ranger out there, but they know that they’re doing this together with others who have their backs and who want to see their communities flourish.

Seth: So what I’m wondering is that, is there opportunities congregants, members of our communities who have active lives out in the civic sphere to help build those bridges and to help us within the church go outside our walls, people who are in our congregations, who are throughout the week working in these city centers or working in the business world, how can those existing relationships help us grow that network?

Leah: That’s a great question, Seth. One of the things that I have been privileged to do is work with clergy and congregations on developing methods of dialogue about social issues. So the seminary where I teach, Lexington Theological Seminary, we got a grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion to test the sermon dialogue sermon process that I developed for the book Preaching in the Purple Zone. And in this process, a pastor begins this by preaching a sermon that invites people to consider the scriptural and theological and ethical implications of a particular topic, whether it is immigration or climate change or the opioid crisis, whatever it is, with the idea that they’re being invited to a dialogue. And the dialogue is called, it’s a form of civil discourse called deliberative dialogue, where you bring people together from different constituencies within the church and out in the community, different ages, different races, different walks of life, different cultures so that you can look at an issue from different perspectives, think about the pros and cons of different approaches to that issue and discern what are the shared values of the common ground that you have so that you can then determine what are next steps you could take on this issue.

And then there’s a follow-up sermon called the Prophetic Proclamation, the Communal Prophetic Proclamation, where the pastor takes the insights that came out of this dialogue and weaves it into a sermon to say, here’s how we saw God’s spirit moving among us on this issue in order to help us determine where we might go from here. So we tested this process by bringing together 10 clergy, and they were each asked to bring one congregational leader who was of a different political orientation than they were. So that’s really important. So we had political diversity in the room and we trained both the pastors and the lay leaders how to moderate a deliberative dialogue. With the idea that then they would go back to their congregations and try this method and see what difference did it make in the congregation’s capacity for civil dialogue and social engagement.

So one of the things that we found is that the lay leaders really took to the role of being the moderators in the dialogue, and the pastors took the role of being the note takers so they could truly be listening. So it empowered the lay leaders to use their gifts and their skills and their connections again within the community and within the congregation to bring people together to have these dialogues. And what we found is that the congregations that did this, not just once or twice, but kind of kept doing it on their own, even after the grant period ended, those congregations had ripple effects in their communities and they became sort of a nexus point for people to come together and have these kinds of conversations about challenging issues so that the community could be built up instead of torn apart. So yes, absolutely. People in congregations who are interested in learning these skills and exercising these skills and utilizing the connections they already have in their communities are a huge asset for congregations to be engaging in deliberative dialogue.

Seth: Wow, I love that. And one of the focuses of the Center for Transforming Engagement is to equip people to do very much what you’re describing there. We want to empower not only clergy, but lay leaders together to engage with one another in healthier, more deliberate, I guess would be a word I could use, dialogues about the issues we face about the discernment of the future for their congregation or for their social enterprise or what have you. We need to transform the way we relate to one another because those divides like you’re describing, they’re only going to get deeper if we don’t figure out how to connect with one another in a different way.

Leah: Exactly. And what we’re seeing now, especially given our very strained political situation, is that even the idea of dialogue with somebody who may be of a different political party or just a different political affiliation than you are is seen as a betrayal of your group.

Well, that’s not helpful if you’re trying to learn how to live together in community. So, we have ask ourselves who’s benefit from these divides when we know there’s so much more that actually joins us together as human beings, as citizens, as people who live on this planet that God has entrusted to us. So what we found is that once people learn that you can have a dialogue about a challenging issue in a way that has ground rules so that people are respecting them and that people know that they’re not going to beat up and be beat up, or that they’re not going to be shamed, but they’re really going to wrestle with these issues in a profound way, then they become open to doing that in the future.

Seth: Tell us more about your research and how that is expanding in this particular way.

