During the spring semester of 2021, the Chapel continues its tradition of compelling preaching with the schedule of guest preachers given below. See the Chapel's calendar for a full schedule of worship services, including dates when Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery and other Chapel ministers will preach.
A recent archive of services is available on the Chapel website and a podcast of sermons is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The Living Tradition online resource presents insights into the rich and deep tradition of preaching at the Chapel through the expertise of Duke Divinity School faculty, research by Duke students, and the reflections of renowned preachers. Duke Libraries' maintains the Duke Chapel Recordings collection of Chapel services from 1946 to 2002.
January 10, 2021 – The Rev. Dr. Will Willimon
The Rev. Dr. Will Willimon is a professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School. A bishop in the United Methodist Church, Professor Willimon served as the dean of Duke Chapel and professor of Christian ministry at Duke University for twenty years. He returned to Duke after serving as the bishop of the North Alabama Conference from 2004 to 2012. Willimon is the author of seventy books. His
Worship as Pastoral Care was selected as one of the ten most useful books for pastors in 1979 by the Academy of Parish Clergy. More than a million copies of his books have been sold. His most recent book
PreachersDare: Speaking for God incorporates some of his preaching at Duke Chapel.
February 14, 2021 – The Rev. Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal
The Rev. Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal is an assistant professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School. Professor Neal’s scholarly work examines the action of the Spirit on the performative borders of body and culture. Her research interests focus on postcolonial preaching, preaching and gender, and the implications of Mariology for a Spirit-dependent homiletic. Neal is an ordained American Baptist minister with broad ecumenical experience, most recently serving as a Global Ministries missionary to the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. During her years in Fiji, she served as dean of studies at Davuilevu Theological College, the oldest theological seminary in that nation.
February 17, 2021 (Ash Wednesday) – Dr. Sam Laurent
Sam arrived at the Episcopal Center in January 2015. He had been a member of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Carrboro for many years, and served in several ministry positions there, including regular preaching and leading a pub-based discussion group called ‘Indulgences’. A lay person, Sam went to UNC for his undergraduate work. While there, he was active in campus ministry and knows what a difference it can make to people’s lives. He then went on to earn a Masters in Systematic and Philosophical Theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, and a PhD in Theological and Philosophical Studies at Drew in Madison, New Jersey.
February 28, 2021 – Dean L. Gregory Jones
The Rev. Dr. L. Gregory Jones is a leader and strategist whose creative engagement has helped institutions across the world to create transformational resource models. He currently serves as dean of Duke Divinity School, a position he held for an earlier term (1997–2010), and is a United Methodist elder in the Western North Carolina Conference.
This summer he will become president of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Between 2010 and 2018, Dean Jones served in a variety of roles, including vice president and vice provost for global strategy and programs at Duke University, and also as provost and executive vice president of Baylor University. He has also served in advisory and strategic roles with several foundations. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, and has authored more than 200 essays and articles. He is known particularly for his books on forgiveness (
Embodying Forgiveness and the co-authored
Forgiving as We’ve Been Forgiven) as well as a more recent book on
Christian Social Innovation: Renewing Wesleyan Witness. His most recent book, co-authored with Andrew P. Hogue, is
Navigating the Future: Traditioned Innovation for Wilder Seas.
March 7, 2021 – The Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric
The Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric is the Irene and William McCutchen Associate Professor of Reconciliation and Theology at Duke Divinity School. He was recently
appointed to serve as dean of the Divinity School for two years beginning July 1, 2021. He also serves at the school as associate dean for academic formation, director of the Center for Reconciliation, and senior strategist for the Hispanic House of Studies. Professor Colón-Emeric’s work explores the intersection of Methodist and Catholic theologies, and Wesleyan and Latin-American experiences. His teaching covers a broad range of theological areas: systematics, Wesleyan theology, ecumenism, and Latin American theology. His research brings theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar into conversation with voices from the theological periphery like Bartolomé de las Casas and Óscar Romero guided by the conviction that Christian theology sounds best when it is symphonic. Colón-Emeric is an ordained elder in the North Carolina Annual Conference. He directs the Central American Methodist Course of Study and the Peru Theological Initiative. He serves in the United Methodist Committee on Faith and Order and on both national and international Methodist-Catholic dialogues.
March 14, 2021 – The Rev. Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley
The Rev. Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley is a research professor of theology and Black church studies at Duke Divinity School. At the school, he also serves as director of Office of Black Church Studies and associate dean for vocational formation and Christian witness. Professor Goatley is a constructive theologian whose scholarship and practice is at the intersection of missiology, Black Theology, and leadership strategy. A globally recognized missiologist, he emphasizes cross-cultural experiential learning with indigenous communities to deepen understanding, broaden horizons, and strengthen Christian discipleship and leadership formation. He is ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, and serves in leadership capacities with the NAACP, Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, and the Baptist World Alliance and the World Council of Churches. His current research projects include leadership development informed by liberation theology, contemporary missiology and strength-based organizational theory, Black Baptist missiology, and African-American pneumatology.
April 11, 2021 – Dr. Valerie Cooper
Dr. Valerie Cooper is an associate professor of religion and society and Black church studies at Duke Divinity School. Professor Cooper, the first African American woman to earn tenure at the school, joined the faculty in 2014. Using historical and theological methodologies, her wide-ranging scholarship examines issues of religion, race, politics, and popular culture. She has published essays on African American evangelicals (particularly in Pentecostalism and the Holiness Movement), on African Americans’ use of the Bible, and with political scientist Corwin Smidt, co-authored an essay on the roles of religion and race in the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. Her article on “Black Theology” is forthcoming in the
Oxford Handbook of Political Theology.
May 30, 2021 – The Rev. Megan Pardue
Rev. Megan M. Pardue is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene and the Senior Pastor at Refuge in Durham, North Carolina. A native of Portland, Oregon, she attended Southern Nazarene University, earning a bachelor or arts in theology in Ministry. While in college, she spent the summer of 2007 as an exchange student at Africa Nazarene University in Nairobi, Kenya. After a year teaching English in South Korea, she attended Duke Divinity School, graduating in 2012 with a master of divinity. In addition to pastoring, Rev. Pardue works at a teaching assistant in the department of homiletics at Duke Divinity School.
