Leo Davis Jr. is artistic director at Gia Publications, Inc. in Chicago, Ill. Davis has a scholarly background in black church worship and can discuss contemporary influences and trends in church music.

Rudolph McKissick Jr. is co-senior pastor at the 9,000-member Bethel Baptist Institutional Church in Jacksonville, Fla. He is a national leader in contemporary sacred music and developed a professional-quality national recording choir at his church. He is an expert in sacred music and opera.

The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III is head pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, N.Y. Butts chairs the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

Harold Dean Trulear, senior pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Twin Oaks, Pa., is an expert on religion and social policy. He is associate professor of religious education at Howard University and is ordained in both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches in the USA.

The Rev. William H. Gray III is pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He was formerly a former U.S. congressman and president of the United Negro College Fund.

The Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook is a distinguished fellow at the Freedom Forum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center. She served as U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom from 2011 to 2013. Cook is an ordained Baptist pastor.

The University of North Carolina’s digital archive, “Documenting the American South,” includes a history on the southern black community and documentation of the past.

Read a brief history and review of scholarly surveys on community outreach by black churches, by John J. DiIulio Jr. at the Manhattan Institute Web site.

Read an essay on BlackandChristian.com about black denominations; find a directory of local black churches around the country.