For the second year in a row, Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School will host a summer preaching conference, aimed at equipping and encouraging practicing and aspiring preachers.
Following last year’s conference, which honored retiring preaching professor Robert Smith Jr., this year’s event, scheduled for July 15-17, focuses on the role of apologetics in preaching, with an official theme of “Persuasive Preaching: Story, Imagination and Apologetics.”
Tom Fuller, associate dean of Beeson Divinity School, said attendees will “explore the interplay of preaching and apologetics,” and hopes those who attend will come away with better insight as to how to integrate apologetics into their preaching for the benefit of their ministry.
“As culture rapidly changes, preachers are facing new challenges,” said Josh Chatraw, Beeson’s Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism and Cultural Engagement, and a contributor for this year’s conference.
“While pastors once held de facto moral and intellectual positions in their communities, they now must contend with a crisis of authority,” Chatraw said. “While they once could assume their hearers possessed basic biblical knowledge, they now must reckon with widespread biblical illiteracy. While preachers once could rely on cultural institutions to cast a net of plausibility for their message, they now must preach amidst the confusion of a society that lacks a sacred canopy.”
The conference’s featured speaker is Alister McGrath, “one of Christianity’s preeminent theologians and apologists,” Fuller said.
“He has a heart for helping believers tell the Gospel story in ways that open the imaginations and move the hearts of our listeners for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
McGrath will deliver three plenary lectures, each featuring a response by other contributors, including Trevin Wax, Karen Swallow Prior and Collin Hansen. Wax will also preach in the conference’s closing worship session on July 17, while Prior will lead one of four workshop options for attendees on July 16.
Other preachers include Beeson’s own Doug Webster and Justin Bailey, professor of theology at Dordt University in Sioux City, Iowa. Bailey will lead a workshop, as will Robert Smith Jr. Maurice Watson, senior pastor of The Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, will lead the other workshop option. More details about the workshops and messages are forthcoming.
Registration for the conference opens February 17. The early bird rate, which ends May 1, is $50, with regular rates of $60 available until July 8.
For more information and to register, visit the conference webpage.
Beeson’s preaching conference is part of The Robert Smith Jr. Preaching Institute’s Spirit and Power Project,funded by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment as part of its Compelling Preaching Initiative. The institute offers a slate of events throughout the year to equip ministers for the sake of the Gospel.