Leah: My team and I have been researching preaching ministry and social issues since 2017. We knew that we were hearing stories from pastors who were getting negative feedback about their sermons that were engaging social issues, and we wanted to get some data on this. So we have been sending out survey waves to get a sense of how clergy in the United States are navigating this very fraught time. So we did a survey wave in 2017, 2021, 2023, and we are conducting one right now, actually during the first 100 days of the new administration. And what we found is that it is very difficult for some pastors who would like to preach about how the Bible relates to and impacts, and it is impacted by social issues, but there are some factors that make them more vulnerable than others. So for example, pastors who are female pastors who are in rural congregations, pastors who are of a different political orientation than say the majority of their church pastors of color in white congregations, all of them would like to say more, but according to the surveys are more hesitant because of the backlash that they’ve received in terms of either angry words or emails, people not coming to church, people threatening to withhold their financial giving or even threatening the job of the pastor themselves.

So one of the things that I’ve been trying to help pastors think about is how they can approach preaching about social issues in a way that is faithful, but is appropriate to their context. So I developed an assessment tool based on the research that we’ve been doing to help preachers assess their personal strengths and vulnerabilities, their congregation strengths and vulnerabilities, and the strengths and vulnerabilities in the relationships between the pastor and the congregation and the congregation members themselves. So this test, this little assessment tool, it’s in the book Preaching and Social Issues, it’s also available for free online. It takes like five or six minutes to fill it out, and when you take this, it gives you a score and tells you what might be the best approach for you to address these issues. And so I developed a threefold approach to this. So one is the gentle approach, the other is a third, a second is the invitational, and a third is robust, and there’s no one way to go about addressing these important issues.

It’s about thinking in terms of where is my congregation’s vulnerability right now? Have they just come through a very difficult time either with lots of losses from death or maybe the local factory shut down? Or maybe there was in the past some problems with previous pastors that makes the level of brittleness higher than say, a congregation that has been pretty stable, has good amount of money in the bank to sustain their ministry, so they’re not really feeling anxious about that. The pastor and the congregation have a high level of trust so that pastor might be able to be a little more invitational or even robust in their approach to a sermon on social issues.

Seth: I want you to go and expand on those a little more. But before you do, I just want to say that I think as we listen to your stories of backlash and responses, I feel as a pastor a sense comradery or relief in a sense that I’m like, oh, I’m not alone. When I feel those or when I hear those things, I’m trying to do this and I get this response. It’s nice to know that others are in it together, that we’re allies trying to find a way forward in this.

Leah: That’s a really important point, Seth, because not only does our data bear this out, but also I’m the co-founder of an organization called the Clergy Emergency League, which is a network of pastors and seminarians and seminary professors and leaders in the church. We started in 2020 to help these leaders think about how to do ministry in the midst of a very tumultuous time of political upheaval, white Christian nationalism, the threat of authoritarianism. So our network provides support and resources and networking. And in the almost five years that we have been interacting through our monthly meetings and through our webinars and our Facebook group, one of the things that we hear most often from these pastors is how much they appreciate knowing that there are other people out there, other pastors who understand what they’re going through, especially if they’re a pastor in an area where they are getting backlash.

It’s very easy to feel isolated, to feel like it must be me instead of recognizing the larger systemic issues and to be able to connect and share ideas for ministry or at least just commiserate as you had said, knowing that you’re not in this alone. I will tell you just in the survey that we’re running right now, and we’re right in the midst of it. So for those of you listening in the show notes, there is a link to the survey and we would love for you to participate as well. But I can tell you that the stress level for pastors right now is through the roof. We’re finding that so far 60% are reporting feelings of exhaustion and frustration. 90% are reporting high levels of stress and 68% are reporting that they are feeling burned out. So these are concerning numbers when you think about what pastors have to go through and what they’re dealing with, and they’re trying their hardest to be faithful servants of the church and servants of God, and this is the kind of atmosphere they’re trying to do this work in. It’s really important to maintain connections with other clergy colleagues.

Seth: That’s striking data and remind us all, I mean, that’s within three weeks or four weeks of gathering.

