The Office of Black Church Studies is offering an evening of worship in honor of the annual Gardner C. Taylor Lecture, hosted by First Calvary Baptist Church of Durham.

Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley is the exciting, gifted, and anointed senior pastor of the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church (ASBC) in Alexandria, Vir. A courageous, dynamic, and visionary leader, he is only the eighth pastor in the church’s 221-year history of worshipping Christ while serving humankind. A native of Chicago, Dr. Wesley is the product of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a Bachelor of Science in biomedical and electrical engineering. While in medical school, Dr. Wesley yielded to the call of God and walked away from a path to a medical career to attend seminary at the prestigious Boston University School of Theology where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. scholar and a summa cum laude graduate in biblical studies and African American religious history. He received his D.Min. in preaching from Northern Baptist Seminary.