Registration

Registration

Anna Carter Florence
Associate Professor of Preaching,
Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has said that Anna Carter Florence “has a special gift from God to let the text speak its gospel truth among us. She does so through a mix of imagination, daring, fidelity, and shrewdness. Her words will lead and empower the rest of us for the sake of our vocation.”

Florence earned her degrees at Yale (B.A.) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.; Ph.D.). After her ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) she served as an associate pastor in Minneapolis, Minn. As a professor at Columbia she focuses her courses on historical, theological, aesthetic, and performative dimensions of preaching and the ways preaching engages other fields and different traditions. Some of her courses include “Preaching and Youth,” “Preaching Jesus, Being Feminist, Staying Reformed,” “The Artist’s Hand, The Preacher’s Word,” and “Preaching as Testimony: Towards a Women’s Preaching Tradition and New Homiletical Models.”

As a scholar and writer, her research interests are testimony, feminist theology, the role of experience in preaching, and the history of preaching women. She is the author of Preaching as Testimony (Westminster John Knox, 2007) and the editor of Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers by Walter Brueggemann (Fortress, 2004). In addition to numerous articles on homiletics, her sermons have been published in The Journal for Preachers, Renewing the Vision: Reformed Faith for the Twenty-first Century, Cloud of Witnesses, Vol. I: An Audio Journal on Youth, Church and Culture, The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, and Pulpit Digest to name a few.

Otis Moss III
Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago

Under the leadership of Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Moss earned his degrees from Morehouse College (B.A.) and Yale (M.Div.), where he was awarded the FTE Benjamin Elijah Mays Scholarship in Religion and the Yale University Magee Fellowship, one of the few African Americans to ever receive this award in the school’s 300-year history.
Following seminary, Moss attended the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology in Colorado to pursue a Ph.D. in religion and social change, under the tutelage of African American historian and theologian Dr. Vincent Harding. Moss has served as an adjunct professor at Voorhees College, guest lecturer at the Interdenomonational Theological Center,
Emory University, Presbyterian College, Howard University, Yale, Harvard University, and Morehouse College, and he has preached internationally in South Africa, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Egypt.

He is the author of Redemption in a Red Light District (Four-G, 1999), and his essays, articles, and poetry have appeared in Sojourners Magazine, Urban Spectrum, and African American Pulpit, which recently named him one of the “20 to watch” ministers who will shape the future of the African American church. Newsweek has cited Moss as one of “God’s Foot Soldiers committed to transforming the lives of youth.”

His passion for youth and intergenerational ministry led him to create the Issachar Movement, a consulting group designed to bridge the generation gap within churches and train a new generation of prophetic church leadership. His work in this area has resulted in invitations to speak at the Hampton University Ministers and Musicians Conference, the largest African American ecumenical conference in the nation.

Claudio Carvalhaes
Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching
Louisville Seminary

As a theologian and artist his focus on reviving worship for the 21st century is deeply informed by an understanding of worship around the world.

Carvalhaes was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, where he also earned his degree from the Independent Presbyterian Theological Seminary. As an ordained minister he served Presbyterian congregations in São Paulo.

He studied ecumenism in Switzerland at the World Council of Churches and received his M.A. in theology and literature from Methodist University’s Ecumenical Institute of the Graduate School of Religion in São Paulo.

In a partnership with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other governing bodies, Carvalhaes became a founding pastor of Christ is Life Presbyterian Church, a Portuguese-speaking congregation in Fall River, Mass. After serving the church for four years, he moved to New York City and earned the Ph.D. at Union Theological Seminary.

A much sought after speaker, writer, and consultant, Carvalhaes has served with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in its peacemaking and immigrant groups ministries. His published articles, in both English and Portuguese, focus on the theology of Paul Tillich, postmodern theological study in Brazil, art and the Reformed faith, and the relationship between theology and liturgy. He is also the author of Trangressões: religião, performance e arte (Transgressions: Religion, Performance and Art), published in 2005 by Emblema Ideas: São Paulo, and Oi Pai. Diálogos imaginários de um filho com o Pai que já se foi. Imaginário de um pai encantado (Editora Kelps, Goiás, 2008: Translated: From Here to There: An Imaginary Conversation Between a Son and a Father Who Has Gone).