Fourth Annual Girardeau Lectures set for March 16-17
Erskine Theological Seminary and First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, S.C., will welcome the Rev. H.B. Charles, Jr. as speaker for the Fourth Annual John L. Girardeau Lectures March 16-17. The theme for this year’s lectures is “The Unchanging Christ.”
The Rev. H.B. Charles, Jr. is senior pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla. His most recent publications with Moody Publishers are The Difference Jesus Makes and On Preaching. His first book with Moody was It Happens After Prayer (2012). His preaching has been published in the 2008 edition of the journal The African American Pulpit.
The first lecture, “Proclaiming Christ in a Changing Culture” is planned for Wednesday, March 16, at 6:15 p.m. in Jackson Hall at First Presbyterian Church. The lecture will be preceded by a supper ($4 per person) at 5:15 p.m. in Jackson Hall. A short question-and-answer session (7:15 -7:30 p.m.) will follow the lecture. The public is welcome.
A second lecture, “A Christ-Centered View of Ministry,” will be offered at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 17, in the Palmer Ministry Center of First Presbyterian Church.
The Girardeau Lectures are named in honor of John Lafayette Girardeau (1825-1898), whose extensive pastoral and educational ministry among the slave population in Charleston, South Carolina, developed many African American leaders for the Church. He stood against segregation in the Southern Presbyterian Church during Reconstruction and became one of the South’s leading theologians and educators. While a student at Columbia Seminary from 1845 to 1848 he attended First Presbyterian Church, and in 1875 returned to Columbia after pastoring in Charleston. As Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology in the Seminary, Girardeau supplied the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church.
