Harding alumnus B. Chris Simpson hardly needs an introduction when he steps foot on campus. The 2009 graduate is widely known among students as a frequent and memorable guest speaker in chapel services, and he was among the lineup of keynote speakers during Lectureship this week. Yet, while many know his face and unique speaking style, not everyone knows the man behind the podium.
A current Harding School of Theology student and a special admissions adviser for Harding’s undergraduate programs, Simpson also serves as a full-time minister to young adults at the Holmes Road Church of Christ in Memphis, Tenn., where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Simpson is probably best known among students for his preaching but said he never intended to become a preacher when he first came to Harding. Although he had experience with debate and oration in the past, Simpson said he began thinking about full-time preaching and ministry when he spoke in chapel for the first time as a student.
“When I first spoke in chapel, it was an accident,” Simpson said. “Not an accident, so to speak, as if I wandered up on stage, but it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was involved in the Multicultural Student Action Committee, and they gave each organization on campus a different day to run chapel…I was to lead singing in chapel — and I’m so glad I didn’t, because I would have done a terrible job — but at any rate, the fellow who was supposed to speak dropped out. Probably four or five days before…they said ‘We need someone to speak in chapel.’ I said I could probably do it. At the time I was working at Chick-fil-A, and I remember a sermon. I believe the Holy Spirit gave it to me when I was back there frying chicken, and I said to myself then, ‘If ever I speak in chapel, I want to talk about that’ … I don’t remember it being very smooth or good, to be honest, but I did it, and that was the first time I spoke.”
Nevertheless, Simpson said his first chapel talk served as a turning point for him while he considered what career path he should take. Before then, Simpson said he planned to become a teacher, but he began to sense a calling toward ministry.
A number of respected individuals came into his life, he said, and started shaping him during his time in college. Simpson said that people like professor of Bible and preaching Eddie Cloer, dean of the College of Bible and Ministry Monte Cox and director of the Center for Spiritual Leadership Randy Willingham were just a few of the people from his time at Harding that shaped him and guided him to become a better minister and a better man.
Cox usually joins Simpson’s home congregation, Marsalis Avenue Church of Christ, in Dallas, Texas, for worship at least once a year during the spring Living World Religions class trip. Cox said that although Simpson was certainly shaped by mentors from Harding, he thinks the direction Simpson’s life is going has even more to do with the mentors who shaped him before he came to Harding.
“I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone who listens to him that God has made B. Chris a gifted communicator,” Cox said. “I see God harnessing those gifts and using them to stir people, often stirring people who might not have otherwise had ‘ears to hear.’ It’s also been a real pleasure for me to spend time in his home congregation and meet the people that shaped his faith. B. Chris had wonderful mentors long before he ever set foot on the Harding campus.”
Simpson said one of those mentors was his father. It was through the way his father taught him about the Bible that Simpson said he learned to think and speak in stories.
“I’ve always thought in stories,” Simpson said. “My father, who has since passed on, he was my mentor before any other mentor. He taught me the Bible and taught me the love of God. He would always tell stories, and in fact, sometimes it seemed that he only communicated in stories. That’s one thing that helped me learn to think in stories, and I learned to think in analogies and to think in those ways. As soon as someone starts talking about anything … I think about it in (an) analogy, that’s just how I process information. So it had never even occurred to me that I was doing something with that, that I was creating something memorable until someone said (it to me).”
Watch Simpson’s full interview online at thelink.harding.edu.
