Jana Childers
Newhall Professor of Homiletics and Speech Communication
The Rev. Dr. Jana L. Childers, Dean of the Seminary and Vice-President of Academic Affairs is also Professor of Homiletics and Speech-Communication at San Francisco Theological Seminary. She is a Presbyterian minister who served congregations in Kansas and New Jersey before joining the seminary faculty. Interests in the arts, spirituality and worship supplement Jana’s “central and great love” – preaching. She is the author and editor of a number of books and articles on preaching including Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre and the award winning, Birthing the Sermon: Women Preachers and Creative Process.
Jana is a popular conference speaker, preaching often in national and international settings and is the recent past-President of her professional organization, The Academy of Homiletics. She has appeared regularly on Thirty Good Minutes, the television program produced by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, was co-host of the San Francisco CBS affiliate’s television program Mosaic and was featured on the Hallmark Channel’s Great Preachers series.
PhD, Graduate Theological Union, 1992
MDiv, Princeton Theological Seminary
BA, Wheaton College
- Theatre, Worship, and Preaching
- Performance Theory and Preaching
- Aesthetic Theology and Communication
- New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching, Associate Editor, Abingdon Press, 2008.
- Performance in Preaching: Bringing the Sermon to Life, Co-editor, Baker Academic, 2008.
- Purposes of Preaching, Editor, Chalice Press, 2004.
- Birthing the Sermon: Women Preachers on Creative Process, Chalice Press, 2001.
- Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre, Abingdon Press, 1998.
- Abingdon Women's Preaching Annual: Series I, Year A (co-editor with Lucy Rose), Abingdon Press, 1998.
- Introduction to Preaching,
- Worship in the Reformed Tradition,
- Preaching and Performance