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As soon as Jesus was baptized by John the Baptizer, He immediately set out on His mission to proclaim \u201cthe good news of God.\u201d He was sent by God to announce the kingdom and call people to repentance and faith.<\/p>\n
You may be reading this because the Lord has sent you on the same mission to proclaim \u201cthe good news of God.\u201d Maybe you have been proclaiming the good news for many years.<\/p>\n
And you need some help.
Support.
Encouragement.
Motivation.<\/p>\n
The Master Preacher is written for you. The Friends Preaching Initiative at Barclay College in Haviland, Kansas, was born out of a Lilly grant awarded in 2024 to study the current state of preaching among evangelical Friends in America. We want to offer support, encouragement, and
Spirit-led motivation to active preachers in the Friends Church.<\/p>\n
You are invited to EXPLORE Friends preaching and vocal ministry through The Master Preacher. The blog will be posted every other week to access at your convenience.<\/p>\n
The Master Preacher offers Friends preachers a resource for \u201cLearning from Jesus,\u201d who is the Master Preacher. That\u2019s the aim. Several other aims come into focus. The Master Preacher will:<\/p>\n
Join us at The Master Preacher.<\/p>\n
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Jeff Blackburn has been proclaiming Christ for over 43 years. He served Friends congregations in Indiana and Kansas. His most recent pastoral assignment was with Greensburg Mennonite Church, Greensburg, Kansas, where he enjoyed nearly 30 years of ministry before being called to coordinate the Friends Preaching Initiative in 2024. He works with aspiring preachers and ministry students on campus, often preaches in churches in the region. He developed three new courses for a preaching certificate offered through Barclay College, and he created a preaching lab for Barclay students to work on their communication skills.<\/p>\n
Jeff grew up in small-town Indiana, attending Quaker Haven Camp every summer before counseling\u00a0and directing camps. He is a graduate of Barclay College and Huntington University. He wrote for Adult Friend and The Fruit of the Vine (Barclay Press, Newberg, Oregon) for many years. Jeff enjoys music and singing, although he can\u2019t read music very well. He continues to serve as the moderator for local schools\u2019 spelling bees.<\/p>\n
Jeff has written one book, Light at the End of the Funnel (Amazon, 2017) recounting the experience of surviving an EF5 tornado that devastated his town in 2007. He and his wife live in Greensburg where they are near enough to play with their grandchildren on a regular basis. The Lord put it in his heart to help train the next wave of preachers and to encourage active ministers to \u201cPreach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage\u2014with great patience and careful instruction\u201d (2 Timothy 4:2).<\/p>\n
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The Master Preacher is written by a preacher with exploring, aspiring, and active preachers in mind. Even more than pulpit ministry, The Master Preacher aims to encourage Friends in the vocal ministry in whatever form it takes: teaching, open worship, sharing faith, evangelism, and speaking the truth in love. You may proclaim Christ occasionally in one of these ways\u2014or weekly. Let\u2019s learn from the Master Preacher, Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fyi-master-preacher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.barclaycollege.edu\/fpi\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}