This year’s offering for Fall Theological will go towards Canvas, an online resource and learning platform for rostered ministers and congregations of the South Dakota Synod. Pastor Sarah Goldammer explains what Canvas is in the short video below:

The Rev. Dr. Joy J. Moore will be this year’s guest speaker for the annual Fall Theological Conference held online on September 21, 2020. Dr. Moore is the Associate Professor of Biblical Preaching and the newly named Academic Dean at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minn. This year’s theme, “A Telling of the World: Preaching that Shapes Community,” focuses on the question of why to preach seems as urgent as what to preach as we consider the place of the church beyond 2020. Global pandemic, political crisis, community unrest, death, disease, and despair are no longer ancient myths as we all respond to flares of virus and violence near and far. What word can the Lutheran pulpit offer for such a time as this?

An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, Moore has been on the Luther Seminary faculty for the past year as associate professor of biblical preaching. Before joining Luther Seminary, she established the William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and served as its first associate dean. Previously, she was associate dean for church relations and associate dean for black church studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Immediately before coming to Luther, she pastored a historic African American United Methodist congregation in Flint, Michigan, whose service as a Community Help Center includes weekly distribution of water through the ongoing water crisis.

Moore has focused on cross-racial ministry in urban, rural, and suburban congregations. She is an “ecclesial storyteller” who seeks to encourage theologically framed, biblically attentive, and socially compelling interpretations of Christian scripture in order to understand the critical issues influencing community formation in contemporary culture. She grew up on Chicago’s South Side attending Commonwealth Community Church, where she was spiritually formed and experienced a call to Christian ministry.

Registration for this year’s conference opens on August 1.