Jerusha Matsen Neal, assistant professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School, is an ordained ABC (USA) pastor who has served as a Global Ministries mission partner in the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. She has spent her ministry preaching in cross-cultural spaces and bridging denominational communities. Her book, The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020) challenges preachers to leave behind false shadows of approval to embrace the overshadowing Spirit of God. Her forthcoming book, Holy Ground: Climate Change, Preaching, and the Apocalypse of Place (Baylor University Press, 2024) engages the climate crisis through the sermons of South Pacific communities displaced by rising tides. A former actress and playwright, she has also authored a collection of dramatic monologues, Blessed: Monologues for Mary (Cascade, 2012).
