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Dean Powery Preaches at Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church

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“In the presence of Christ, we may recognize the ways in which we are not well, and the truth of this is costly.” That is from the sermon the Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, dean of Duke University Chapel, preached on August 2, 2026, at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Rev. Dr. Luke Powery speaks enthusiastically into a microphone from behind a wooden podium inside a sanctuary, gesturing with his hand while seated choir members and congregation members listen attentively.

Titled The Hidden Cost of Healing, the sermon was based on the passage from the Gospel of Mark that describes Jesus healing a man possessed by demons.

“This whole person healed and saved was given a responsibility to proclaim: Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you,” Dean Powery said in the sermon, which was greeted with applause and acclamation. “His healing caused a vocational shift in his life. No longer was he shackled by demonic slavery among the dead. Now he was free—sent to preach among the living.”

A wide view inside a church sanctuary showing Rev. Dr. Luke Powery at the wooden pulpit speaking into a microphone with his arm extended, as seen from behind members of the congregation.

The Gospel passage also described how the healed man’s community wanted Jesus to leave them alone.

“The power of God disturbs the way of life that had been accepted by the people,” Dean Powery said. “They asked Jesus to leave because they are upset that things won’t stay the same in the presence of Christ.”

“In the presence of the healer and healing, our reality is reordered,” he said.

Ebenezer Baptist is renowned as the home church of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It continues today as an urban-based, global ministry dedicated to individual growth and social transformation through living in the message, and carrying out the mission, of Jesus Christ.

The current senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist, the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, was a guest preacher at Duke Chapel in 2014 (watch the sermon), and in 1977, another senior pastor of the church, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., preached at Duke Chapel (listen to the sermon in the Duke Chapel Recordings online archive).

Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, wearing a dark suit, shirt, and glasses, grins while shaking hands with a man wearing a suit in a brightly lit hallway or foyer surrounded by other attendees.

Dean Powery regularly preaches and speaks at churches, conferences, and universities around the country and abroad. In addition to his role as Duke Chapel dean, he is also a professor of homiletics and African and African American studies with faculty appointments in Duke’s Divinity School and the Department of African and African American Studies in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Follow his speaking engagements and writings. 

Photos by Ari Skin.

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