Nicholson Lecture
2026 Nicholson Lecture Series with Rev. Dr. Mark Jefferson
The Cadence of the Spirit: Preaching and Formation Under the Powers
2026 Nicholson Lecture Series with Rev. Dr. Mark Jefferson
Oct. 13 & Oct. 14, 2026 | 7 p.m. | Hybrid Event
This October, join us in person at the Saint Columba Chapel or online for the 2026 Nicholson Lecture Series with Rev. Dr. Mark Jefferson titled, “The Cadence of the Spirit: Preaching and Formation Under the Powers.”
About the speaker: Dr. Jefferson is Associate Professor in the John Gladstone Chair of Preaching and Worship and Dean of the Sarah Daley Nickerson Chapel at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, N.S. An alumnus of Norfolk State University (B.A.), Candler School of Theology (M.Div.), and Emory University (Ph.D.), his work explores the confluence of race, class, technology, contemporary cultural expressions, and preaching. Dr. Jefferson has preached around the globe—in South Africa, Israel, the Caribbean, and throughout the United States. He has appeared on prominent platforms, including the Washington National Cathedral and the Festival of Homiletics. Whether in pulpits, classrooms, or digital platforms, Dr. Jefferson brings a theologically rigorous and culturally resonant vision for Gospel witness.
The two-day lecture series will proceed according to the following schedule:
Oct. 13 | 7 p.m. ADT
Lecture I: The Powers That Form Us: Rival Cadences in the Algorithmic Age
This lecture will examine the competing cultural, technological, racial, economic, and ideological forces that shape attention, desire, identity, and belonging before the preacher ever enters the pulpit. Dr. Jefferson will argue that formation often happens rhythmically before it happens propositionally and that contemporary preaching must take seriously the rival cadences already forming Christian communities.
Oct. 14 | 7 p.m. ADT
Lecture II: Learning the Cadence of Christ: Toward a Cadential Homiletics
This lecture will move from diagnosis to a constructive theology of proclamation. It will develop Cadential Homiletics as a Spirit-enabled, Christologically ordered understanding of preaching as formation, organized around the recurring movement of hearing, discernment, proclamation, formation, and witness.
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Community Thursday Chapel event with Rev. Dr. Mark Jefferson
Oct. 15 | 12 p.m. ADT | Hybrid Event
Confusing Our Cadence
Dr. Jefferson will also join the AST Community for Community Thursday Service on Oct. 15, 2026, preaching from Genesis 11:1–9 under the title “Confusing Our Cadence.”
The sermon, which is an extension of lectures, will move from Babel to Pentecost, exploring the danger of a common but distorted cadence and concluding with Pentecost as a Spirit-given counter-cadence: communion without conformity.
Taken together, the sermon and lectures will form one integrated theological movement: not every cadence is holy; the powers form us through rival cadences; and the Spirit forms a people into the cadence of Christ for faithful witness.
About the Nicholson Lectures: The Nicholson Lectures were established in the early 1980s in memory of Dr. C.M. Nicholson, who was principal of Pine Hill Divinity Hall from 1946 to 1971. The memorial fund was established by the Pine Hill Alumni Association, which has committed itself to the establishment of permanent funding for the lectures.