United in Our Leadership: Litton Aims to Bring SBC Together Through “Honest Conversation”

SBC President Ed Litton addresses the SBC Executive Committee during the September 2021 meeting in Nashville. Image by Brandon Porter | Baptist Press

BY DAVID ROACH

An egregious sin in the congregation could have brought division to Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, the church Ed Litton has pastored for twenty-seven years. But thanks to Litton’s leadership, it didn’t, said his longtime associate pastor Billy Graham.

Litton showed “the positive side” of church discipline, Graham said, as “he followed the biblical mandate” of Matthew 18—going to the sinning individual, then taking someone else, then taking the matter to the church and removing the man from fellowship when he didn’t repent. But that wasn’t the end of the story. “As a result of that, there was great repentance that took place. The man came back and repented publicly before the church, and full restoration was brought about.”

Those who know Litton say that wasn’t an isolated incident. For decades, he has forged unity among believers through strained times. Now he’s looking to bring that brand of leadership to the SBC amid its own strained times.

SBC President Ed Litton (far right) hosts “Shrink the Divide,” a dialogue on racial reconciliation at Redemption Church on October 3, 2021. Participants included (left to right): Chris Singleton, Marshall Blalock, Anthony Thompson, and Ed Litton. Image courtesy of Redemption Church

“A cool hand on a fevered brow” is how Graham describes Litton’s leadership style. “God has given him great intuition and great knowledge of the Scripture.”

Litton was elected SBC president in June at the Convention’s Annual Meeting in Nashville as Southern Baptists confronted contentious issues like Critical Race Theory, charges of liberal drift and how to handle sexual abuse allegations. Yet Litton believes the occasionally heated discussion of those issues and the narrow 52-percent majority by which he was elected belie an underlying unity in the SBC.

That was evident in the hours following Litton’s election, when people approached him in the convention center countless times to say, “I didn’t vote for you, but I’m praying for you.” He has been told the same thing many times since at speaking engagements.

When secular journalists ask Litton the SBC’s perceived division, he tells them, “You don’t understand how unified we still are. I find a delight in knowing that the common Southern Baptist just wants the Gospel to get out and change their community and change the nation and change the nations of the world.”

Southern Baptists are watching to see if Litton can tap into that underlying unity to calm the latest round of Convention squabbles.

A MANDATE TO HEED Ironically, he believes two hot-button issues can be among the SBC’s greatest sources of unity: sexual abuse and racial reconciliation. The Convention “gave me a mandate” to address those issues, Litton said, when it voted with near unanimity to add a sixth strategic action to the SBC’s Vision 2025 initiative: “Prayerfully endeavor to eliminate all incidents of sexual abuse and racial discrimination among our churches.”

Both issues “at their core create distrust if they’re not handled correctly,” Litton said. “I can’t create unity. But I can do what the Convention has tasked me to do and believe that when properly done, it will lead to greater trust.”

He began addressing sexual abuse by appointing in July a seven-member task force to oversee a third-party review into the handling of sexual abuse claims by the SBC Executive Committee (EC). A month later, the task force released an update calling for proposals from firms interested in conducting the review. The task force also announced that the review would include EC actions from 2000 to 2021.

Litton long has been an advocate of racial reconciliation. Last fall, he helped draft a statement on “the Gospel, racial reconciliation, and justice” signed by a diverse group of pastors. In June, SBC messengers overwhelmingly adopted a resolution “on the sufficiency of Scripture for race and racial reconciliation.”

“We have to have an honest conversation about race . . . and abuse,” Litton said. “The Convention expresses itself in the motions it makes and the resolutions it adopts, so leaders need to listen to what the Convention is saying.”

EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW One of Litton’s favorite historical examples in that endeavor is K. Owen White, who served as SBC president from 1963–64 as the Convention sought a unified response to doctrinal controversy and racial strife. White was elected at the same

Litton is optimistic about leading the SBC to greater unity. The most significant lesson he has learned from his early months in office is that an overwhelming percentage of Southern Baptists are “serious about the Gospel.”

Annual Meeting where messengers adopted the Baptist Faith and Message (1963)—the culmination of a doctrinal dispute—and debated whether to endorse historic civil rights legislation.

A theological conservative, White had objected publicly to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Ralph Elliott’s 1962 book The Message of Genesis, which denied the historicity of Genesis. White’s election was viewed as a conservative reaction to liberal drift in some Convention entities.

White also led Southern Baptists through racial tension. The year he presided over the Annual Meeting, messengers declined on a ballot vote to support the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act then working its way through Congress. In 1965, White urged First Baptist Church of Houston, where he was pastor, to grant the request of an African American woman to become a church member. Despite his recommendation, the church voted by secret ballot not to receive her into membership. White expressed disappointment and resigned a day later to take a position with the California Southern Baptist Convention.

White was a friend of Litton’s parents and the first SBC president he knew personally. On occasion, White preached in Litton’s boyhood church. “As a teenager,” he said, “I was overwhelmed by the power of his pulpit” and “captivated by everything he said.” Like White, Litton aims to be “convictional,” “practical,” and “inspiring.”

Litton also looks to the example of former SBC president Jimmy Draper, “a Southern Baptist statesman” and “one of the kindest men that I have ever seen in that office.” Litton served on the staff of First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, when Draper was pastor.

Draper said the SBC seems to be experiencing a “perfect storm” of challenges, but Litton “has the spirit to deal with that carefully.”

“He’s going to be a good leader,” Draper said. “I have great confidence in him.”

BELIEVERS TO UNITE Despite the challenges, Litton is optimistic about leading the SBC to greater unity. The most significant lesson he has learned from his early months in office is that an overwhelming percentage of Southern Baptists are “serious about the Gospel.”

That was evident this summer when, on vacation in Colorado, Litton and his wife Kathy were trying to find a Baptist camp that had been destroyed by forest fire nine months earlier. As they searched, the Littons happened upon “trucks with big yellow signs that said Southern Baptist Disaster Relief,” he said. Five Disaster Relief volunteers were sifting through the ashes of a burned house, looking for items of value to the family.

“We sat there and wept with them as they told us stories of how people heard the Gospel” through Disaster Relief, Litton said, noting “the joy of hearing” how God was working to “expand the Gospel.”

He’s confident he will happen upon many other Southern Baptists sharing Christ amid the challenges of 2021. People with hearts like that, he said, can be led to unity.

DAVID ROACH is a writer and senior pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama.