Barbara Kay Lundblad
GET UPDATES FROM Barbara Kay Lundblad
Barbara Kay Lundblad currently serves as the Joe R. Engle Professor of Preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She received a B.A. in English from Augustana College (1966), the M.Div. from Yale Divinity School (1979), and the D.D. from Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. An ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, she served 16 years as a parish pastor in New York City, as well as campus pastor at Lehman College and New York University. She has taught preaching at Yale Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College and in the D.Min. program of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools. In 2007, she served as president of the Academy of Homiletics. Her teaching interests include preaching in partnership with the congregation, preaching and social transformation, new forms of preaching and preaching as an integral part of worship.

Last year, Dr. Lundblad published several sermons in the journal Lectionary Homiletics, and “Prologue, ‘Down by the Riverside,’” in Women’s Voices and Visions of the Church: Reflections from North America (2005); her essays on “Narrative Theory” and “Feminism” were accepted for publication by The New Interpreter’s Bible Encyclopedia of Preaching. 


Lundblad is the author of two books, "Transforming the Stone: Preaching through Resistance to Change" and most recently, "Marking Time: Preaching Biblical Stories in Present Tense." This recent book is based on the Beecher Lectures which she gave at Yale Divinity School. In addition she has published articles in journals such as Currents in Theology and Mission, Word and World, Journal of Preaching and The Living Pulpit.

For more than 20 years she has been one of the preachers on the radio program “Day 1” (formerly “The Protestant Hour”). She has preached in hundreds of congregations across the United States and has given lectures at many seminaries in this country and Canada, as well as a Lutheran World Federation conference in Buenos Aires. A frequent speaker at the Festival of Homiletics, her 2008 lecture, “Jeremiah, Martin and Me,” challenged preachers to confront the realities of racism in the U.S., especially in this election year.

Blog Entries by Barbara Kay Lundblad

Mark 16:1-8: Beyond Fear and Silence

28 Comments | Posted April 4, 2012 | 11:10 AM

This story leaves us wondering and longing for more. Mark's Easter Gospel (Mark 16: 1-8) ends with silence rather than "Alleluia!" That wasn't the word the women said at the end of their long night of waiting. That's not what they said when the...

Read Post

Mark 9:2-9: Visions of Jesus and King on the Mountain

77 Comments | Posted February 15, 2012 | 11:00 AM

Is there room in our lives for visions we cannot explain? Have we closed our minds to truth that doesn't fit our rational categories? In her book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Annie Dillard shares stories of doctors who performed early cataract surgery in Europe. When...

Read Post

Exodus 14:19-31: Singing Through The Sorrow

21 Comments | Posted September 7, 2011 | 11:34 AM

What is the text for this Sunday, September 11? The minister may read a text from the Bible but many people will be hearing other texts that aren't in the book: the reading of names, the melancholy drone of bagpipes, a final goodbye...

Read Post

Matthew 15:21-28: Teaching Jesus

465 Comments | Posted August 9, 2011 | 11:25 PM

This story in Matthew 15 is very troubling. A Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus to heal her daughter. By the end of the story, her daughter has been healed -- but between the crying and the healing, Jesus says some terrible things. He's...

Read Post