The Endearing Power of Preaching | Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis
Will preaching endure? Will it outlast podcasts, TikTok clips, shrinking attendance, and AI that can draft a sermon outline in seconds? Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis, senior pastor of Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, says that is the wrong question. “Enduring” is a defensive word. The better question is whether preaching can endear the Gospel again to a culture taught to be suspicious of it.
In this morning's teaching session at the 5th Annual Midwest Gospel Preaching Summit, Dr. Curtis turns to the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35). There the risen Jesus asks a question before he preaches. He walks at the disciples’ pace, opens the Scriptures, and stays for supper. Their eyes are opened at the table. Dr. Curtis draws on 30 years with one congregation and on voices from Augustine and Barth to Howard Thurman and Gardner C. Taylor. His thesis is that a changing world needs more nearness, not less gospel.
What Dr. Curtis covers:
Five shifts in the room where we preach:
From assumed belief to contested belief (Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age)
From institutional trust to institutional suspicion (Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority)
From shared attention to fragmented attention (Sherry Turkle)
From a gospel of transformation to a gospel of therapy (Christian Smith, Kenda Creasy Dean)
From human authorship to machine assistance: what AI can generate, and what only a preacher can incarnate
The current beneath them all: pain
Four theological foundations: incarnation, love for the hearer, the witness of the Black preaching tradition, and the prophetic imagination
Six practices for endearing preaching: credibility, clarity, cultural fluency, compassion, courage, connection
He also offers a simple model of sermon movement (tension, correspondence, resolution) and closes with a candid Q&A. Topics include what to do when your words wound a listener, how a guest preacher can serve a pulpit that isn’t theirs, whether AI democratizes information or intellect, and how to pastor a neighborhood that may never walk through your doors.
“Use the tools for the road. But you can’t outsource the table.”
About the Summit
The Midwest Gospel Preaching Summit brings together preachers, pastors and ministry leaders committed to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and serving their communities. The 2026 theme was “Preach the Word: The Preacher’s Charge in a Changing World.” The Summit met October 7–9 in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Upper House Commons in partnership with Mt. Zion Baptist Church.