Diocesan News Releases
• Jaime Sanders chosen for Episcopal Preaching Foundation’s Preaching Excellence Program
By
Jul 25, 2007, 14:00

Jaime Sanders, deacon at All Saints, Portland, recently completed five days of study at the Episcopal Preaching Foundation’s annual Preaching Excellence Program. She was ordained to the transitional diaconate on June 30 by Bishop Itty at Trinity Cathedral.

Jaime Sanders, a recent graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, recently completed five days of study at the Episcopal Preaching Foundation’s annual summer Preaching Excellence Program.

Sanders was ordained as a deacon by Bishop Itty on June 30 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, along with her classmate Karen Bretl.  Sanders will be serving her transitional diaconate at All Saints in Southeast Portland and hopes to also serve as a priest in the Diocese of Oregon.  She previously served an internship year at Grace Memorial in Northeast Portland.  Before attending seminary, she was a partner in the Portland law firm of Stoel Rives, and a member of the choir and the stewardship committee at her sponsoring parish of Christ Church, Lake Oswego. 

Sanders spent June 3-8 at Villanova University in Villanova, Penn., working with other seminarians, just-graduated seminarians, preaching professors and parish priests to preach, listen to others preach, meet with the some of the most skilled preachers of the day, and receive feedback from all of them about her own preaching.

The keynote preacher for the week was Thomas Troeger, the J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School. His books on preaching, poetry, hymnody and worship include “Preaching and Worship,” “Preaching While the Church Is Under Reconstruction,” and “Above the Moon Earth Rises: Hymn Texts, Anthems and Poems for a New Creation.”

A. Gary Shilling, founder of the investment advisory firm bearing his name, began the Episcopal Preaching Foundation in 1987. He did so out of a conviction that excellent preaching is a key to engaging all of the church’s members but especially those who were relatively uninvolved. Working together with the Rev. Roger Alling, his aim was improve preaching in the Episcopal Church by offering seminarians an immersion experience in the art and practice of preaching.

Since 1988, the foundation has sponsored the annual week-long tuition-free Preaching Excellence Program. Approximately 10 percent of the clergy active in the Episcopal Church today have participated in the program. Participants are nominated by their seminaries.
 
Three years after the first conference, the foundation developed “Sermons That Work,” a collection of outstanding sermons preached by Episcopal clergy all over the church. The series, published by Morehouse Publishing, is now in its 15th year.