Remi Shores
Open Pulpit
Oakland, California
Rev. Remi Shores is making thoughtful, inclusive preaching easier to find—and safer to trust. Through Open Pulpit, Remi is developing a digital platform that will curate and share sermons grounded in scripture, theological depth, lived context, and humility. Every sermon will be selected according to a clear commitment: it will not be cis-heteronormative, white-centered, ableist, cognitively narrow, or intellectually dishonest.
Open Pulpit is designed especially for people who want to engage with Christian preaching but may not have access to an affirming congregation in their community. This includes LGBTQ+ people who have been excluded or harmed by churches, people who are interested in faith but do not regularly attend worship, and listeners looking for preaching that takes both scripture and human dignity seriously. By bringing trusted sermons together in one accessible platform, Remi and their team are creating a new way for people to explore faith, encounter good theology, and perhaps reconnect with a faith community.
About Remi:
Rev. Remi Shores (they/them) is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Program Director for the Proclamation Project, a national initiative of the Disciples' Office of the General Minister and President that resources preachers in deepening their craft. They have served congregations in Texas, Iowa, and California. Remi holds an MDiv from Brite Divinity School, where they were named a Walker Preaching Scholar. They live in Oakland, California.
Remi describes coming to the work of building Open Pulpit as “something something Holy Spirit... I was between jobs and trying to figure out what comes next when Katie Hays (Lead Evangelist at Galileo Church) asked me, “what if I wrote a grant for a project and you directed that project? It has to do with queer preaching.” I said, “sure!”
Remi ended up doing the actual grant writing - “quite a complex collection of documents, narrative, timelines, and budgets. The more I wrote about what we wanted to do, the more I couldn’t wait to do it. So in between writing the grant application, I started just doing the work. I just kept falling more and more in love with it,” Remi relates.
Open Pulpit
Open Pulpit was created in response to a growing gap between people’s continued interest in faith and their access to thoughtful, inclusive preaching. While participation in traditional congregations is declining, many people still turn to sermons for spiritual reflection and a deeper understanding of scripture. Some cannot find a nearby church that reflects their values, while others face barriers related to geography, disability, family responsibilities, or previous religious harm.
Katie Hayes speaks at Galileo Church in Fort Worth, Texas
Remi saw this need through Galileo Christian Church’s sermon podcast, which reached listeners beyond the congregation. Before joining the church, one member listened to several sermon podcasts but often found that, after following a preacher for weeks, she would encounter a sermon that said something harmful about women or LGBTQ+ people.
Although digital media has made thousands of sermons available, listeners often have no reliable way to know whether the preaching they find will respect their dignity. Open Pulpit addresses this injustice by creating a trusted source for inclusive preaching grounded in the belief that LGBTQ+ people should not have to choose between affirmation and serious engagement with scripture.
“Queer folx should not have to choose between preaching that is inclusive and preaching that takes scripture seriously,” Remi says.
The project also challenges broader inequities within Christian institutions that have historically centered heterosexual, cisgender, white, able-bodied, and culturally dominant experiences. These systems shape who is welcomed, whose interpretations are considered authoritative, and whose lives are represented in preaching.
Open Pulpit will identify and elevate sermons that approach scripture through a more expansive and honest theological lens. Each sermon is reviewed according to clear standards: it must be biblical rather than ideological, theological rather than didactic, contextual rather than generic, and humble rather than triumphalistic.
Remi wants to make finding good preaching as easy as finding a podcast while creating opportunities for people harmed by the church to engage with faith again.
“I hope people who have never listened to preaching decide to give it a try, because it’s right there in their pocket,” Remi says. “I hope that people who have been hurt by Christian preaching, especially LGBTQ+ people, will have an opportunity to experience healing in the form of preaching that honors their personhood and dignity.”
For Remi, becoming an Invested Faith Fellow provides funding as well as the relationships, encouragement, and spiritual support needed to move Open Pulpit forward.
“It means I don’t have to wait for a long-term plan to keep going on this work,” Remi says. “It means we have the funds to pay for some technology to get it off the ground, and it means we have the spiritual support to keep doing it the best way we know how.”
By pairing theological substance with a commitment to inclusion, Open Pulpit is creating a more accessible and trustworthy way to engage with the preached word.