Dr. Joel C. Gregory holds the George W. Truett Endowed Chair of Preaching and Evangelism at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He is also Director of the Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at Baylor’s Truett. In 2018 he was named one of the “Twelve Most Effective Preachers in the English Language” by a poll of more than 500 professors of preaching in American seminaries and universities. The same year he was also recognized by the E.K. Bailey International Conference as a “Living Legend.” In 2019 his peers at Baylor University, the oldest university in Texas and the world’s largest Baptist University, named him an Outstanding Professor.
Gregory holds the B.A. Summa cum Laude from Baylor, the M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught preaching, and the PhD in New Testament from Baylor. He served four student pastorates and three pastorates after his student days, including Travis Avenue Baptist Church, the largest Baptist Church in Fort Worth, and the First Baptist Church, Dallas. In addition to being a professor at Baylor’s Truett Seminary, he is also President of Joel Gregory Ministries.
Under the auspices of Gregory Ministries he has spoken on average in 20 states per year for decades in more than 60 churches and conferences. Among other preaching appointments, he brought the concluding message at the Baptist World Congress in in Durban, South Africa, in 2015 as well as speaking at the invitation of President Jimmy Carter at the Baptist New Covenant meeting in Atlanta, 2008. In 2017 he was honored to bring the citywide memorial message in Charleston, SC, on the second anniversary of the death of the Emanuel Nine, along with the governor and mayor. Joel has spoken at dozens of colleges, seminaries, and churches internationally. These include Princeton University Chapel and Seminary, Spurgeon’s College, London, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, Kensington Temple, London, for 22 years at the E.K. Bailey International Conference on Expository Preaching, the IC3 Conference in Houston, Preaching Magazine’s National Preaching Conference, the Evangelical Homiletics Society, and dozens of other conferences, conventions, and churches annually.
Since 2005 Gregory has conducted nearly 100 Proclaimers Place® Seminars in 18 states, the U.K., Paris, Rome, Greece, Israel, Germany, and Switzerland with more than 1,000 pastors attending the four-day seminar. In 2019 he celebrated the 15th anniversary of the seminar meeting at Oxford University’s Regent’s Park College with 42 ministers present for four days of intensive training.
Gregory is the author of five books, anthologist of Baptist Global Preaching, and a regular contributor to preachingtoday.com. His 2018 article, “Spurgeon’s Resignation from the British Baptist Union: A Microhistory of First Responders,” Baptist History & Heritage Fall 2018 No. 3: 33-50, won the Norman Cox Award for the Best Article of the Year in 2018.
Among other investments, Gregory actively works with Compassion International in an advisory role and has travelled with them recently introducing pastors to their work in Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, as well as helping forge a relationship with Baylor and Compassion.
Gregory is married to Joanne Michele Gregory, RN, a Baylor graduate and accomplished interpreter for the deaf. They have four adult children.

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