1. Keynote Speaker

Steve Bell, C.M.,O.M.

Steve Bell is a Canadian singer/songwriter and guitarist based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is among the best-known Christian musicians in Canada and is an accomplished songwriter and record producer. Before embarking on his solo career, he was a long-time member of the group Elias, Schritt and Bell. In 1989, Bell founded the independent recording label Signpost Music along with Dave Zeglinski, long-time friend and co-producer. His first solo album, Comfort My People, was released on Signpost that same year. Bell now has twenty albums to his credit. Among his many awards are two Junos, several GMA CanadaCovenant Awards and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Anna Carter Florence

Anna Carter Florence is the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and holds degrees from Yale University (BA) and Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv and PhD). Before joining the Columbia faculty in 1998, Anna served as an associate pastor for youth and young adults at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.

Anna’s books include Preaching as Testimony, Inscribing the Word, Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God’s Word in Community, based on her 2012 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School, and A is for Alabaster: 52 Reflections on the Stories of Scripture (2023). She has also published articles and chapters in numerous books and journals, including a year’s worth of lectionary text commentaries for www.WorkingPreacher.org.

Anna’s research focuses on testimony, preaching pedagogies, and creative strategies for communities to engage and encounter the biblical text for our present context. She is a frequent preacher and teacher in the U.S. and abroad, which gives her plenty of opportunity to do what makes her happiest: sitting around a table with a group of people, a big passage of Scripture, and a big block of time to dive into it. She and her husband, the Rev. David Carter Florence, have two grown sons, Caleb and Jonah, and two new daughters-in-law, Kate and Kyra. They also have a dog, a cat, a log-splitter to keep their wood stove going, and way too much knitting yarn.

Malcolm Guite

Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and associate chaplain of St. Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge.  On several occasions, he has taught as visiting faculty at several colleges and universities in England and North America.

Guite is the author of five books of poetry, including two chapter books and three full-length collections, as well as several books on Christian faith and theology. Guite has a decisively simple, formalist style in poems, many of which are sonnets, and he stated that his aim is to “be profound without ceasing to be beautiful”. Guite performs as a singer and guitarist fronting the Cambridgeshire-based blues, rhythm and blues, and rock band Mystery Train. He also has a YouTube channel where he shares his passions and musings with his viewers.

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