For the Rev. Herbert Brown, early June wouldn't be the same without the National Baptist Congress.

Mr. Brown, a pastor in Nashville, Tenn., has been attending this major annual black church event for the last 15 years.

He comes for the classes on preaching. He comes for the gospel music and fellowship. Not least, he comes for the late-night worship services, which don't begin until 10 o'clock.

"You've really got to be born again to go to a worship service at that hour," Mr. Brown said with a laugh.

The National Baptist Congress began Tuesday at the Dallas Convention Center and continues through Friday, with 15,000 Baptists and others expected to attend.

Top speakers will include the Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York; and the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas' Red Bird area. The host pastor is the Rev. R.E. Price of New Mount Zion Baptist Church in Lake Highlands.

This is the 102nd annual session of the congress, which last met in Dallas in 1987.

Daytime classes are held in everything from narrative preaching to how to be a more effective church usher. Along with evening worship services, there's a full range of youth activities, focusing on such areas as oratory, "religious mime" and drill teams.

The event is put on by R.H. Boyd Publishing Corp. of Nashville, a leading publisher of hymnals, Sunday school lessons and other materials produced mainly for black churches of various denominations.

The firm's founder, Richard Henry Boyd, was born a slave in Mississippi in 1843. He was moved to a plantation in Washington County, Texas.

After emancipation, he became a cowboy, educated himself with basic spelling and reading books, studied at Bishop College and organized black churches across Texas.

Realizing the need for written materials for black churches, he moved to Nashville in 1896 and started a publishing company there the next year. In 1906, he began the annual educational and worship event that has become known as the National Baptist Congress.

"He needed an outlet to show the persons who bought the literature how to teach the literature," said T.B. Boyd III, his great-great-grandson and current president and chief executive of the R.H. Boyd Corp.