This year’s student-led Harvey Lecture, “Jesus Speaks: The Call to Prophetic Preaching,” was given by The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis, Class of 2007.
The event was Monday, April 12, 2021, live on the Motte, with the lecture streamed to the Southwest Facebook page. Liturgy began at 5:00 p.m. with a Spanish Eucharist service, with the lecture following at 6:30 p.m. after a dinner on the Motte.
This year’s event was planned by students the Rev. Santi Rodriguez and the Rev. Jenny Newman, both MDiv Seniors. It was the first in-person event hosted at the seminary since the pandemic hit in March of 2020.
“It was a delight to plan the Harvey Lecture and its festivities. With COVID-19 guidelines limiting in-person interaction in the last 13 months, the format of this year’s Lecture has seen major changes from previous years and from other lectures this year,” said Rodriguez. “Holding it outside along with the Spanish Eucharist – the first of the year – and dinner, help us to commute with nature and one another.”
The Rev. Baldwin-McGinnis is Priest/Pastora at Northside Episcopal Church, a bilingual church plant in Northeast Houston. Rev. Baldwin-McGinnis is a native of Austin and was a member at All Saints Church on the University of Texas campus. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and began her nonprofit vocation in Washington, D.C., in the field of human rights. Her wife, Pam, and two children support her in her ministry.
“The most enjoyable part of the planning was our committee’s discernment of its theme. We wanted to hold a lecture that helps future Church leaders to proclaim God’s prophetic Word in pastoral ways without watering down the Gospel,” said Rodriguez. “I am delighted by the way The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis helped us to understand prophetic preaching as a celebration of the bond between God and God’s people.”
“The student planning committee took the initiative to shake up the pattern this year, organizing a Spanish Eucharist, a festive meal, and then the participatory lecture on What is Prophetic Preaching,” said the Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, dean and president of Seminary of the Southwest. “It was a blessing to have the Rev. Luz Montes return to preside and to welcome back the Rev Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis to share her experience and theological reflection on prophecy for preachers and for all the baptized. Spirits were high!”
The Harvey Lectures were conceived at Seminary of the Southwest as a way of honoring the late Dean Hudnall Harvey, who died unexpectedly in 1972, after serving as the seminary’s dean for just five years.
During Dean Harvey’s tenure, following some institutional turbulence during the 1960s, the seminary had begun rebuilding: in terms of enrollment, financial strength, and earning back the trust of many dioceses through the church.
The seminary community established the Harvey Lectures an annual series that would be overseen by student leaders and that would address the relationship between pastoral leadership and contemporary issues confronting the church.
Over the years, these Lectures have become a lasting and vital resource for the seminary, bringing important and diverse theological voices to our campus.
