Dear Colleague,

The 2009 Conference on Preaching was an exceptional event, an invigorating exchange among top scholars and practitioners. Leading thinkers from post-liberal and post-evangelical vantages revealed essential insights that stimulated critical conversations and homiletical preparations. Scot McKnight exclaimed, “It was the best conference I’ve attended ever.”

Dave Bland, Curtis McClane, Carson Reed, and Royce Dickinson, Jr. (God rest his soul) have always been at the center of this project and colleagues at Rochester and Lipscomb provided essential support to its life. And you, minister and friend, have filled this experience with meaning. The now completed Sermon Seminars & Conferences on Preaching have provided immeasurable opportunities for growth and joy over the last dozen years. It was a project worth doing and we all did well!

Our closing conference’s theme on wisdom will be developed in one final volume by the publisher who gave the book series its first life, ACU Press. By returning to ACU Press, especially now under the expert editorial leadership of Leonard Allen, Dave and I knew we’d find perfect closure. Expect the volume, with essays and sermons by Tom Long, Scot McKnight and the others, by the end of next summer.

What’s next? I highly recommend as the best venue for scholarship and its lively integration: The Christian Scholars’ Conference (June 3 -5, 2010), hosted by Lipscomb University.

What’s next? There is something afoot at Lipscomb which I strongly endorse, a vision whose expression is in the process of being mutually crafted by the academy and the church ~ which is cause for happy anticipation.

With gratitude for who you are and all you do for good,

David F