Leah: Yeah, we launched the survey the day after the inauguration. And so these numbers are very concerning. We have close to 700 respondents so far. We’re hoping to get 2000 within the first hundred days so we can get a sort of a snapshot of what it’s like right now to do ministry. And so people understand that pastors are really on the front lines of dealing with the executive orders that have come down that have said that congregations are no longer safe places for those who do not have documentation but still want to worship God. There have been attacks on some denominations saying that they are money laundering for the services that they’re providing, that the government contracted them for. I mean, this puts a target on all churches when the administration says these kinds of lies about churches. So it is a very difficult time for pastors to do their work.

Seth: And I would be really curious to know as you finish this round of survey and go back to the previous ones, how it compares. I imagine you’re going to be doing some comparative work with this, correct?

Leah: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We’re going to track these stress levels over the last several years to see. I will also say that when we did the survey in 2020, and I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but the stress level for pastors in the time of COVID was also through the roof because pastors were trying to figure out how to do ministry online. They were doing pastoral care without being able to be in person. They were conducting some of them multiple funerals from people dying of COVID. It was a very, very difficult time for these pastors. That was just four years ago. And now we have another wave of very stressful situations. Even looking at Bishop Budde’s sermon, the Episcopal bishop at the inauguration, and the kind of backlash that she received simply for preaching the gospel and doing what so many people in scripture have done, which is to appeal to the authority figure for mercy on behalf of those most vulnerable. Well, her message was biblical and it was completely on point. It was completely in line with the gospel and the kind of backlash and threats that she received has just, I mean, I think it’s really been a wake up call, not just for pastors but their congregations to say, oh, so the kinds of things that you’ve been preaching to us every week, if it’s done in a particular situation, it really puts you at risk.

Seth: Thank you. As a pastor who worked through COVID with my congregation, I mean, everything you just described just hits so close to home in so many good ways. It’s… your work is helping pastors and congregations feel seen, I imagine.

Leah: That is our hope. Yes. There aren’t a lot of surveys there like this for us to capture, to get a snapshot of what it’s been like. And we also ask things like, what topics are you talking about? And we’ve given them a list of everything from abortion to climate change to guns to racism, to everything in between. And we ask, are you preaching about these? If you aren’t, why not? What are you planning to preach about? And it’s been fascinating to watch certain topics trend and other ones kind of fade. For example, environmental issues used to be really low on the priority list for pastors. And this one, we did it in 2017, but when we did the survey, I haven’t looked at the numbers for 2024, but when we did the survey two years ago, 70% of pastors said that they were now addressing things like climate change and environmental issues. That’s a huge jump. And I think it reflects what, not just that our society is seeing this more, but the congregations themselves are being affected by these climate driven weather events and these threats. And so it’s no longer, well, it’s in somebody else’s backyard. It’s in our sometimes literally our church’s backyard, the flooding, the wildfires, environmental pollution. So it’s really interesting to see what pastors are reporting about how they’re bringing scripture and theology to bear on these topics that are affecting their communities.

Seth: And I want to remind us all that you’re speaking about purple congregations, worlds that, or communities that are not homogenous necessarily in one way or the other and span the spectrum. I mean, you’re offering an open survey, so pastors and congregants from across the denominational spectrum and political divides could be your respondents. So you’re telling us that, widespread, we have these issues?

Leah: Yes. And just to be clear, we’re asking preachers in this survey, we have done congregational surveys in the past. We’ve done them with Disciples of Christ congregations and we’ve done, we’ve done them with United Methodist congregations. We’re not currently conducting those right now. These are strictly for those who are preachers. But yes, what we’re fighting, regardless of whether you are serving in a suburban, urban or rural, whether you’re male or female, whether you are a person of color or person who is white, the stress level across the board is very high, but it’s higher for those who are most vulnerable.

Seth: Say a little more about that, the vulnerability piece, because I want us to highlight and recognize that when we preach and speak of liberation, we must pay attention to the least of these, the ones who are struggling, the ones who are feeling the push. So talk about that a bit.

