Graduate Preaching Fellowship

Back in December, I submitted a proposal to Luther Seminary in the hopes that my idea would be chosen out of a list of qualified applicants. A few months later, I received a call from one of my favorite professors at Luther Seminary, Karoline Lewis. She excitedly said, "Amber, the preaching faculty and a few other staff have met in review of the applicants, and I am pleased to announce you are the 2010-2011 recipient of the Graduate Preaching Fellowship!” I was in Herberger's at the time trying to contain my excitement while gripping the clearance rack. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! A few of the other applicants were friends, so I knew either way would've been either a). excited for my friend, b). excited for ME! I can’t lie, I was thrilled to be honored with such an amazing opportunity.

My proposal was entitled "visual preaching." A study of how people in other countries interpret Bible stories based on where they live and what they see around them. My hope is to talk to Christians and non-Christians to hear where they see themselves within a biblical text and how they interpret the texts. I am going to use four specific texts and ask the same questions everywhere. With that information, I will try to find correlation to what they say and what I see in the people, buildings, homes, and environments around them. My eye and my camera will be doing the second part. My wildest dream is to come back and publish a book with what I discovered. Incase you're wondering where we're off to, here's a loose itinerary of our trip:

September-December (Hong Kong)


Late Dec-Early Jan (back to MN to love on my nieces!)


January-February (India)


February-April (Jerusalem)


April-May (England)


June-July (Sweden)

For those of you wondering: Kevin is coming along, and will be resigning from his church at the end of July. It's hard to process all the emotions that go along with leaving home for a year, letting my growing photography business take the back burner, leaving a church Kevin loves, and planning a wedding and year-long honeymoon. Excitement, sadness, joy, gratitude, fear. I could go on.

Oh, last thing: I will definitely be keeping a blog as we discover, meet people, fly, live, eat amazing food, and experience the first year of marriage in far away lands. Once that gets created, I'll give you a heads up so you can feel free to follow our journey as we take it. Exciting for sure!

Here's what you can do to help me: offer suggestions for texts from the Bible you think would be interesting to hear interpretation on. Just a reminder, both Christians and non-Christians will be involved in this study, so they need to be stories both groups of people can easily understand. Let me know what you think!!