Gospel-Centered Preaching Conference
October 28-29, 2024 | New York City
Explore and experience how the Gospel can transform our lives, ministries and preaching, and the communities in which we live and serve.
The Gospel-Centered Preaching Conference is dedicated to the legacy of Timothy Keller, founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. We will gather for this event at Church of the Advent Hope, where Redeemer Presbyterian first met for worship and the heritage of Keller's ministry continues to inspire us.
Rev. Dr. Michael Carrion serves as the Senior Pastor and General Overseer of the Promised Land Covenant Churches located in the North and South Bronx. He also serves as the founding Chairman and Superintendent of the Bronx Academy of Promise K-8 Charter School in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx and the Regional Coach for Church Planting and Development for the East Coast Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church,assisting with community and regional mapping, the discernment and assessment process of identifying and training new church planters in the NY/NJ areas.
Rev. Carrion has received national recognition and awards from Government, Community Based Organizations, Faith Based Organizations in several contexts throughout the Metro New York & New Jersey areas. Rev. Carrion was nominated and acknowledged as the Latino JSEC Community Champion for the poor – A United States Department of Labor achievement award for his civil rights efforts and community development contributions in bettering the Bronx community.
Serving as the VP of Church Planting and Leadership Development at CTC, Michael oversees the NYC team prayerfully and discerningly recruiting, training and resourcing church planters called to plant healthy missional churches in the five boroughs of NYC. Michael has successfully planted several churches and charter schools across the South Bronx. He is a social justice activist, community organizer who has been nationally recognized for his work among the poor across the city. Prior to working with CTC, Michael held appointments with the city of New York HRA/CAS and the Fedcap Group as the Senior Director of Workforce Development. As well as a prior role as the Deputy Director of Vocational Rehabilitation Services (VRS). Rev. Carrion has been married to his wife Elizabeth for over 30 years. Pastor Mike and his wife love spending time together with their 5 adult children Michael, Matthew, Tirza, Joshua and Tiffany, 2 granddaughters, 1 grandson, son-in-law Demar, and 3 pitbull dogs.
Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Postand offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.
Jonathan Henderson has served as a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church for over 25 years, with stops on the campuses of Loma Linda University and Pacific Union College. He spent 17 years in the Bay Area of California, pastoring in downtown Oakland for 12 of those 17 years, where he saw a congregation grow from 25 to 400 in membership and attendance.
Jonathan is currently the senior pastor of the Glendale Vallejo Drive Church in Los Angeles County, where he has served for the past year.
Jonathan is the author of the book Worth Every Drop: God’s Relentless Pursuit to Prove You Matter, which is the second edition of the book, released in 2021.
Sam Leonor is the Mission and Spiritual Care Executive for Adventist Health. He leads market mission alignment and the team of chaplains that provide spiritual and emotional support to patients and their families, employees and community members.
Sam has 30 years of experience in Adventist pastoral ministry, higher education and healthcare. Prior to joining Adventist Health, he was a university chaplain and adjunct professor at La Sierra University, where he taught classes in theology and spirituality in the workplace. His connection to Adventist healthcare began in Central America where his parents worked to develop the denomination’s health and educational missions in Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Sam has a Bachelor of Arts degree in religious education from Southern Adventist University and a Master of Divinity degree from Andrews University. He enjoys exploring the connection between spirituality and vocation through research, writing and speaking to a wide range of audiences in church, business and academic settings.
Kendra Haloviak Valentine, Ph.D., is professor of New Testament Studies in the H. M. S. Richards Divinity School at La Sierra University. She earned bachelor’s degrees in Theology and English from Columbia Union College and a master’s in New Testament from Andrews University Theological Seminary. Haloviak Valentine completed her doctorate in New Testament and Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley in 2002.
Haloviak Valentine has served as a pastor in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland, and taught at Adventist colleges and universities in the United States and Australia. Through her experiences as a pastor and teacher, her interest in the book of Revelation grew. She has presented over 40 seminars on the book of Revelation for clergy and lay audiences.
Haloviak Valentine has published in journals, magazines, and books. Publications include “The Book of Revelation” in The Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (2011), Signs to Life: Reading and Responding to John’s Gospel (2013), Worlds at War, Nations in Song: Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation (2015), and “Liberating Legion: An Ecocritical, postcolonial reading of Mark 5:1-20,” in Ecotheology and Nonhuman Ethics in Society (2016).
Recent projects include an article on the tragedy of Waco twenty-five years later (2018), a paper on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians presented at a theology conference in the Philippines (2019) at the Adventist International Institute for Advanced Studies (AIIAS), and an exploration of “truth” in John 19 presented to the Society of Adventist Philosophers (November, 2019). A sabbatical to Australia, Thailand and Cambodia included collecting over 120 surveys on how people read the gospel of Mark. She is currently working on a book that evaluates and reflects on this research.
Kendra has been teaching at La Sierra University since 2002. In 2009 she met Gilbert Valentine, Ph.D., while guest lecturing at Avondale College, and they were married in 2010. Gil has written a number of books on Adventist history and theology, including a recent biography of John Nevins Andrews (2019). Gil and Kendra have enjoyed becoming grandparents to Bronte, Hayden, Tess and Caspar Valentine, whose parents, Lincoln and Janine, live in Australia. They are also proud of Andrew, the oldest son in the family, who is working on a Ph.D. in economics at the University of New South Wales.