The Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep in creation and over the campus of VTS in the Deep Calls to Deep Residency, 2023! While twenty preachers gathered for five days at VTS to work with six different presenters the Holy Spirit created ONE unified experience.
Uncoordinated between the preachers, speakers, and workshop leaders each sermon or lecture or activity directly interlinked. Our opening lecture,“Seeing the Image of God in Black”, grounded us in the creation story from Genesis 1 that was also the scripture for our opening sermon and then propelled us into Biblical Storytelling which included both being made in the image of God and jazz, linking directly to the session on “Preaching and Jazz.” Jazz engaged creativity and movement like that of our experience of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Creation Lesson and our “Proclamation and Liturgical Dance” session. Our liturgical dance presenter was also our final preacher who called at the last minute to share that God had led her to change the scripture on which she was preaching to the creation story from Genesis 1.
And so under the amazing guidance of the Holy Spirit, preachers from Texas to Maryland, lay and ordained, experienced and new, Baptist and Episcopalian, came to be one community of siblings in Christ renewing their preaching passion. It was glorious!
– The Rev. B. Cayce Ramey, ’12
Project Coordinator, Deep Calls to Deep
Lifelong Learning at Virginia Theological Seminary