Our 2012 Perkins Lecturer will be Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia. Professor Johnson earned a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Yale University, as well as an M.A. in Religious Studies from Indiana University, an M.Div. in Theology from Saint Meinrad School of Theology, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans.  Professor Johnson’s research concerns the literary, moral, and religious dimensions of the New Testament, including the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of early Christianity (particularly moral discourse), Luke-Acts, the Pastoral Letters, and the Letter of James.

A former Benedictine monk, Professor Johnson has taught at Yale Divinity School and Indiana University, where he received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, was elected a member of the Faculty Colloquium in Teaching, and won the Brown Derby Teaching Award and the Student Choice Award for teaching. At Emory University, he has twice received the On Eagle’s Wings Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2007 he received the Candler School of Theology Outstanding Service Award.

Professor Johnson is the author of more than 25 books, including:

• The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels;
• The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, which is widely used as a textbook;
• Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity;
• The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters;
• Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel;
• The Gospel of Luke;
• Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Study;
• The Acts of the Apostles;
• The New Testament: A Very Short Introduction;
• Hebrews: A Commentary;
• The Letter of James;
• Faith’s Freedom: A Classic Spirituality for Contemporary Christians;
• The First and Second Letters to Timothy;
• Scripture & Discernment: Decision Making in the Church;
• Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary;
• Letters to Paul’s Delegates: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus;
• The Jesus Controversy: Perspectives in Conflict
  co-authored with John Dominic Crossan and Werner H. Kelber;
• The Living Gospel; and
• Brother of Jesus, Friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James.

He has also published several hundred scholarly articles and reviews.

Here is the tentative schedule for the 2012 Perkins Lectures, Practical Christianity: Lessons from the Letter of James:

• Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 10:30am
  “Friendship with the World and Friendship with God: The Need to Choose”

• Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 7:00pm
  “The Power of Speech for Good and Evil”

• Monday, March 5, 2012 at 11:30am
  “Faith and the Faithful Use of Possessions”

• Monday, March 5, 2012 at 7:00pm
  “Christian Community: Competition or Cooperation?”

More information will be provided when it becomes available!

- Save Your Receipt: Exchanging Fear for Faith

The Rev. Dr. Alyce M. McKenzie is Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology. Ordained as an elder 1981, Dr. McKenzie is a member of the North Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Dr. McKenzie received her BA in the History of Religions from Bryn Mawr College (1977), her Master of Divinity degree from the Divinity School of Duke University (1980), and her Ph.D. in Homiletics from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1994. Dr. McKenzie has served several local congregations, in both associate and solo pastoral roles, in several churches in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania. From 1994-1998 she served as Visiting Lecturer in Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary and as Consultant in Preaching and Worship to pastors of the Central and Eastern Conferences, UMC.

Her special interests include preaching on biblical wisdom, preaching on the sayings and parables of Jesus, preaching on public (often controversial) issues, and the role of imagination in crafting sermons. Her articles have appeared in a wide spectrum of periodicals: Quarterly Review, Interpretation, Journal for Preachers, The Living Pulpit, Circuit Rider, and Theology Today. Likewise, some of her sermons have appeared in a number of anthologies.

Dr. McKenzie enjoys writing books about preaching for pastors. She is the author of Preaching Proverbs: Wisdom for the Pulpit (1996), Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society (2002), and Hear and Be Wise: Becoming a Preacher and Teacher of Wisdom (2004). Her book, Novel Preaching: Tips from Top Writers on Crafting Creative Sermons, was published by Westminster John Knox in 2010. A book, co-authored with colleague Dr. John Holbert, is entitled What Not to Say: Practical Advice for Provocative Preaching and will be published in the fall of 2011.

