Dwight A. Moody, President
Academy of Preachers
We have done six National Festivals (and many campus and regional festivals) but nothing was a good as Dallas!
Wow! is all I can say, and all that many have said to me. It was surely a WOW event.
Thanks to Highland Park United Methodist Church and Perkins School of Theology. Thanks to our lead sponsors: Perkins School of Theology, Truett Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan University and Seminary, and Wesley Seminary in Washington DC. (Who will take the lead in Lexington for the 2016 National Festival of Young Preachers?)
We tried some new things: Master Classes, Preacher Studio, Sponsor’s Fiesta, and the AoP Express (the bus from Lexington). All were stellar successes, and all will be repeated next year, even the chartered bus from Texas—the only question is: who will sponsor that bus?
Our plenary speakers were memorable and the music of the American Spiritual Ensemble was outstanding; but the main thing stayed the main thing: young preachers gathering to pray, preach, and support one another in their call to gospel preaching.
We (the AoP team) made note of a dozen things about the Festival that need improvement, and come next year you will see that improvement; we are already hard at work with plans for another memorable inauguration of the new year. After all, what better way can there be to welcome the new year of our Lord?
A hearty and heart-felt THANK YOU to my colleagues, Wyndee Holbrook and Debbie Moody (who is my sister, not my wife!), and to their team of Festival managers and hosts. Blessings especially to registration manager Della Stanley-Green of Indianapolis whose mother died during the Festival and whose service in Dallas was cut short.
Thanks be to God, for another inspiration festival, for friendships old and new, and for the saving, redeeming gospel we have been called to declare.