James Emery White, founding pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, will present the sixth annual session of the John A. Broadus Lectures on Preaching October 18-19 at Anderson University. Sponsored by Anderson University’s Clamp Divinity School and College of Christian Studies, the Broadus Lecture series is an annual event for students and church leaders honoring one of the nation’s pioneering teachers of preaching. The theme for the 2016 lectures will be “Preaching in a Post-Christian World.”
In addition to his role as senior pastor of one of the nation’s largest churches, White is founder and president of Serious Times, a ministry that explores the intersection of faith and culture and hosts ChurchandCulture.org which features his messages and blogs. He is ranked adjunct professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president, and is author of twenty books which have been translated into ten languages.
Attendance at the lectures will be free and open to the public. Lectures will be held Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm. White will preach for campus worship in Henderson Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct 19 at 10:10 am, then bring the concluding lecture at 2:00 pm. All three lectures will be held in the Theater in the new G. Ross Anderson Student Center on campus.
“James Emery White is a significant thinker and author in the area of faith and contemporary culture, and is an influencer of preaching through both his speaking and his books,” explains Michael Duduit, Dean of Anderson’s Clamp Divinity School and College of Christian Studies. “We are delighted that he will be a part of this lecture series and that our students and guests will have an opportunity to hear his lectures as well as hearing him preach during university worship.”
White launched Mecklenburg Community Church in 1992 with a single family and it has grown to 11,000 active attenders at four campuses. The church experiences over 70 percent of its growth from those who were previously unchurched, and during its formative years was often cited as one of the fastest growing church starts in the US. White’s commitment to local church ministry also includes service as Distinguished Professor of Pastoral Ministry at Anderson University, and consulting editor to Leadership Journal.
White holds a B.S. degree in public relations and business, along with the M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from Southern Seminary. He has also done advanced university study at Vanderbilt University in American religious history, and continuing education at Oxford University in England. He has served as a visiting professor at such institutions as New Orleans Seminary, Southern Seminary, Southeastern Seminary and the Moscow Theological Institute.
He is the author of twenty books, including Gold Medallion nominees for Serious Times and A Search for the Spiritual, Christianity Today book-of-the-year award winner Embracing the Mysterious God, as well as A Mind for God and Rethinking the Church. His most recent publications include What They Didn’t Teach You in Seminary, A Traveler’s Guide to the Kingdom, The Church in An Age of Crisis, and his most recent book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated (Baker).
The lectureship is named in honor of John A. Broadus, who was one of the four founding faculty members in 1859 of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, SC; the seminary moved to Louisville, KY in 1877. He served as professor of preaching and later President of the seminary. His classic book, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons
, was written while teaching in Greenville and was the nation’s preeminent text on the subject for the next century.
“Broadus was the father of modern expository preaching, and today’s great evangelical preachers are his legacy,” notes Duduit, who also serves as executive editor of Preaching magazine in addition to his role at AU. “We are blessed to be able to reclaim this important part of South Carolina’s Christian heritage through recognizing the Broadus name in connection with this significant annual lectureship.”
For more information, contact the College of Christian Studies at 864.328.1809, or email ministry@andersonuniversity.edu.