Faith, Media and Social Change with Dr. Kenneth Miller
When Faith Learns to Speak in a New Language
This week Tony sits down with a pastor who has spent his life learning how the oldest message reaches a changing world. Dr. Kenneth Miller leads Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland, California, a congregation that has served its city since 1926. He joins Conversations with Tony Mobley to talk about faith, media, and the work of social change, and what happens when the pulpit learns to speak through a screen as fluently as it speaks from the platform.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 8:00 – 9:00 PM ET Live at conversationswithtonymobley.com
Who Is Dr. Kenneth Miller?
Dr. Kenneth Miller is the Senior Pastor of Beebe Memorial Cathedral, a historic Christian Methodist Episcopal congregation in the heart of Oakland. His road to that pulpit ran a long way round.
A preacher’s journey. He grew up in rural Mississippi and answered the call to preach as a young man, going on to pastor a string of churches across Mississippi and Los Angeles before being entrusted with one of Oakland’s landmark cathedrals.
A shepherd of a city church. Beebe Memorial has stood with its community since 1926, and under Dr. Miller it keeps doing what the best churches have always done: meeting people where they are, which today means meeting them online as much as in the pews.
A believer in media as ministry. He has watched media reshape how a congregation gathers, learns, and reaches outward, and he treats that shift not as a threat to the tradition but as a new way to carry it.
Why This Conversation Matters
Faith and media have always been entangled. The sermon, the hymn, the printed tract, the radio broadcast: each was the new media of its day, and each changed how belief travelled. What feels new is the speed, and the fact that every believer now carries a broadcast studio in their pocket.
For a pastor, that raises real questions. How do you keep a message whole when it is cut into clips? How do you build genuine community through a screen? And how does a church use these tools not just to grow, but to push for the social change its faith calls for?
Dr. Miller lives inside those questions every week. This is a conversation about answering them with both conviction and care.
What We Expect to Explore
Faith in a Media Age
- How ministry changes when the congregation is also an audience
- Keeping a message faithful when it travels in fragments
- What the pulpit can teach the rest of us about speaking with purpose
Media as a Tool for Change
- How a local church reaches well beyond its own four walls
- The line between building an audience and building a community
- Using a platform to serve a neighbourhood, not just to grow one
Faith and Social Change
- The long tradition of the church as a force for justice
- Where faith and social change still meet, and where they strain
- What real change asks of a congregation, not only its leaders
Who Cannot Afford to Miss This
Pastors and ministry leaders working out how to carry an old calling into new media
Church media and communications teams trying to serve the message, not just the algorithm
People of faith who want their belief to show up in the world, not only on a Sunday
Anyone drawn to social change and the role the church still plays in it
Listeners curious about where faith, media, and public life meet
Because the message was never meant to stay inside the building. Every new medium is just another way to carry it further, and to let it do its work in the world.
Tony Mobley Host, Conversations with Tony Mobley
“The platform keeps changing. The calling does not. The work is learning to speak the new language without losing the old word.”