Center for Excellence in Preaching Celebrates 20th Anniversary

This year, the Center for Excellence in Preaching (CEP) celebrates 20 years of service to pastors. Founded in 2004, CEP serves the church by providing preachers with fresh ideas and resources to help make weekly sermons an eventful and vibrant proclamation of grace and hope. This mission is accomplished through weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, short teaching videos, an expansive resource library, and conference events and seminars for pastors and ministry leaders.

As CEP celebrates 20 years of ministry, they are excited that their website is nearing 100,000 users per month, a statistic that speaks to the ongoing, global benefit of their work in the lives of pastors and congregations. Now in their second year of the Compelling Preaching Initiative funded by the Lilly Endowment, CEP is actively conducting workshops, Peer Learning Groups, seminars, and other events to help pastors from around the globe proclaim the Gospel in engaging and effective ways.

In July 2024, the Center is hosting a seminar on “Gratitude in Preaching and Worship,” where Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. (Calvin Theological Seminary President Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship) and Rev. Scott Hoezee (Calvin Theological Seminary Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching) will lead conversations on the theme of gratitude, its role in the Christian life, and how preaching can encourage all congregants in living a grateful life before God. Registered participants for this seminar are coming from the United States, Canada, the United States Virgin Islands, Guyana, and Jamaica.

CEP is grateful for the generosity of the many donors whose contributions have funded all regular CEP programming from the Center’s inception.