Newbold College of Higher Education<\/a>, from 16\u201318 March, pastors and ministry leaders gathered for the 2026 Preaching and Ministry Seminar, sponsored by Newbold and conceived by Pastor Jonathan Holder. This year\u2019s featured preacher was Randy Roberts, Senior Pastor of Loma Linda University Church, California, who emphasised the centrality of prayer in pastoral life.<\/p>\nCentred on the enduring place of preaching in the life of the church, Roberts emphasised that this weekly moment continues to shape faith, form community, and speak meaningfully into the realities of contemporary life. With a strong emphasis on listening\u2014both to Scripture and to the prompting of the Holy Spirit\u2014the seminar invited participants to rediscover preaching as a sacred responsibility and a Spirit-led act of service.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Roberts immediately following the seminar, David Neal spoke with him for the quarterly TED Ministerial video series, Deep and Wide<\/em>, capturing what Roberts described as a core conviction about preaching:<\/p>\n\u201cPreaching is the one consistent time every week that the pastor has with his or her people. It is the one time when the pastor has the ability to speak into their lives, to call them to a vision in Christ, to speak about where the church is going, to help them understand God and what to do about the cultural times in which we live. And, most remarkable of all, it is the time when the Spirit has tapped us on the shoulder and said, \u2018Here\u2019s something really important\u2014please share it. If we are not investing ourselves in that, everything else just becomes running a community club, a business, or something else.\u201d<\/p>\n