UMAC Announces Keynote Speakers for Side x Side in Austin

“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other, but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help.” – Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10

The United Methodist Association of Communicators leadership team is pleased to announce its preacher and keynote speakers for UMAC 2027 in Austin, Texas, who will help us understand what it means to work side by side in our collective efforts to tell the good news of Jesus Christ in our midst.

PREACHER

Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, a longtime friend of UMAC known for excellence in communication across our connection, will lead our opening worship. She serves as bishop of the Rio Texas Annual Conference and Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. She is the current president of The General Commission of Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. Previously, Bishop Harvey served as the president of the Council of Bishops 2020-2022.  

Before she was clergy, Bishop Harvey spent 12 years in the corporate world as a regional director of marketing for The Rouse Company, a shopping center developer with properties throughout the United States.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Keynote speakers, listed below with more to be added, will help us understand what it means to tell stories and speak authentically into this time and space the church – United Methodist or otherwise – has been called into today.

Rev. Rachel Kessler, aka “The Nerdy Priest”

Rachel Kessler is an Episcopal priest serving as campus chaplain at her alma mater Kenyon College and rector of Harcourt Parish in Gambier, Ohio. An "exvangelical" and progressive Christian influencer, she is known on social media as "The Nerdy Priest."

In her previous life, Rev. Rachel earned her PhD in Old English literature from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and she teaches part time in the Kenyon English department. In 2017 and 2020, she received the Kenyon faculty/staff LGBTQ+ advocate award. She is a founding member of Palestinian Anglicans and Clergy Allies, a grass roots organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian Christian voices in the western church.

Rev. Rachel has been published in the Religion & Literature journal and has written for online magazines such as Reactor, Fidelia and The Wild Word. She’ll chat with UMAC attendees about cultivating an authentic Christian social media presence.

Rev. Lindsey Joyce

An elder in the Northern Illinois Conference, Rev. Joyce sits on a team of clergy that cooperatively pastor four churches in the city of Chicago called the Northside Co-op; Her primary location is Grace UMC in Logan Square, which sits at the site of prolonged protests against the former mayor of Chicago and in a neighborhood heavily targeted by ICE during Operation Midway Blitz. She will talk about the rapid response network she helped establish in her neighborhood and where communication plays a key role.

Garrett Bucks

Garrett Bucks is an organizer, writer and dad, originally from Montana, now living in Milwaukee. Through the Barnraisers Project, he has trained thousands of people across the world to build community and make a difference with their neighbors.

He is also the author of the popular weekly newsletter, The White Pages, with more than 25,000 subscribers in 140 countries, as well as the memoir The Right Kind of White, which was released by Simon and Schuster in 2024. His current project is the Interdependence Relay – a marathon of 50 cookouts, potlucks, sewing circles and hootenannies in all 50 states, connected by a 60 pound black walnut box with fifty compartments. Bucks will share with us his insights on building community and the role communications plays in it.

Tracy Simmons

Tracy Simmons, an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and media entrepreneurship will participate in UMAC’s religion reporter roundtable discussion (with more presenters to be announced) as we explore the issues and topics religion reporters are covering and facing these days. In her 20-plus years on the religion beat, Simmons has tucked a notepad in her pocket and found some of her favorite stories aboard cargo ships in New Jersey, on a police chase in Albuquerque, in dusty Texas church bell towers, on the streets of New York and in tent cities in Haiti.

She has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across New Mexico, Texas and Connecticut. Simmons is currently is a Scholarly Associate Professor at Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication and serves as the executive director of FāVS News in the pacific northwest.

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Stay tuned as additional speakers and workshop information is announced for UMAC 2027, Feb. 26-27, at Bethany UMC in Austin, Texas.