A few days ago John Harp rolled in to Abilene with a load of sermon tapes (some on reels, most on cassette), files and books from Roy Osborne, longtime minister at Sunset Ridge Church of Christ in San Antonio, Texas. Pictured below are John and Mac after we unloaded and finished a tour of Special Collections.
In 1964 J. D. Thomas and Biblical Research Press published a volume of Roy’s sermons in the ‘Great Preachers of Today’ series. They reissued it under a new title in 1983. The Osborne Papers contain tapes from a fairly wide span of Roy’s preaching. The collection should prove exceedingly useful to historians and rhetoricians because of the time span covered by the reels and tapes, as well as providing a complementary audio version of the kind of preaching committed to print in Roy’s book. As samples of the kind of preaching held forth as exemplary by J. D. Thomas, these sermons will provide a fine window into the changing shape of homiletics and theology in post-war and late twentieth-century Churches of Christ.
They are currently in the queue for processing. We will publicize the finding aid when it is complete.
I am very interested in Roy’s sermons in book form. How may I obtain a copy?
I appreciate this service you and ACU are rendering to the family of God. Good to know Roy’s papers will be preserved. My father, while preaching in Pleasant Hill, California, debated a brother on the church cooperation issue. Roy had previously debated this and, in retrospect, re-thought some of his arguments — and came up with some better ones. He shared them with dad, who used them. MUCH later, Dad and I (then a teenager) visited with Roy who showed us through the Sunset Ridge building. A good thinker and preacher.