Truett Seminary Welcomes Former Toliver Chapel Baptist Church Pastor For Fall Preaching Convocation

Media contact: Lori Fogleman, director of media communications, (254) 710-6275

A former Waco pastor and renowned specialist in the theory and method of African American preaching and worship will be the featured speaker at the annual Fall Preaching Convocation Oct. 15-16 at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

Dr. Cleophus LaRue, former pastor of Toliver Chapel Baptist Church and currently The Francis Landey Associate Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary, will give The E.K. Bailey Memorial Sermon during a worship celebration at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, in Truett's Paul W. Powell Chapel. Music will be provided by Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Waco.

On Tuesday Oct. 16, LaRue will preach at Truett's community worship from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. in the Powell Chapel. Both worship sessions featuring Dr. LaRue are free and open to the public.

From noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, LaRue will speak at a luncheon in the Piper Great Hall, followed by a question-and-answer session. From 3 to 4:30 p.m., he will lecture at the seminary.

The Fall Preaching Convocation is a program of The Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at Truett, said Dr. Hulitt Gloer, professor of preaching and Christian scriptures and director of the center. The Lake Center will officially open next year in conjunction with Truett's Winter Pastor's School to be held Feb. 4-6, 2008.

An ordained minister in the National Baptist Convention of America, LaRue is the former pastor of two churches in Texas, including Toliver Chapel, as well as the former interim pastor of churches in Harlem and Jamaica Queens, N.Y. He is a frequent speaker in churches and seminaries throughout the country and is a member of the Academy of Homiletics.

LaRue received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Baylor and his master's of divinity degree and doctorate from Princeton. He is the author of The Heart of Black Preaching and Power in the Pulpit: How America's Most Effective Black Preachers Prepare Their Sermons. He is the editor of a forthcoming publication, This Is My Story: Testimonies and Sermons of Black Women in Ministry, published by Westminster John Knox Press.

LaRue and his family reside in Princeton, N.J.

For more information, call (254) 710-6874 or email preaching@baylor.edu.