Dr. McKenzie also enjoys writing small group Bible studies for youth and adults. Her Matthew volume of the Interpretation Bible Studies Series was published by Westminster John Knox Press in 1998 and is now in its sixth printing. Her book, The Parables for Today, was published in 2007 by Westminster John Knox and is now in its 4th printing. She is currently working on a study of the Bible’s wisdom entitled Save Your Receipt: Exchanging Fear for Faith, is the recipient of the Perkins Scholarly Outreach Award for 2011. It is written for a popular audience and deals with how the Bible’s wisdom can re-frame the fears that shape our daily lives.

Dr. McKenzie’s blog “Edgy Exegesis,” a reflection on the weekly lectionary gospel text, attracts 2,000-2,500 readers per week.

Dr. McKenzie serves on the Board of Ordained Ministry of the North Texas Annual Conference and is the First Vice President of the Academy of Homiletics. She is a frequently featured speaker at events for both laity and clergy both in Texas and throughout the country.She and her husband Murry have three grown children, Melissa, Rebecca, and Matt. They live in Allen, Texas where they are active in the life of First United Methodist Church of Allen. She sings in the chancel choir and, with her husband Murry, leads the Journey Sunday School Class. The McKenzies enjoy traveling, music, and spending time with friends and family. She is an avid fan of mystery novels, a sporadic practitioner of yoga, an excellent baker, and a novice guitarist.

2011 Lecture Series
- Save Your Receipt: Exchanging Fear for Faith:

• Sunday, March 6, 10:30am:
  The Fear of Everything but God: Cultivating the “Fear of the Lord” (click the link to watch or listen to this lecture)
  Proverbs 3:5-18
  FUMC Trinity, Wesley, Chapel, and Chancel Choirs will sing.

• Sunday, March 6, 7:00pm:
  The Fear of Feeling Others’ Pain: Cultivating the “Listening Heart” (click the link to watch or listen to this lecture)
  1 Kings 3:3-12
  The MSU Concert Chorale will sing.

• Monday, March 7, 12:00noon:
  The Fear of Being Out of Control: Cultivating the “Cool Spirit” (click the link to watch or listen to this lecture)
  Proverbs 17:27; 25:28
  The Hirschi HS Acappella Choir will sing.

• Monday, March 7, 1:00pm:
  Perkins Lectures Lunch Talk (click the link to watch or listen to this lecture)

• Monday, March 7, 7:00pm:
  The Fear of Suffering the Consequences: Cultivating the “Subversive Voice” (click the link to watch or listen to this lecture)
  Matthew 16:24-26
  The WFHS Acappella Choir will sing.

The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like a Story:
The Parables for First – and Twenty-First – Century Ears

Our 2010 Perkins Lecturer will be Amy-Jill Levine the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Graduate Department of Religion, and Program in Jewish Studies.

Holding a B.A. from Smith College, M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, and the University of South Carolina- Upstate, Professor Levine has been awarded grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.  She has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association (she is presently the New Testament book review editor for the Catholic Biblical Quarterly), and the Association for Jewish Studies.

Her most recent books include:

• The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperOne);
• The edited collection, The Historical Jesus in Context (Princeton Readings in Religions) (Princeton);
• The fourteen-volume series, Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings (Continuum);
• The Cambridge Companion to the Bible (Companions to Religion) (Cambridge).

In addition, she has recorded “Introduction to the Old Testament,” “Great Figures of the Old Testament,” and “Great Figures of the New Testament” for the Teaching Company.

A self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” Professor Levine combines history and literary insight with a frequent dash of humor to bring aspects of the Scriptures down-to-earth.  In all of this, she maintains a commitment to eliminating anti-Jewish, sexist, and homophobic theologies.

2010 Lecture Series
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like a Story:
The Parables for First – and Twenty-First – Century Ears

• Sunday, March 7, 2010 – 10:30am
  The Good Samaritan

• Sunday, March 7, 2010 – 7:00pm
  Hearing the Parables Anew

• Monday, March 8, 2010 – 12:00noon
  The Prodigal Son

• Monday, March 8, 2010 – 7:00pm
  The Laborers in the Vineyard

Our 1992 & 2009 Perkins Lecturer was Dr. Tex Sample, the Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor Emeritus of Church and Society at Saint Paul School of Theology where he also served as the Acting Academic Dean during 1987-88.

