SPRINGFIELD – The IGRC Commission on Archives and History has announced the speakers for the 2021 Prentice Sermon and the 2021 Peter Cartwright Memorial Sermon.
Paul Black, IGRC Director of Communications, has been selected to deliver this year’s Prentice Sermon which will be Sunday, April 11, at Astoria UMC in the LaMoine River District. Rev. Jim Clayton, pastor of the Colchester-Hills Grove UMC’s, will be the 2021 Cartwright Sermon speaker on Sunday, Oct. 17 at Peter Cartwright UMC in Pleasant Plains.
Black is the IGRC staff liaison for the Commission on Archives and History and periodically assists with request for historical information. Clayton was to have delivered the 2020 Cartwright sermon but the service was cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions.
The Prentice Sermon began with a bequest from a Methodist layman in Springfield to honor a group of persons who are well known for their untiring proclamation of the Gospel, the pioneer Methodist circuit riding preachers. Hiram Buck Prentice made his bequest to the Illinois Conference in 1922 to pay the expenses of one of the ministers of the Illinois Conference to preach upon the topic, “the Ministry and service as exemplified by the lives and labors of pioneer preachers of the Illinois Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.” The location of the annual sermon rotates throughout the conference.
The Cartwright Sermon is usually observed on the third Sunday of October and serves to remind persons of the contribution of the Rev. Peter Cartwright, who was a leader in the formation of the church in the State of Illinois.
Both sermon series are co-hosted by the IGRC Commission on Archives and History and the IGRC Historical Society.