Students Hear From Rev. Lester W. Taylor Jr. and Ayaan Hirsi Ali During Convocation

Students were immersed into the history of gospel music during the Feb. 5 Convocation and heard a message from Rev. Lester W. Taylor Jr., while former Dutch politician and activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, took the stage during the Feb. 7 Convocation to share her journey from Islam, to atheism, to Christianity.     

Wednesday’s Convocation featured an extended time of worship by LU Praise, led by Patrick Shorts, the assistant director of LU Praise. Informational videos appeared during the breaks between worship medleys, highlighting key movements in the history of gospel music. 

Before introducing the day’s speaker, Shorts shared one of the unique aspects of preaching in the gospel tradition with the crowd. 

“One of the most ground shaking parts of our genre is our preaching. You know, when we bring the Word, it is a conversation,” Shorts said. 

He then welcomed Taylor, the senior pastor at Community Baptist Church in Englewood, New Jersey, to the stage. Taylor has served as the lead pastor of the church for over three decades.  

Taylor quickly warmed the audience up to his conversational preaching style, starting his sermon with a call and response practice with the audience. 

“Neighbor. I don’t know. What you’ve come to do. But I’ve come to clap my hands,” Taylor said, leaving space between lines and directing the audience to repeat after him as he spoke, all the while underscored by Shorts’ tasteful interjections with a B3 Organ. 

Taylor then dove into the meaning of the gospel genre. 

“The songs we just got finished singing today, they are designed to encourage the believer,” Taylor said. 

 The New Jersey minister then shared that he is a two-year cancer survivor, and said that anyone who’s heard him preach for the last two years knows the same thing. He doesn’t share his fight because he is seeking pity, he shares because he knows the real victor already.
“Because God is great and greatly to be praised,” Taylor said.
As his conversation with the body of believers came to an end, Taylor concluded his message by quoting the lyrics to Kurt Carr’s “For Every Mountain.” Another video appeared on the screens before the room transitioned into a final session of worship. 

Sophomore April Jordan said she enjoyed experiencing gospel music live.  

“I have loved gospel music for forever, but this was my first time hearing it live. Getting so much of the history, and having a message centered on worship. Yeah, it was just really special,” Jordan said.  

Friday featured public figure Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her political career, her three books, “Infidel: My Life” (2007), “Nomad: From Islam to America” (2010) and “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now” (2015) — and most recently, for her public conversion to Christianity after previously identifying as an outspoken atheist. 

Ali describes herself as a spiritual fugitive. A once-prominent figure within the New Atheist Movement, Ali established herself as being intent on doing away with the spiritualism of her upbringing. That changed in early 2023 when she found herself in a rehab center. 

“I was there to quit drinking, not to find God,” Ali said.  

Despite this mantra, one of the counselors who was watching over her during her stay accused her of spiritual bankruptcy, and the accusation resonated deeply enough within Ali that she began to reassess the assumptions she had originally made.  

Eventually, she converted to Christianity as a result of that interaction, and is now calling on fellow believers to hold the world accountable for its own spiritual bankruptcy. 

Ali describes the world we are in as one on the precipice of major decline, partly due to conscious subversion. 

“It’s the process by which the foundations of a society are systematically undermined from within,” Ali said, noting that the definition came from a lecture given by Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet journalist, in 1983.  

Ali identified the four steps of subversion as the undermining of the religious foundations, the rousing of unrest within society, the reaction to destabilization and the establishing of a new, often authoritarian, order. 

Ali said these steps are being practiced by Islamists who, as western Christians continue to retreat from local politics, education and social centers, are filling the void left behind. 

She noted the important qualities civilization should prioritize to counteract this subversion: human dignity, individual rights, equality in the eyes of the law, compassion and care for the vulnerable. Ali proclaimed that these concepts do not come from a secular worldview, but the Bible. 

She said that the West is competitive and encouraged the audience to compete as well. She told the audience that when they are met with social justice efforts, they must respond with biblical truth. When faced with a situation that could benefit from a strong Christian leader, believers should step up. In this way, Christians can avoid being flushed out of their own homes and better influence the world around them. 

Hughes is a news reporter for the Liberty Champion.