Preaching at a young age can be a daunting task, especially for someone who has no experience, but through the a partnership with Shiloh Baptist Association, Toby Forehand, a junior digital media communications major at Union University, was able to serve the Lord in a new way.
The Office of University Ministries (OUM) partnership with the Shiloh Baptist Association gives opportunities to people who are looking for a future career in preaching as well as those who might have a talent for preaching to exercise their faith by sharing the word with a congregation. The program allows students to preach in multiple different churches, not just Shiloh Baptist.
Joe Ball, the director for discipleship and ministry at Union, is in charge of coordinating between the churches and the young preachers and enjoys giving these opportunities to people who may not necessarily want a career in preaching but may have the potential to do it well. One of these people was Forehand. He was not necessarily dying to go preach, but Ball encouraged him to do so and thought it would be a good learning experience.
“For me, it was because Joe asked me to,” Forehand said when asked about his decision to preach for the program. “He’s convinced I’m going to end up a preacher.”
Ball saw potential for Forehand to do something outside of his comfort zone that would not only help Forehand in his walk with Christ, but also benefit a church that was thrilled to have a young preacher.
“A lot of times these churches are small country churches and they haven’t had a young preacher in their church in forever. So they love it,” Ball said with excitement in his eyes.
Preaching to a congregation for the first time is no easy task. Forehand explained to me some of the worries he had coming into this experience as well as some of the things he did to prepare. It wasn’t easy, and he most certainly did not want to fail.
“In high school I did a lot of public speaking, so I was used to giving short 5 minute speeches, but I had never done anything that anyone would consider preaching, and to me that’s so much more important and I was putting a lot of pressure on myself on the performance side of it,” Forehand said.
As we sat together in the dining hall talking about his experience with preaching, it was evident to me that, despite it being deeply challenging for Forehand, it was something he was very proud of and excited to talk about. It gave him a new perspective on the word, while also growing his faith in ways he did not anticipate.
The OUM program has been cultivating preachers for several years dating as far back as 2006 when Ball was a student at Union and participated in the very same program Forehand is now a part of. It gives a unique experience to any and all who want to participate. The experience also lends itself to spiritual growth within the preacher as they are encountering a different aspect of being a faithful follower of Christ.
Forehand expressed to me how important the experience was to him through his preparation.
“Once I kind of landed on what passage I wanted, I dug as deep as I could. I remember I went to the gym one day and in my AirPods I had a John 15 commentary playing. Some of that ended up being very helpful, but some of it was just my own nervous tendencies as a human to try and make it perfect when in reality the Lord will reveal his character,” Forehand said.
Preaching to an unfamiliar audience can be terrifying. The challenge to communicate God’s word both accurately and in a way that the audience can comprehend is not an easy task. After his debut at the church he preached at, Forehand told me some of the things he learned from this experience.
“I was very humbled by it. No matter how much speaking on stage you think you’ve done, to actually preach the word is always going to be far more important. That became very clear to me,” Forehand said.
Forehand also realized how powerful the experience can be, not only for him but for those he’s preaching to. It broadened his perspective and showed how the faithfulness of God’s people is self-evident even in small communities.
“People are preaching the word in these tiny churches in a really faithful way, and it’s not just the ones being posted on Instagram. There are great pastors in these tiny churches. There are faithful believers who are staying faithful to the Word and no one would know,” Forehand concluded.