Best-selling author featured during Willson Lectures at Wayland

PLAINVIEW – The author of the best-selling book Before You Leave: For College, Career and Eternity will be on the Wayland Baptist University campus Feb. 21 and 22. Dr. Todd von Helms will be featured at the 2023 Willson Lectures.

Can we trust the Bible, or has it been distorted over the centuries? Are demons real or just a Hollywood invention? Are heaven and hell real, eternal destinations? Does prayer work? These are the kinds of questions Dr. Von Helms addresses in his book, as well as in his speaking engagements, and he does so with a scholarly approach that has prompted excellent reviews of Before You Leave: For College, Career and Eternity.

The annual Willson Lectures series begins at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 21, with an invitation-only dinner at the university’s Plainview campus and concludes with a chapel lecture at 11 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 22, in Harral Memorial Auditorium. His topic for the Tuesday dinner will be “Embracing the Gift of Prayer,” and his topic for the chapel lecture on Wednesday will be “Made for Eternity.” The chapel lecture is open to the public. In addition to the featured addresses, Dr. Von Helms will engage in a question-and-answer session at noon on Wednesday in UC-211 in McClung Center and he will present classroom lectures in the School of Christian Studies.

Established in 1950 by gifts from Floydada residents James M. and Mavis Willson, the annual lectureship features topics related to “Applied Christianity” and “Christian Home and Family Life.”

Dr. Von Helms has more than two decades of experience gained through working with teenagers, college students, and clergy as an ordained minister, college professor, church consultant, research assistant, interviewer, chaplain, and headmaster. He has degrees from the University of Texas, Dallas Baptist University, Southwestern Seminary, Southern Seminary, Duke University and Southern Methodist University.

Dr. Von Helms is a Senior Fellow at The King’s College in New York City, an adjunct professor and the Presidential Scholar of Christianity and Culture at Dallas Baptist University, and a Senior Fellow for the Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.

In addition to traveling the nation speaking to youth and college students, Dr. Von Helms organizes speaker series events that encourage communities, churches, and academia to think more deeply about matters of faith.