Kate Bowler. Cornel West. Krista Tippet. Brian McLaren. David Brooks. Brian K. Blount. Presbyterian speaker series with big-name thought leaders offer new perspectives on life, culture, and faith when they speak in churches nationwide. Churches, big and small, offer lecture or speaker series that encourage communities to wrestle with today’s challenges and grow in faith.
Why have a lecture series?
Adding outside speakers to the church’s usual pastoral lineup offers perspectives from different cultures and contexts and allows congregations to expand their worldviews. Some, like the Duerr Lectures at St. Philip in Houston, Texas, invite Reformed theologians from around the country to discuss biblical and ecclesiastical issues.
John Wurster, pastor of St. Philip, explained that bringing in an annual speaker from a different part of the country allows the congregation to engage with diverse theological issues and keeping the lecture series focused on Reformed and Presbyterian theologians enhances the congregation’s ties to its siblings in faith around the country.
“It allows for a deeper connection across the denomination,” he explained. “It lets the congregation hear about things that are happening nationally.” This year St. Philip will be hosting New Testament scholar Brian Blount. Blount has authored several books on Revelation, including Can I Get a Witness? Reading Revelation through African American Culture. Organizer Elizabeth Duerr has heard Blount preach and speak.
“I’m excited to bring his energy and scholarship to St. Philip,” she said.
The series known as The Willard at First Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, began in 1970 by inviting notable Presbyterian theologians to come and speak to the congregation. In 2012, the leadership broadened the focus to issues of human dignity, inclusion and justice. Recently, they’ve hosted Brian McLaren, Krista Tippet and Jonathan Haidt. That change has allowed The Willard to reach more people in the surrounding community and challenge the congregation in new ways.
Kate Bowler, the author of the bestselling book Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved,) is the 2025 Willard Lecturer at First Presbyterian.
“We don’t want a speaker to tell us something we already know. We don’t want someone to just help us pat ourselves on the back. We want someone to challenge us and bring in new ideas,” said Garrell Keesler, FPC-Charlotte’s director of adult formation. “The good thing about hosting an outside speaker is that they can say things that our pastors can’t.”
“Diversity is important over the course of a series,” explained Scott Kenefake, interim pastor at the House of Hope in St. Paul, Minnesota, home of the Sunday Series lectures. “We don’t want to hear the same thing over and over. We try to bring in a variety of speakers, including mainstream conservative voices.” Past visiting lectures include Kate Bowler, political expert Heather Cox Richardson, and retired Minnesota Justice Alan C. Page, who co-founded the Page Education Foundation to assist students of color in Minnesota with their higher-education pursuits.
An opportunity for an invitation
A lecture or speaker series is also a way to invite neighbors to the church for an event that may not feel as intimidating as inviting them to worship. The goal at Newport Presbyterian Church, a small congregation in Bellevue, Washington, is to make their Doreen Meekhof Memorial Lectures events bigger than themselves.
“It gives us a very intentional reason to invite folks to learn with us,” said pastor Kelly Spencer. “The congregation is very progressive and hesitant to invite folks to worship, but they will invite friends to a learning event.” Larissa Kwong Abazia, the strategic director of NEXT Church, and Diane Moffett, the former executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, are among the most recent lecturers.
Julia Carlson, an associate pastor at House of Hope, agreed that inviting neighbors, coworkers, family and friends to a lecture is easier for parishioners than inviting people to worship. The Sunday Series began by inviting speakers to preach. In 2013, they moved the lecture to a non-worship time on Sunday afternoons.
“The point is to gather people from beyond the church and get new people to cross the threshold,” she said.
Rebekah LeMon, senior pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, says they only offer half of the Rosemary Kittrell Memorial Lecture Series tickets to church members.
“The intention of the bequest that funded the series is to make sure that it’s a community event. We honor that and have about a 50/50 split of church members and those from the community,” she said.
The fourth annual lecture, in 2024, featured author Anne Lamott. Speaker and author Arthur C. Brooks, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, and podcaster Krista Tippett have also visited.
Making a lecture meaningful
Lecture series that thrive are more than one-time events. Congregations that host a dynamic series will also create wrap-around activities for the lecture, including adding reading groups, classes and even learning trips for interested participants.
Many of the speakers are writers, so churches often host classes on the general lecture topic or offer opportunities to gather and talk about the lecturer’s books. Bryan Stevenson’s lecture at Trinity in 2022 included a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) space. The lecture and the trip to EJI made a lasting impression on Trinity’s congregation.
“The impact of a lecture experience can go well beyond a year,” said Lucy Strong, associate pastor for mission and engagement at Trinity. “Even today, when our church members talk about their faith and make faith statements, they are still referencing things they learned from Bryan Stevenson.”
David VanderMeer, minister of music and fine arts at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said a recent event in their Open Doors Creative Arts Series had a lasting impact. The Open Doors series hosted a multi-media event by The Crossroad Project, “Rising Tide,” about Earth care. It included speakers, science, statistics and a string quartet. Shortly after the event, the congregation was inspired to become a designated Earth Care Congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Thinking beyond the lectern
While many Presbyterian speaker series focus on lectures and luncheons, incorporating music and other modes of presentation offers participants different ways to be transformed by what they are experiencing.
VanderMeer said the newly created Open Doors series will further the church’s mission to embrace diversity, inclusion, accessibility and accountability. It incorporates different learning styles that go beyond speaking and listening. Open Doors has included a local artist who makes Motawi tile and an event with an Arab musician that literally had people dancing in the aisles. On January 2, “Visions of Change: Artistry in Action” explored themes of social change and justice through visual narratives.
“The program was intended to extend the boundaries of what our existing programs already have,” VanderMeer said. “We wanted to move beyond a traditional concert series or lecture series to reach more people.”
Speaker sticker shock
Because the cost of big-name speakers can be prohibitive, the Meekhof lectures in Washington focus on creating a small, homey, interactive experience. The Meekhof events have included such non-lecture topics as “Eating with Muslims” and the importance of art and storytelling.
Even some well-endowed churches are experiencing sticker shock as the speaking fees for nationally known speakers rise. Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York City helps to organize the Anita and Antonio Gotto Lecture Series. This series has links on YouTube, and Black Johnston suggests that all churches take a creative approach to booking a speaker.
“I try to make direct contact with the person and sell them on the event at Fifth Avenue,” he said. He does this by seeing if anyone he knows can help him contact the speaker, including other churches that do lectures. These direct connections help to avoid additional fees added by agencies who make the bookings.
Spencer says both big and small churches should be bold when negotiating speaker deals. She will invite speakers out of the congregation’s price range and sometimes finds they will lower their fees or recommend someone who is within the church’s price range.
Although he’s in a major city, Black Johnston encourages smaller communities to invite big names. Some national speakers want to experience what’s happening in communities around the country, whether it’s the heartland, the West Coast or the Deep South.
“Encourage them to visit your slice of America,” he said. Then, the community and the speaker are both learning at the event.
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