A native of Brookhaven, Mississippi, he attended public schools in Brookhaven and went on to receive his B.A. from Millsaps College with a major in psychology. He received his M.Div. from the Boston University School of Theology and his Ph.D. from the Boston University Graduate School. While a graduate student, Sample was a Fellow in the Boston University Human Relations Center. In 1999 he was named Distinguish Alumnus of the Boston University School of Theology. He received the D.D. degree from Coe College in 2003.

Over the course of his life Sample has worked as a cab driver, as a laborer, and as a roust-about in the oil fields. In addition, he pastored churches for eight years and served three years as the Director of Social Relations of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. In this last capacity he was the lobbyist for the Council and worked actively in the civil rights and peace movements. An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church (UMC), he is a member of the Missouri Conference. He served as a delegate to the General Conference of the United Methodist Church on four occasions and to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference five times.

Academically, Sample works and teaches in the areas of U.S. lifestyles, U.S. culture, social theory and social change, power, social class and theological ethics. He is a specialist in the study of blue collar and poor people. Sample is a member of the Society of Christian Ethics and a member and Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In Phoenix, Arizona, where the Samples currently live, he is active in The Valley Interfaith Project (an IAF community organizing effort), Interfaith Worker Justice, and The Arizona Interfaith Movement, an organization with twenty-four participating faith traditions. The Sample are also active in the Asbury United Methodist Church in the city.

Sample has authored nine books and co-edited another: Blue Collar Ministry: Facing Economic and Social Realities of Working People (Judson Press, 1984); U.S. Lifestyles and Mainline Churches: A Key to Reaching People in the 90′s (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990); Hard Living People and Mainstream Christians (Abingdon, 1993); Ministry in an Oral Culture-Living With Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl (Westminster/John Knox, 1994); White Soul: Country Music, the Church and Working Americans (Abingdon Press, 1996); The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World (Abingdon Press, 1998); a book edited with Amy DeLong: The Loyal Opposition: Struggling With the Church on Homosexuality (Abingdon, 2000); Powerful Persuasion: Multimedia Witness In Christian Worship (Abingdon, 2005); Blue Collar Resistance And the Politics of Jesus: Doing Ministry With Working Class Whites (Abingdon, 2006); and Earthy Mysticism: Spirituality for Unspiritual People (Abingdon, January, 2008).

In 1957 Sample married Peggy Jo Sanford. Ms. Sample is a landscape artist and works in acrylics and watercolor. A retired soprano she sang professionally in churches in Kansas City and Boston. She worked for many years in community theater. The Samples have three children: Steven (deceased), Shawn, and Jennifer. They have four grandchildren.

His real name is Tex. It is not a nickname. His father named him after Texanna Gillham, an African-American woman who was born in slavery and helped raise his father near Center, Texas.

(Majority of information above gleaned from www.texsample.com)

1992 Lecture Topics:

• To Believe the Mystery and Hear the Music
• Fulfillment, Achievement and Tradition: The Shapes of American Life
• The Middle Aging of the Baby Boomers
• Will Rogers, Uncle Remus and Minnie Pearl: Oral People and Literate Clergy
• Loving Jesus and Justice: Doing Ethics With Real People
• A Gospel of Grace in an Achievement Culture

2009 Lecture Topics:

• Sunday, March 1, 10:30am – The Practices of Transformation
• Sunday, March 1, 7:00pm – Getting the Story Right
• Monday, March 2, 11:00am – Reading the Bible as the Church
• Monday, March 2, 7:00pm – Living the Tradition
• Tuesday, March 3, 11:00am – The Practice of Justice
• Tuesday, March 3, 7:00pm – The Craft of Witness

Our 1997& 2008 Perkins Lecturer was and will be Dr. R. Maurice Boyd, whose ministry has included preaching and teaching in the major pulpits and universities of the Nation and abroad and he has been the Theme Speaker at many conferences. For instance, he delivered the Hickman Lectures on preaching at Duke University in 1980.

