Undergrad student will preach at Duke Chapel on Sunday

WHAT: Student Preacher Sunday

WHEN: 11 a.m. Sunday

WHERE: Duke Chapel

BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN

dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563

DURHAM -- When Chrissy Booth submitted her sermon for Student Preacher Sunday at Duke Chapel, the topic hit close to home. Based on the lectionary from Isaiah 6 and Luke 5 about answering a calling, Booth, too, was searching for direction.

Recently the Duke senior, who will preach her winning sermon at the chapel on Sunday, learned what professional direction she'll take after graduation. She'll be a Teach for America teacher in Atlanta, her hometown. But vocation is much more than figuring out a job, she said.

Booth said that while she is a little intimidated by public speaking, she entered the annual undergraduate student sermon competition because the Old Testament lectionary -- Isaiah 6: 1-8, is one of her favorite passages.

"I always thought it was a really interesting description of a call of a prophet," she said. Isaiah doesn't think he's fit for the job, she said, even though he is in a shaking, smoke-filled temple with seraphs calling out "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty." In her sermon, Booth will preach that she is happy that God calls ordinary people to exceptional tasks.

In the New Testament lectionary, Luke 5: 1-11, Peter, James and John are called by Jesus to immediately cast aside their full nets of fish to become fishers of men, which they do.

Booth said she doesn't make hasty decisions. "To me, it's a unique thing about a Godly calling to jump up and go," she said.

Booth is a religion major, with a minor in chemistry and is also working toward a certificate in global health. She was raised Presbyterian and attends Blacknall Presbyterian Church in Durham. She came to Duke with plans for a pre-med track, and chose religion as well because she wanted to study something completely different. Halfway through her college career, she switched from medical school plans to global health, with an emphasis on public health disparities. Working in Atlanta with Teach for America will give her a perspective on educational disparities. Educational inequity is one of the biggest social injustices in the U.S., she said.

Last summer, Booth worked with a faith-based group and Duke Global Health in Haiti. She has also been part of Duke's interfaith efforts and went on a student interfaith trip to Israel in 2008. Though she probably won't end up working for a faith-based public health organization, she said, religion will help her understand public health in terms of how people approach healing and disease from their own religious perspective.

Majoring in religion has taught Booth about other religions and beliefs, she said, and twice she has taught a pass/fail course about religious traditions.

The annual Student Preacher at Duke Chapel is chosen by a four-member committee of a campus minister and officials from the chapel and Duke Divinity School. The committee chose Booth's sermon because it "shows a sense of her journey as a Duke student." Criteria for selection included relevance of the sermon to that Sunday's Scripture, delivery and appropriateness of subject matter for a chapel service.

When she was back in Atlanta recently, Booth talked to her uncle, a minister, about getting up in front of the congregation at Duke Chapel on Sunday to deliver her first public sermon.

"He said don't worry, you're not going alone," Booth said. God will be there, too.