Progressive Preacher

By Mary Alice Garrett

This story originally appeared February 12, 2009 in The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware.

BRANDYWINE HUNDRED - The Rev. David Albert Farmer believes boredom is the biggest sin in preaching. As pastor of the liberal Silverside Church, Farmer goes to extremes to avoid boring his congregation.

Farmer came to Silverside almost nine years ago, a year after it changed its name from Second Baptist Church and affiliation with the American Baptist Convention. Members decided to become a nondenominational community church. It was a good fit for Farmer, formerly a Southern Baptist preacher, who says Silverside lets him do things other ministers could never hope to do.

That includes depicting God on Broadway and God in contemporary literature and paintings, sometimes to the sounds of Dixieland and rap music.

"This is a very liberal church," said Farmer. "The church is very progressive. We call it Delaware's progressive-seeker's congregation."

Farmer is known for his sermon series, some of them lasting 14 weeks. Recently he concluded a "God on Broadway" series. "Some absolutely loved it. Some said, 'David's doing one of his eccentric things,' " Farmer said.

"I thought it was wonderful," said TruDee Burrell of Wilmington, a church member since 1985. "It has broadened us on everything."

Member Walter K. Stapleton, judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals' Third Circuit, said Farmer's sermon series "amaze me. I don't know how he does it week after week after week. They always have some really important message."

Farmer started his "God on Stage" sermons while a minister in Baltimore. He admits to a love of theater - especially comedies and musicals.

He said that Silverside wants singer Arbender Robinson, a veteran of "The Little Mermaid" on Broadway and now on a tour of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," to return whenever the theatrical sermons continue.

Farmer also has presented "God and Great Art" at Silverside, which has a number of artists among its 140-member congregation.

A social-crisis preacher

Stories from the Bible should be related to the present day. Farmer stresses with his master's preaching students at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University near Philadelphia. He tells them that 50 percent of a sermon should be in the present tense and 50 percent in the past tense.

"The sermon is not for them. The sermon is for the audience. If it isn't understood, it's pointless," Farmer noted.

"A lot of pure academic theology is boring. That's not what people in the pew are concerned about," he added. "I think preaching should be very fresh, very contemporary, very relevant."

Social-crisis preaching is a big interest. Farmer regrets that he did not speak from the pulpit against the war in Iraq. "It tore me up. I felt like I was being timid to the point of dishonesty," he said. He also favors pacifism and believes that conscientious objectors have the right to refuse to serve in the military "and to be respected for it."

Farmer always has been in favor of women in the pulpit. "The Southern Baptists told women they could give 'a talk' but not a sermon." Farmer said half his students at Palmer are females, some of them starting second careers.

Besides teaching at Palmer, Farmer also is on the humanities faculty at Wilmington University. In speaking of his two part-time teaching positions, he said, "I tell my friends that it's the best continuing education that could have come my way. It's enriching. it keeps me on my toes."

Farmer became a single custodial father to his sons, Jarrett and Carson, when they were 8 and 10 years old. "That's been the most important thing in my life, I can say that." Now 24 and 26, his sons are about to finish college and graduate school and start careers of their own.

"I feel very blessed to have David not only as pastor but as my counselor," said Burrell, a retired Pennsylvania educator, who now travels extensively as an international Rotary Club ambassador. "He's quite an asset. He's very dear to me. I can talk to him about almost anything."

Farmer knew at a young age that he wanted to be a preacher. He gave his first sermon when he was 14. "I practiced it at 30 minutes, yet I delivered it in 11 minutes," he recalled. "I had a hunch that that's what I should do with my life."

He tried several majors in college, but "I always kept coming back - always came back to religion." Farmer was inspired greatly by the faculty at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee. When he told his rural neighbors in Halls Crossroads, Tenn., that he was going to a seminary, many thought he meant a "cemetery."

Farmer received both a master's and a doctorate of divinity degree from Southern Baptist Seminary. He was a professor at the International Baptist Theological Seminary, then located near Zurich, Switzerland, for one term before returning to teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Following that, he became pastor of St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in new Orleans. Before coming to Silverside, he was minister of University Baptist Church in Baltimore for eight years.

Stapleton said Silverside is "unusual." Stapleton, who now lives in Unionville, Pa., joined Silverside (then Second Baptist) when he was 12 and has remained a member for 62 years.

"The theological or practical message is not what you would get in many mainline Protestant churches," he said.

Silverside Church is not tied to a creed. Members affirm separation of church and state along with an individual's direct access to God. They cherish freedom to think for themselves and to express their own views. What they have in common is a journey in search of truth and meaning.

PROFILE

The Rev. David Albert Farmer

AGE: 54

FAMILY: Single; two sons, Jarrett Farmer, 26, of Baltimore, and Carson Farmer, 24 of Wilmington

POSITION: Pastor of Silverside Church in Brandywine Hundred

HOME: Elsmere

EDUCATION: Bachelor's in religion from Carson-Newman College in Tennessee and master of divinity and doctorate from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

HOBBIES: "My three dogs and writing [fictional] plays."

GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: "Being a father."