Rev. Richard Bray is a member of Amazing Grace Christian Church (DOC) in Indianapolis, Indiana. His areas of study include rhetoric, preaching and practical theology; community-engaged congregations; and supporting leaders, congregations and citizens in having courageous conversations at the intersection of race, racism, Christianity and the community. For his dissertation, he’s focusing on a rhetorical case study of the sermon manuscripts of Rev. Dr. Robert Elwood Dungy when he served as pastor of Sunnycrest and St. Paul United Methodist Churches (UMC) in Indiana from 1988-1997. Dungy’s rhetorical challenge is to persuade the predominately Eurocentric audience of the exciting possibilities of ministry with a Black pastor. The dissertation seeks to discover what we can learn from Black preaching in cross-racial, cross-cultural congregations.
Richard chose to pursue a PhD in Black Preaching to discover a creative response to supporting clergy and lay leaders. Along the journey, Dr. Bray has taught preaching and developed his own preaching theory: Communal Homiletic.
