91���� is pleased to announce that the featured speaker for the 2025 edition of the Covenant Seminary Preaching Lectures is Rev. H. B. Charles Jr., Pastor-Teacher of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. The lectures will take place in the Robert G. Rayburn Chapel on the Seminary campus on Tuesday, October 28. No classes will be held that day so that students and faculty may attend the lectures; local pastors and members of the community are welcome to attend as well.

Rev. H. B. Charles Jr.

Rev. H. B. Charles Jr. has served at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville since 2008. Prior to that he led Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church of Los Angeles for almost eighteen years, having succeeded his father as pastor there at the age of seventeen. In addition to his ministry at Shiloh, Rev. Charles speaks regularly at churches, conferences, and conventions around the country and hosts the On Preaching podcast, dedicated to helping pastors preach faithfully, clearly, and better. He is the author of several books, including It Happens After Prayer, On Preaching, On Pastoring, The Difference Jesus Makes, and others, and writes about life, preaching, church, books, and other things at .

Dr. Charles’s theme for the lectures is The Preacher’s Life, Labor, and Leadership. Individual lectures expound on each of those topics:

• Session 1: The Preacher’s Life

• Session 2: The Preacher’s Labor

• Session 3: The Preacher’s Leadership

Dr. Thurman Williams, Director of Homiletics for Covenant Seminary, noted, “We are excited to have Rev. Charles with us for this year’s Preaching Lectures. Beginning with our founding President, Dr. Robert G. Rayburn, and continuing on up to the present day, the Seminary has held a strong focus on training preachers as a central means of pastoral ministry. These annual lectures, which bring in notable preachers from a variety of backgrounds and styles, serve not only to instruct but also to inspire and motivate our students, by God’s grace, to excel at this vitally important gift to the church. We look forward to the blessing of experiencing Rev. Charles’s own gifts as a biblical expositor and renowned communicator of God’s Word.”

The Preaching Lectures are just one element in Covenant Seminary’s ongoing mission to prepare pastors for Christ’s church who are faithful to the Scriptures, true to our Reformed confession, and rooted in God’s grace for a lifetime of faithful ministry. The Seminary is working to expand and enhance its training in the area of preaching with the assistance of a recent $1.19 million Compelling Preaching Grant from Lilly Endowment. The grant is enabling the school to develop additional training opportunities as well as a website devoted to preaching and preaching resources.

Doors will open for the Preaching Lectures at 8:30 a.m. with coffee and refreshments available. The lectures will begin at 9 a.m. and end at approximately 3:30 p.m. The main theme and individual lecture topics, along with a full schedule for the day, will be available soon.