By Jaci Schneider, Copy Editor
Dr. Royce Money, president of the university, will share the Lectureship stage Sunday night as he delivers his opening address with Dr. Don Jeanes, president of Milligan College in Johnson City, Tenn.
The lecture, entitled “The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us,” will focus on unity, said Dr. Mark Love, director of Ministry Events.
“Don Jeanes is a friend of Dr. Money, and Dr. Money felt it was important to share the podium with a Christian Church leader,” Love said.
As part of the university’s ongoing goal to open discussion with Restoration-era churches, Love and administrators invited several Christian Church leaders to speak at Bible Lectureship this year.
Christian Churches developed out of the same spiritual movement as Churches of Christ; however, they have been considered a separate group because of their use of musical instruments in worship and support of missionary societies.
Love decides who to invite as theme speakers with the advice and consultation of a committee made up of faculty members in the Bible, Missions and Ministry Department. The committee discusses the broad Lectureship theme, which this year is “Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free” from the book of John, and considers church teachers who could come speak.
The speakers commit to Lectureship by April, Love said.
Love then sends each theme speaker a packet of information relating to the given title of the lecture.
“I give them a title that pushes them in a certain direction,” Love said. “That just keeps them from overlapping too much.”
Mike Cope, the preaching minister at Highland Church of Christ and adjunct Bible, missions and ministry instructor, will give the theme lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday with the title “I am the Bread of Life.”
“I’m speaking from John 6,” Cope said in an e-mail, “and I’m calling my message ‘Disciplus Carnivorus,’ since in the text Jesus asks us to eat his flesh and drink his blood.”
Cope said he used several methods to prepare his lecture, including prayer, conversation and imagination. He also reads the New Testament texts in Greek and Spanish.
“… not to give some mystical insight but to help familiarize me with what’s there,” Cope said. “When you have to work slower than usual, you see things you might not otherwise see.”
Cope said he is thankful to be included in Lectureship this year, especially with its focus on unity.
Love said he is also looking forward to the emphasis on unity.
“This is the Lectureship during the Centennial year,” Love said. “We thought, ‘What word would be connected significantly to the history of the campus?'”
The Lectureship theme this year is etched above the doorway of the Administration Building, something Love said is fitting for a Christian university.
“A Christian ought to be concerned about truth,” he said.
