With sermons from Honduras, Canada, Indonesia and more, “the competition was great this time,” says Fernando Enns, jury member for the Menno Simons Sermon Prize, an initiative of Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church in Germany and the Centre for Peace Church Theology at the University of Hamburg. “It was a real pleasure to read all these inspiring, very different sermons and to discuss them in the jury.”

For the first time since its inception in 2008, this year’s Menno Simons Sermon Prize was awarded to someone outside of Europe or North America. Peter (Pedro) Stucky, pastor of Iglesia Menonita Teusaquillo in Bogota, Colombia, was recognized for his “Month of Mission” sermon on 1 Peter 2:9.

“We want to see the church as a being that proclaims and lives the good news in such a way that it becomes an agent of change, a welcoming family, a community of love and healing, an evangelizing light,” Peter Stucky says.

“The priesthood belongs to a community of faith: the church is there to help the person who is burdened by his past, burdened by her mistakes,…to receive the forgiveness and liberation Jesus Christ offers.”

“Knowing that we can belong to a family of faith where we can experience the embrace of divine love is news too great and excellent to imagine, but it is the truth,” says Peter Stucky.

The varied submissions challenge the jury to become more international. “To read the context of a given sermon, its congregational and societal context, is crucial to understanding and assessing its message,” says Fernando Enns.

Learn more about the peace prize here:

https://mwc-cmm.org/stories/can-preaching-bring-peace

Learn how to submit a sermon here:

https://www.theologie.uni-hamburg.de/einrichtungen/arbeitsstellen/friedenskirche/menno-simons-predigtpreis.html

Watch the sermon here (English and German):

https://youtu.be/-kjvzOVwvxU