Meet the 2024 Omark Preaching Competition winners

“What is truth?” It’s the question Pontius Pilate asked Jesus right before he condemned Jesus to death. Fast forward some 2,000 years—it’s the same question many are asking in a culture where truth is often considered subjective and changeable. This year, the contestants in Bethel’s Edwin J. Omark Preaching Awards were tasked with crafting and delivering sermons around the theme of truth, asking—like Pontius Pilate—“What is truth?” and then considering Jesus' answer in John 14:6: “I am the Way and the truth and the life…”

Each year, students submit sermons that are judged on clear communication style, biblical exegesis, personal spiritual formation of both student and audience, and an understanding of the audience or context. First-, second-, and third-place winners receive scholarship money, and first place is given the opportunity to preach live at Bethel Seminary’s Preaching Showcase. “Our goal is to help students hone their preaching skills,” says Seminary Dean Peter Vogt. “We hope that all students will gain a better appreciation for the importance of preaching and Bethel Seminary’s commitment to this important aspect of ministry.”

Meet this year’s winners.

Erica Stricklen S’25

In Seymour, Tennessee, Erica Stricklen serves as children’s pastor at Seymour Heights Christian Church, where she loves helping parents feel seen and known. Feeling nudged by God to deepen her ministry, she began looking at seminary programs across the country and eventually chose Bethel’s M.A. in Children’s, Youth, and Family program. “I loved Bethel’s focus and passion for crafting the whole person, not just the academic side,” Stricklen says of Bethel Seminary’s Transformative Education Model. “I didn’t expect the relationships and support I would gain through this program; My friends in ministry together around the country have been a great blessing to me.”

Her experience at Seymour Heights Christian Church has given her a front-row seat to the pressures young people face today. “We see anxiety, suicide, and violence rates up in Gen Z, and I think some of that is due to the pressure of the message ‘Choose your truth,’” Stricklen says. “We as humans were not meant to carry the burden of defining truth, and the pressure of that is creating a great strain on people.”

In her sermon, she offers hope for those searching for truth, stating that we can know two things for sure: God is truth and Jesus bore witness to the truth. Experiencing these truths for ourselves is a time commitment though. “By knowing God and spending time with Him in His word, we can have truth revealed to us,” she preached. “We don’t define truth. God does.”

Writing this sermon was definitely out of Stricklen’s comfort zone, she admits, and she is thankful she received support from her professors and her lead pastor as she explored examples and prepared her sermon. “It’s our job to point people to truth through God. The more we talk about truth, the more we can point people to God,” Stricklen says.

Emmett Rogers S’28

Rogers and his wife recently moved to Minnesota from Arizona when he became associate campus pastor at Crossroads Church-Hastings. When he began considering seminary, a few of the pastors he works with spoke highly of Bethel, and he says the Bethel Seminary staff was so approachable and friendly that he felt it would be a great fit. He is now working towards a Master of Divinity. “I am hoping to grow in my knowledge in theology and continue to build a foundation on how to share the Gospel well to as many people as possible,” Rogers says. “I believe I’ll gain the tools to grow not only in my personal journey with the Lord but also to help others.”

For his sermon, he considered all the things the world pitches as truth, and determined that one “truth” we all fight against is individualism. “Many people have a hard time hearing the Gospel or accepting Christianity because they don't like the idea of submitting our lives to Christ. The world has tried to ingrain in our heads that whatever we put our minds to we can achieve,” Rogers says. “We believe we can stronghold our entire lives, which in the long run actually leads to failure, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, sickness, and so many other things.”

So today, with so many worldly truths coming at us daily via the news, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc., he preached that we must remain steadfast in our belief that Jesus is our Lord and Savior—He alone provides the truth. Rogers offered three ways to do this: First, pray that God helps us hold on to His truth. Second, read the Bible. And third, remain within a healthy Christian community. These can help us sift through what the world is telling us is true. “As Christians, we can live in the fact that we have a God that goes before us and does the work,” Rogers says. “We can rest in the fact that we aren’t perfect but we serve a God who is.”

Lydia Kaiser S’27

Years ago, Kaiser sat in many medical waiting rooms with her husband who was battling cancer and noticed that people facing their mortality were much more open to spiritual conversations. Not long after, Kaiser sat in a hospital room on Christmas with a friend whose husband was dying. They asked for a chaplain and no one came, so she stepped in to offer comfort to the family. Together, these experiences prompted Lydia to consider more education to become a chaplain. She’s now in Bethel’s Master’s in Ministry program.

In her sermon, Kaiser, who lives just outside St. Louis, Missouri, asked three questions: Is moral truth absolute? Is moral truth relevant? And is moral truth discoverable? “The theme of truth is timely because young people want to be involved in important causes, but unless they can figure out why a cause is truly important, they will eventually become disillusioned about the meaning of life,” she says. “We need to provide God’s truth in a way that speaks their language.” To that end, she answered her questions. Truth is absolute and based on irrefutable facts, citing the law of contraries—two opposite truths cannot be true. Truth—discovering it and applying it—is the most important factor to the meaning of life. And truth is discoverable in the person and words of Jesus Christ.

She went on to preach that Jesus is the foundation of all truth for four reasons. Jesus made the claim that He is truth; and if He’s truthful, then He’s not a liar. Jesus’ teachings are recognizable. Jesus’ truth changes lives. And Jesus proved that He is the source of truth because He had the power to rise from the dead.

She says the most challenging aspect to this sermon was keeping it to 20 minutes: “Truth is a deep topic, and yet we needed to include an introduction, personal stories, teaching, and plenty of application,” Kaiser says. “It required tough decisions about what to leave out.” She challenged her listeners at the end, asking them to consider if they want to be a cynical Pontias Pilate or a John, who in his gospel wrote and taught about God’s love and the importance of abiding in the vine.

Charlene Magill S’27

After serving on the prayer team at Eagle Brook in Lino Lakes, Minnesota, Magill decided she wanted to go to seminary to continue to help people after she retires from her current role as a school psychologist. She’s now pursuing her Master of Divinity at Bethel Seminary.

Magill’s sermon was personal, coming together after two emotional events. A widower dad came forward for prayer at church—his wife had just died, leaving him with five young children to care for. Around the same time, Magill’s step-dad passed away right as they welcomed her first grandchild into the world. “My thought was, ‘What am I desperate for people to know about God in my message?’ That is how I came to talk about what the cross meant to Jesus, how to do better in our relationships with others, and the ever-present problem of how to view God in light of life’s difficulties,” she says.

She preached about Jesus speaking the truth in love and how we can emulate Him in our own relationships. And even though it’s hard to understand, we can still have peace when things go wrong citing, among other verses, 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7 and Deuteronomy 6:5.

Magill is no stranger to public speaking, having trained hundreds of teachers as a school psychologist for over 22-plus years. She also teaches yoga. But this message was challenging. In it she shares the last conversation she had with her step-dad. “It was so hard to relive. I had to practice my message six times before I could get through that part without crying,” she says.

In her own life, she has experienced the comfort that comes with God’s truth, and with her degree, she hopes to lead a women’s ministry and write healing books for women in the future.

Listen online.

Interested in hearing more? You can view this year’s Omark Preaching Competition sermons in their entirety and learn more about the process of participating.

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