Don’t miss our 2013 Fall Festival Speaker, Rev. Dr. Clayton Schmit
The annual Preaching Festival brings to Western Theological Seminary people who can inspire women and men to preach with excellence and lift high the vocation of preaching.
Rev. Dr. Clayton J. Schmit is currently provost for the School of Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. Before coming to LTSS he was Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary where he taught Homiletics and courses in Liturgical Arts. He is an accomplished choral music director and published composer. Rev. Schmit has published several books including Praying the Hours in Ordinary Life (co-authored with Lauralee Farrer, 2010), Sent and Gathered: A Worship Manual for the Missional Church (2009), Too Deep for Words: A Theology of Liturgical Expression (2002), and Public Reading of Scripture (2002). His areas of expertise include research, writing, preaching, composing and worship.
The Bast Preaching Festival has developed into a partnership with the Chaplain’s Office at Hope College, where the featured preacher begins each festival with a “guest sermon” at Hope College’s Sunday evening Gathering at 8:00pm.
This component of The Bast Preaching Program selects a pastor who desires to deepen their own reflection and understanding of pastor as preacher and combines that with the goal of enriching the preaching vocation of students here at Western Seminary, to create a semester of growth, learning and enrichment for everyone. Resident preachers have the opportunity to serve as a mentor to students, present a workshop or lecture for the community, interact with students in a preaching class, and develop a resource for the broader church.
This newly revised component of the Bast Preaching Program creates a summer learning community of eight pastors who come together for a week at Western Theological Seminary for group discussions, reading, personal study and rest. Facilitators will guide the week-long experience, not only for the personal growth and inspiration of a pastor, but to also connect passionate preachers with one another. 
The Henry Bast Chair of Preaching is a faculty administrated position and is one of the five components of the Bast Preaching Program. This endowed chair at Western Theological Seminary was established to continually raise up new generations of preachers for the Church of Jesus Christ. Since 1995, Rev. Dr. Timothy Brown has held the Henry Bast Professor of Preaching Chair at Western Seminary. As a young man and new convert in the late 1960s, Tim witnessed the aging and ill Henry Bast ascending the pulpit to preach. Tim recalls, "I thrilled then, as I do now, to the gospel he preached."