Dr. Boyd served churches in Ireland and Canada before coming to New York City. Dr. Boyd was Minister of The City Church, New York (1993-2007), of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York (1988-1992) and of Metropolitan United Church, London, Ontario, the largest congregation of the United Church of Canada (1975-1988).

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and ordained in the Methodist Church there in 1956, Boyd is a graduate in Theology from Edgehill Theological College, Belfast and McMaster Univerisity, Hamilton, where he majored in Philosophy and English. He holds the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Victoria College and the degree of Licentiate of Music from the University of Western Ontario. In May, 1992, he was awarded the Doctor of Sacred Theology degree by Hastings College.

Four books of Dr. Boyd’s sermons have been published: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World (1985); Permit Me Voyage (1989); Running To Paradise (1990), and Corridors of Light (1991). Also published are The Fine Art Of Being Imperfect: And Other Broadcast Talks (1998), and Why oesn’t God Do Things Perfectly? (1999) a defense of the goodness of God in the face of evil and suffering.

1997 Lecture Topics

• On Not Being Taken In
• How to Have Faith
• Wishfulness and Wishes
• Prevenient Grace
• The Slant of Truth
• The Summing Up

2008 Lecture Topics

• Knowing Our Place
• Buying Our Dream
• Gathering Our Harvest
• Reading the Signs
• Remembering to Forget
• Stringing Our Instrument

Our 1983 & 2007 Perkins Lecturer was Dr. Fred B. Craddock, who is minister emeritus of Cherry Log Christian Church in Cherry Log, Georgia and Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament, Emeritus, in the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. An ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Dr. Craddock has also served pastorates in Tennessee and Oklahoma. Much sought after as a lecturer, he has delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, the Scott Lectures at Claremont School of Theology, the Adams Lectures at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, the Schaff Lectures at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt, the Westervelt Lectures at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, the Mullins Lectures at Southern Seminary, Earl Lectures at Pacific School of Religion, and even the Perkins Lectures here at FUMC in 1983.

Reported in Newsweek as one of America’s top preachers, Mr. Craddock, reared in rural Tennessee, speaks the folk idiom with prophetic authenticity.

Dr. Craddock has written a number of books, including The Pre-Existence of Christ in the New Testament (1968), As One Without Authority (1971, rev. 1974, 1979, 2001), Overhearing the Gospel (1978, rev. 2002), The Gospels: Interpreting Biblical Texts (1981), Preaching (1985, rev. 1990), Craddock Stories (2001), and The Cherry Log Sermons (2001). In addition, he has written Bible commentaries on John (Knox Preaching Guides) (1982), Philippians (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (1985), Luke (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (1991), and First and Second Peter and Jude (Westminster Bible Companion) (1995). In 2004, he also co-authored The People’s New Testament Commentary with M. Eugene Boring. Dr. Craddock has also contributed articles to various journals. (To order any of the above mentioned books, just click the title of the book).

A native of Humbolt, Tennessee, Dr. Craddock is married to the former Nettie Dungan. They have a daughter and a son.

1983 Lecture Topics

• The Moment of Truth (Luke 3:1-17)
• Jesus Tempted by the Devil (Luke 4:1-15)
• A Word to the Wise (Luke 4:16-30)
• Learning What We Already Know (Luke 4:16-30)
• Offended by Generosity (Luke 15:11-32)
• While They Were Eating (Luke 24:13-35)

2007 Lecture Topics (based in the book of Philippians)

• Free From Regret
• Free From Excessive Inwardness
• Free From Anxiety About Death
• Free From Being Determined By Others
• Free From Pre-Occupation With Status
• Free From Obsession With Things