Leah: There are some pastors who are serving in congregations where their very bodies are confronting their congregations with difference and the realities of oppression. So congregations that are maybe having a female minister for the first time, that can trigger all kinds of things about whether women should even be in ministry or should even be preaching. Pastors of color who are serving in white congregations have to deal with all kinds of different levels and manifestations of micro racism or outright statements or actions against them because of their race. LGTBQIA pastors, especially with the administration’s attack on trans individuals, those pastors who are either trans themselves or are trying to minister to those congregations, they are being targeted in such an extreme way that they’re feeling their own safety threatened just by getting into the pulpit. So it’s really important that we understand that these are human beings and they’re God’s children who have responded to the call to minister in their communities, to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted and to proclaim release to the captives. And when they get pushback either externally or internally from that, what’s happening is people are actually responding to the word of God and the pastor becomes the lightning rod, but it’s really God’s word of justice and righteousness that people are pushing back against. So I think that’s very telling, but it also, it does not in any way diminish the lived experience of fear and frustration and stress and just being burned out, having to deal with this every day, every Sunday.

Seth: Thank you. That’s powerful in the way that you’re able to focus in on the real felt experience of the preacher who has to, Sunday always comes, you come back to it yet again. And so many folks I imagine want to at some level just walk away from this because of the pain and the attack, but there’s this compulsion I have to go back. I’ve been called to this work, and so how do I do it in a way that’s going to make an impact? And that’s where I want to. I’m curious if you would go into the three different categories of how to approach these issues, because I think the gentle, invitational and robust really do give some entry points for how to speak about these issues. So talk to us about that.

Leah: Yeah, sure. Because I’ll just say in addition to feeling frustrated and burned out, we also find paradoxically that they’re still really committed to ministry. These pastors, this is not just a job, this is a call. It is, they have discerned a call from God and from the church to do this work. So sometimes all it takes is just a few parishioners to say, I see you. I’ve got your back. I know you’re struggling, but you’re doing the work and we’re here for you. That can make all the difference. And I’m speaking as a pastor who I’ve been ordained since 2000 and I’ve pastored three different congregations and I’ve been doing this kind of work, and sometimes it’s just like maybe two or three individuals who are really giving you a lot of pushback, but if nobody else speaks up and says, we’re with you, that’s really hard.

So the three different approaches each have three strategies within them to help pastors address social issues. So in the gentle category, when I say gentle, I don’t mean like the tone of your voice. I mean, you’re in a situation where maybe you’re new to the congregation or maybe the congregation has dealt with some stressful situations, and so they have a sunburn, so to speak, and you don’t want to touch that sunburn real hard. You need to be gentle with it, but you still need to apply the lotion. Right? Okay. So the three strategies here are first of all to name the issue and frame it biblically. If we don’t ground ourselves in scripture, then we’re really just, we are just giving political talks. So it has to be grounded in scripture and theology. Also, you can share your own struggles with the issue. One of the things that congregation members have reported is that they don’t like to be preached at or shamed for what they have discerned to be their righteous positions. So a pastor modeling vulnerability and discernment can be really helpful. And then standing with the congregation and voicing the feelings. A lot of times these seem like intellectual disagreements about things, but scratch beneath the surface a little bit. And you’re going to find that there are very strong emotions, and these are gifts from God. Emotions are gifts from God. And so when we maim them and say, there are people feeling afraid, there are people feeling triumphant, there are people feeling hesitant. Just naming those is really important.

Then if you’re in a congregation where it’s a little more stable and you feel like you’re in a position where you can be a little bit stronger, you might go into the invitational category. And the three strategies here are to tell stories to create empathy. So people are moved by stories. We’re a storied people. The Bible is made up of stories. So when we tell stories that help us understand the humanity of people who are affected by certain policies, that can be really helpful. A second strategy is when I’ve already described the sermon dialogue, sermon process, so I won’t go into that again. And then another strategy is what I call history, mission, future, and that’s where you help remind the congregation of like, this is how you were founded, where you came from, sort of your spiritual DNA, and here’s been your mission all along. So your call to whatever participate in a homeless shelter or start a new ministry to help with addictions, this is actually part of your DNA. So framing it that way.

