The Laity Alive and Serving Series contains agendas, articles, audio-cassette tapes, booklets, brochures, business cards, clippings, correspondence, charts, diplomas, financial information, fliers, galleys, invitations, invoices, itineraries, lists, maps, minutes, memoranda, newsletters, newspapers, notes, pamphlets, postcards, programs, receipts, reports, resolutions, schedules, sermons, speeches, tracts, transcripts, and other materials. The series is arranged alphabetically by folder title. Photographs, audio-visual materials and oversize items have been removed to photograph and oversize storage. See the Photographs Series for photographs removed from this series and the Audio-Visual Series for the audio-visual materials removed from this series.

The material in this series was mainly created by the activities of Laity Alive and Serving, Inc. a lay ministry found by Harry Dent and his wife Betty for “lay people … to help churches motivate and mature” by “speaking, teaching, and writing.” The Dents spoke at church services, Sunday schools, conferences, retreats, jails and homes; conducted religious education classes; conducted missions in the United States and overseas; and wrote teaching texts on the Bible and character education. There is also some material relating to Harry Dent’s religious activities before the creation of Laity Alive; his study of the Bible and on the role of the laity in the church; his activities on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention, particularly his role as a trustee of the Baptist College at Charleston (later Charleston Southern University) in South Carolina and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; and his chairmanship of the 1987 Billy Graham Crusade in Columbia, SC. While there a few items relating to his studies at Columbia Bible College the bulk of the pre-Laity material concerns his service as the first Director of Adult Ministries and Director of the Billy Graham Lay Center in Asheville, NC from 1982-1985. The Center was born out of a fire that destroyed the historic Inn at the Ben Lippen School and Summer Ministries run by the Columbia (SC) Bible College (now Columbia International University) in 1980. The following year the Bill Graham Evangelistic Association gave “The Cove”, which it had purchased in 1972 to the College and in 1982 the Center was established, with the College contracted by the Association to run it. Shortly after Dent left in 1985 the College and the Association mutually decided to cancel the arrangement and in 1987 the Association established the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove. The Center was intended to be a year-round lay training center “to work with pastors and churches in teaching God’s Word in lay witness, discipleship, and evangelism to the world” through conferences, music ministries, seminars, and other educational offerings.

Much of the correspondence concerning the Center consists of invitations; requests for information about the Center, for books and to be put on the Center’s mailing list; and thank you’s for books and for speaking to groups, as well as comments on programs offered by the Center. There is also correspondence with J. Robertson McQuilkin, the President of Columbia Bible College from 1968-1990. The series contains notes for speaking engagements, as well as copies of letters accepting or declining invitations to speak. Some of the earlier history of The Cove (previously known as Porter’s Cove) is given in a July 6, 1982 letter from Lewis H. Miller, Jr. from the National Bible Museum in Gatlinburg, TN. Files relating to Roy King, the Assistant Director of Adult Ministries at the Center include information on programs undertaken and planned, fund-raising, and on meetings with church staff, lay ministers, and others. A good deal of the material in this series concerns Dent’s speaking and teaching and includes invitations, thank you’s, and other correspondence about his speaking engagements; fliers and schedules; his speeches and sermons as well as items gathered and notes taken in his research for those speeches and sermons; and teaching materials such as copies of the overheads he used for his lectures on God and the Bible. There is also material relating to some of his other activities, such as participation in various conferences and meetings such as the 1988 “Religion, Public Values, and Human Responsibilities” Conference held at the University of South Carolina or the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1986; planning for a proposed video teaching series; and writing religious articles and columns for magazines and newspapers. Finally, there are Dent’s “Books Read” notes that list key points in the books he read and his research on character education and the role of the laity in the church. The Dents conducted a number of overseas missions which are documented in the series: Australia, China, South Korea, the U.S.S.R., and especially Romania centering on the city of Cluj-Napoca. All of the overseas mission material includes correspondence regarding travel arrangements; correspondence with congregants in the country where the mission is being conducted; clippings concerning political and religious conditions in the mission country; tourist information including lists of contacts and itineraries; and reports and speeches made on the mission once the Dents returned to the United States. The Romanian material includes more correspondence with individuals in the host country than the other missions and also includes correspondence concerning the translation of Cover up: the Watergate in all of us into Romanian. There is also information on the University of Cluj-Napoca; the adoption of Romanian children; on political, business and economic conditions in Romania and Cluj-Napoca including business prospectuses and material on the creation of a new constitution; and on missionary work in and relief shipments to the country. There are files relating to efforts by Dent and others to obtain Most Favored Nation trade status for Romania. In addition, there is material relating to establishing a “sister city” relationship between Cluj-Napoca and Columbia, SC and a “sister hospital” relationship between Providence Hospital in Columbia and the Clinic of Cardiology in Cluj-Napoca. A delegation from Romania visited Columbia in 1991 and the arrangements for that visit are well documented; there is also some items relating to the defection of Romanian Senator Vasile Aileni and his family to the United States during the visit. Some of the material in this series is in Romanian; Chinese and Russian are also represented. Dent’s service as a trustee for the Baptist College at Charleston and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary are documented in this series. The material concerning the Baptist College relates mainly to Dent’s service on various committees, fundraising, athletics, and the changing of the College’s name to Charleston Southern University in 1990. That for the Seminary documents the changeover from a moderate to a more conservative board of trustees, questions of academic freedom and diversity among the faculty (i.e., increasing the number of conservative faculty), and controversies concerning the theological stances of President Roy Lee Honeycutt and faculty members E. Glenn Hinson, Molly Marshall-Green, and Paul Simmons. In addition to correspondence with Honeycutt there is correspondence with his successor, Richard Albert Mohler. Also a part of this series is the records of the South Carolina Billy Graham Crusade held in Columbia, South Carolina in April 1987; Harry Dent served as chairman of this organization from 1986-1987. This organization was responsible for planning and carrying out the Crusade but its records are separate from those of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which also has records relating to this Crusade. Most of the material in this series relates to fund-raising and is composed of contributors (potential and actual) lists and form letters. Samples of the form letters were kept, with lists of whom each form letter was sent to. Other material relating to the Crusade includes articles; correspondence; the minutes of the administrative, executive and advisory committees; news releases; a copy of the transcript of an oral history by Dent for the Billy Graham Oral History Program; sample mailings; statistics; and two notebooks of Crusade procedures and publicity material.

Correspondents include Romanian engineers and deacons John Achim and Eugen Stancel and their wives Monica and Vali; evangelists Bill Barton, Leighton Ford, Billy Graham, John Guest, and Josef Tson; Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia, SC; Dent’s wife Betty; Jack Eckerd, founder of Eckerd Drugs; Greg Horton, 1991 President of the South Carolina Baptist Convention; Anthony Miles, a public relations expert in Eastbourne, United Kingdom; artist Liviu Mocan; John Simmons, South Carolina general manager of Southern Bell; Vasile Talos, President of the Evangelical Alliance of Romania; U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond and his wife Nancy; Alastair Walker, formerly pastor of the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC; and Dr. Gregore Zanc, professor of philosophy and Prefect of Cluj-Napoca.

SEPARATION LIST Removed Oversize Box 1: