The Royal Priesthood Series: Why It Matters

Bishop Hugh Daniel Smith's current Sunday series — The Royal Priesthood — is not a word about preachers. It is a word about every believer. Here is what the series is doing in the house, and why we are leaning in.

Embassy Newsroom · Apostolic Desk October 15, 2026

A word about every believer.

For the last five Sundays, Chief Apostle Bishop Hugh Daniel Smith has been teaching through a series called The Royal Priesthood. The title comes from Peter’s letter to the scattered believers of Asia Minor:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” — 1 Peter 2:9

Peter did not write that to clergy. He wrote it to shopkeepers and farmers, to servants and householders — ordinary believers scattered through a hostile empire. He called them a royal priesthood. Not people who had access to the priesthood. People who were the priesthood.

That is the word Bishop Hugh has been bringing to Embassy. Not a word about preachers. A word about every believer.

What the series is doing in the house

Over five Sundays — September 6, 13, 20, 27, and October 4 — the Bishop has walked us through the biblical weight of priesthood: what a priest does, what a priest carries, what a priest sacrifices, and what it means that Christ has brought every believer into that order.

A few threads have surfaced across the series:

You carry an altar. The believer is not just a worshiper. The believer is a priest, and every priest has an altar. The altar is where the believer meets God, where petitions are brought, where thanksgivings are offered. If you have never thought of your prayer life as an altar, the series will reorient that.

You carry a cleansing. Hebrews makes the point that the blood of Christ “will purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). A royal priest serves out of a cleansed conscience. The series has made room for that cleansing — not just as doctrine, but as experience.

You carry a people. Priests do not stand alone. They stand on behalf of a people. The series has returned the house to our intercessory calling — the ministry of standing with others, carrying their need before God, believing with them for breakthrough. If prayer has felt small to you, the series will make it feel like the engine room it is.

Follow the whole arc

Every message in the series — along with the full transcript — is on the Embassy site:

Watch the full video on each page. Or read the transcript. Or both. Share the ones that mark you with someone who needs them.

The series continues. See you Sunday.