And then the third category is what I call the robust category. And this is where the congregation and the pastor don’t need to be convinced to address these issues. They are ready to get to work and do the actions. So one strategy is simply be blunt and bold. Be blunt about what the situation is, but be bold about the gospel and what God has said about these kinds of things. A second one is to collaborate before, during, and after. So gathering people in the congregation, some of those community members we were talking about earlier, who are doing this work, have the insights, can inform the pastor who can then integrate that into the sermon, do some listening sessions, so it’s really collaborative. And then the third one is to equip people for justice. There are pastors who are in congregations that are right now being targeted by immigration agents and by right wing hate groups. These are congregations that need to be equipped for justice. They don’t need to be convinced they’re living with this every day. And so the pastor’s job is to absolutely speak to this. It’s not a question of, it’s a question of how and what can I do to best them spiritually, emotionally, biblically and physically to do this work?

Seth: Equipping and empowering our congregations. It’s so key in this. And really what I hear in that robust strategy is the opportunity to give people the tools to go out and be the gospel in the world. And that’s what we have always been as the church, but in this particular state or place in time, we want to give better tools for particular ways to respond, and equip people with the gospel and the good news of the scriptures. That is a tool in order to work with and see, look, this is the story I’m from and I will live with this story as my guide.

Leah: I love that. That’s beautiful.

Seth: Well, yeah, this has been wonderful conversation. I think so many different tools and ways for us to start thinking about how to have more deliberate, more engaged conversations with our communities in order to bring this witness into the here and now and use our voices to speak up where it needs to be spoken. I wonder if you’d like to share a little bit more about how you’re offering some of the support with this Clergy Emergency League and how we can plug in with that or connect more to your work.

Leah: Absolutely. In the show notes, you can see the link to clergyemergencyleague.com, and this is something that is available to anyone who is a leader in the church, whether you’re a priest or a deacon or a seminarian or a pastor. This group is for you. And if you are looking for a network of other clergy who are doing this work, we have weekly lectionary studies. We have monthly member meetings where just for example, we talked about how people are doing ministry during these first hundred days, how pastors can equip their congregations with the new immigration orders, how congregations can protect themselves with digital security, because that has also been a situation. So we do meetings for our members.

We are partnered with the Wisconsin Council of Churches, and so we do webinars with them on how we can navigate different issues, whether it is dealing with threats and doxing or against pastors and congregations. How do you do that? We did a webinar on that. We did one on how to look at Christian nationalism and how to address that in congregations. So we’ve got lots of resources. We have a very active Facebook group that people can join. Again, this is just for clergy and there are vetting questions. So you would have to answer those in order to gain an entrance, but we now have more than 3,000 in our network. And so we have a very robust group that is engaging these issues, doing it together, doing it faithfully, and engaging them in solidarity with their fellow clergy.

Seth: Well, I want to encourage everyone who’s listening that’s clergy or hears this category and says, yes, that’s me. Please go sign up and get involved with this as well. I think we need your work for sure.

Leah: Thank you.

Seth: As well, remember that in the show notes, there is a link to the survey and it’s perfect time to go fill that out and make sure that your voice is added to the data. And I know many folks who hear about this are going to want to know how to follow along with your results and how to pay attention to these data points that you’re able to collect. So thank you Leah, for this.

Leah: Yeah, absolutely. You can follow me on Blue Sky. I’m there. You can also follow my blog. I’m on Patheos. I’m the eco preacher, E-C-O-P-R-E-A-C-H-E-R. I do lots of reporting on the results from these surveys. And I will say the survey is anonymous and only takes about 15 minutes, but this is a chance for if you are a preacher, for you to share what it’s like for you right now trying to preach about social issues or do any kind of ministry on social issues during these first 100 days of the new administration.

Seth: Thank you so much for all that you’ve shared and for this offering of resources for clergy and their communities in order to speak up about social issues, to engage in real dialogue and to build stronger networks of care and community. So thank you so much for today.

Leah: You’re very welcome, Seth. This has been a great conversation and I hope helpful to a lot of people.

Seth: Thank you.