Award-winning preacher ‘lets
the Word of God speak’

LONDON, UK — “Preaching is all about the intersections between life and this amazing book that we call the Bible,” said Col Margaret Hay of the Salvation Army. New Zealand-born Col Hay recently became the first woman to win Britain’s Preacher of the Year award.

In the final round of the competition, called a “preach-off”, Col Hay competed against six other clerics for the title. They had been selected from over 500 entrants. Her winning sermon was based on Isaiah 9:2: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.”

Prisons

The essence of her message, she said, was one that she delivers each week to prisoners and asylum-seekers at Rochester and Brixton prisons, where she works as a chaplain and counsellor. But she said that preaching at the contest was a very different experience from sharing God’s Word with prisoners.

“There [in the prisons], we are a bunch of seekers and sinners gathered together to worship,” she said. “The big preach, the big sermon, absolutely doesn’t happen there. But when an inmate stands up and reads from the Scriptures, my hair goes straight up on end!