Nicole McDonald
SENIOR PASTOR (INTERIM) | CONTACT
The Reverend Dr. Nicole McDonald is a native of Hampton, Virginia. She attended the University of Virginia and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology and a Master of Science in Patient Counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2016, Dr. McDonald completed a Doctor of Ministry Degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Her ministerial project focused on a pastoral approach to preaching funerals. Funerals remains Dr. McDonald’ specialty with several sermons published in A Balm in Gilead: Eulogies of Comfort. Dr. McDonald has a forthcoming book titled, Preaching Funerals: A Pastoral Approach.
Recently, Dr. McDonald made history by being the first student to successfully defend her dissertation for the PhD in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her dissertation, Yvette A. Flunder: The Apocalyptic Preacher characterizes the homiletic method and homiletical theory of Bishop Flunder. Dr. McDonald is teaching Queer Womanist Preaching at Chicago Theological Seminary. The class focuses on the preaching ministry of Bishop Yvette Flunder centering Flunder’ homiletical method, the Apocalyptic Method.
Currently, the Reverend Dr. Nicole D. McDonald serves as the Interim Senior Pastor of Central Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Over the past 20 years, Dr. McDonald has served diverse ministerial contexts as a lay leader and ordained clergy in Baptist and Disciples congregations. Trained in chaplaincy, she worked as a hospice chaplain, bereavement coordinator, and a pediatric intensive care unit staff chaplain. Pastor Nicole has a heart for God’s people. As a queer, womanist practitioner-scholar, she strives to build justice-oriented communities of radical inclusivity where all feel welcomed.