I received an email this afternoon from a graduate student at Purdue University by the name of Jenni Sigler. She’s working on a dissertation on preaching and asked me to reach out to my readers for help. It sounds like a worthwhile idea. For now, she’s focusing just on diocesan priests (who do most of the preaching every week anyway).
Here’s her pitch:
Hello, Father!
My name is Jenni Sigler and I’m a doctoral candidate in communication at Purdue University. I’m also a daily Mass-going Catholic, so for my dissertation, I’m interviewing priests about their preaching work. In particular, I’m interested in how busy priests balance all they have to do with “waiting on the Holy Spirit” in preaching. There’s very little empirical research on Catholic preaching at present, and my own past research has indicated this particular question is an important one. So the goal of the study is to add to what we know about how priests do preaching work, and hopefully find out some things that could help make that work easier, faster, and better.
If you’re a diocesan priest working in a parish in the United States, I’d love for you to participate in this study. Interviews will last about an hour and can be scheduled whenever they’re convenient for you and conducted via Skype or telephone. To get an accurate picture of what I’m studying, it’s important that I talk to priests from many different dioceses and seminary backgrounds, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch even if you’re in Alaska. And international priests: If you’re working in the United States, I’d like to hear from you, too!
If you’re interested in participating, or want to find out more before committing, feel free to contact me at jsigler@purdue.edu or (765) 441-2136 (texting okay). Or contact my advisor Patrice Buzzanell (technically, the lead researcher on this project, since I’m still a graduate student) at buzzanel@purdue.edu.
Thanks, and God bless you, Father!
Jenni
Interested? Drop her a line or give a call. And thanks!
And today we celebrate...