Beeson Podcast, Episode #591 Dr. Ed Litton March 8, 2022 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to a very special edition of the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. I’m here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. And this podcast episode is special for two reasons. First, we are recording today in front of a live studio audience. And second, our guest today is the Reverend Dr. Ed Litton, President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Samford has a long history of course with the Southern Baptist Convention and with Alabama Baptists in particular. We were founded by the Alabama Baptist State Convention in 1841 as Howard College. Our Divinity School’s founding Dean, Dr. Timothy George, is a Southern Baptist Minister. And one of the endowed faculty chairs at the Divinity School is named after a long time Alabama Baptist pastor, Charles T. Carter, and is held by another Baptist pastor, Robert Smith. As Dean, I often encounter a couple of misleading perceptions of our identity as a seminary. One is that Beeson is “just a Baptist school.” And the other is that “Beeson isn’t quite Baptist enough.” Well, the truth is that Beeson has always been an interdenominational evangelical divinity school. Which means we train Southern Baptists and a variety of Christians from other protestant networks. But, more than 50% of our people, past and present, identify either as Baptists or as Baptistic nondenominational church members. So, we clearly love Baptists. And we are grateful for the support and the ministry of Southern Baptists at Samford, at Beeson, and beyond. Our guest today preached just a little while ago in Beeson’s Tuesday chapel service. Then he shared a meal with us and other friends from Birmingham. He will be whisked out of town just as soon as we are finished with this podcast interview. SBC presidents are very busy people. So, Kristen, let’s get going. Please tell us about Dr. Ed Litton. >>Kristen Padilla: Thank you, Doug. Again, let me just give a warm welcome to those who are here with us for this podcast. We have with us on the show the Reverend Dr. Ed Litton. He is the Senior Pastor of Redemption Church in Mobile and the 63rd President of the Southern Baptist Convention. So, welcome Dr. Litton, to the Beeson Podcast. >>Dr. Litton: It’s an honor to be here at Beeson, at Samford, and it’s an honor to be on this podcast. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, I just gave a very short bio of you. So, why don’t you introduce yourself more fully to our listeners? Where are you from? How did you come to faith in Jesus Christ? >>Dr. Litton: Well, that’s a great question. I love to talk about it. I came from two kids who never graduated from high school. They were hillbillies from southwest Virginia. My mom’s father was a coal miner who died of Black Lung in his early thirties. My dad’s father owned a grocery store, lost everything he had during the Great Depression. And so my dad joined the Navy during WWII, fought in the Pacific, he stayed in the Navy and fought in Korea, was a Vietnam, was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the process of his growing up he became an alcoholic. And he and my mom were on the verge of divorce when a Southern Baptist pastor in Virginia Beach, Virginia shared the gospel with my dad in a grocery store. My dad rejected the gospel at first, but I had the privilege at about eight years old of watching my father go into his office after he had been drunk for two weeks and my mother had left him and we were getting our things together. He begged her, “Take me to see this preacher, then you can leave me.” And so we went. I watched him get on his knees and invite Christ into his heart. He stood up saved. And he actually drove home – he was so sober. And God has given me an amazing recollection. I was in the back seat, eight years old. My dad gets in. He looks at my mom. I can still see his face. I can still hear his voice. He said, “Sue, something just happened to me and I cannot explain it.” And he said the pastor wanted to know if we had a Bible. He said, “Do we have a Bible?” She goes, “No, we don’t have a Bible.” So, my dad went out and bought a King James Thompson Chain Reference Bible and he began to build our lives on that. That’s where I was introduced to the gospel. And shortly after gave my life to Christ, was baptized into the Kempsville Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The reason people say, “Why are you Southern Baptist?” I am conventionally Southern Baptist, but (laughs) first and foremost they’re the ones who came to get us. That’s one thing I think Southern Baptists are known for is evangelism and we still have a lot of work to do in that area, but that’s my story of coming to faith in Christ. I will say this ... even as an eight year old boy I knew there was something to Jesus. I knew the power of God to change a man’s life. God took my dad from being a hater to being a lover. He became a man of integrity and served the Lord till the day he died. So, I’m grateful. >>Doug Sweeney: Dr. Litton, I bet our listeners would love to hear a little bit about how the Lord pulled you into pastoral ministry. Can you tell us that story or your story about the call to the pastorate? >>Dr. Litton: I was 17 years old when I felt the Lord’s call. I was in a revival meeting in my church. It was really heavy upon me because I didn’t want it. And I ran from it. I did everything I could to actually disqualify myself from serving the Lord. The Lord brought me ... What I discovered is when you are his you can run but you cannot hide. There’s a chain, there’s a leash, and I hit the end of it, and I was struggling as hard as I could and God graciously met me there. And he reminded me that his plan for me was better than mine. So, I surrendered. It has been a joy. God called me to pastor. I’ve had opportunities to do other things but I know that he made me a pastor and he’s proven that, affirmed that gift, and I’m so grateful that he did, because it’s been a wonderful use of the life he gave me. >>Kristen Padilla: You and your first wife, Tammy, served as church planters in Arizona. So, what were those first few years of ministry like? And what lessons did you learn as church planters that have helped you in your pastoral ministry in Mobile all these years later? >>Dr. Litton: Well, I think it helps to be an idiot. To not know what you’re actually doing works in your favor because they guy that enlisted me, I’ll never forget it ... I said, “Give me time to pray about it.” We prayed about it. And I said, “Okay, I think God may be in this.” (laughs) And I said, “How do you start a church?” He looked at me and he said, “Well, you preach Jesus and you win people to Jesus.” I said, “That’s it?” And he goes, “That’s it.” I said, “Well, I can do that.” Turns out there’s a little more involved with it. And so on the organizational end and everything else God just blessed, the church exploded in growth, it was amazing. That wasn’t the only blessing by any means. By the time we left there seven and a half years later half of the congregation had come to faith in Christ there in that seven years. And to see that birthing experience in a place where there aren’t a lot of strong churches was an incredible experience. So, that has shaped us. It’s shaped us in a lot of ways. Because the culture that I was in had issues with prejudice but they weren’t toward African Americans. It was toward other groups and other people. And I learned a very important lesson that all human beings struggle with a heart that’s bent to pre judge other people by the way they appear or the way they look and to not accept people. So, one of the things I learned coming into this state, which I dearly love, is that we all share this same struggle. It’s a part of our fallen nature. And we need to address it. The same way we address any sin in our lives. And so that’s been one of the helpful things, but not the only one. We learned that church basically, I don’t care how old your church is, it could be a historic church, needs to reinvent itself on a regular basis. It needs to redefine the purpose that is clear in scripture, not make up a new purpose, but redefine it in the language of that generation. And every church has to be rebirthed. I’ve been where I’m at now almost 28 years and I would say we’ve had at least eight to ten rebirthing cycles. And that’s just the way I think of it. You have to honor the history, but you keep saying there’s a new generation that does not know the Lord; that grew up that did not know the Lord. And so that’s the ones we’re trying to reach and disciple. >>Doug Sweeney: Tell us a little bit more about the rebirthing idea. You came to Mobile, I believe, in 1994. >>Dr. Litton: Correct. >>Doug Sweeney: And when you arrived you arrived to pastor the First Baptist Church of North Mobile. Of course, today it’s called Redemption Church and it’s big and multi site, so on. Can you tell us just a little bit about that story? How did you get to Mobile? And how did you get to the point where you thought, “We need to re launch the church and change the name?” >>Dr. Litton: First of all, I don’t know that any of our churches are big anymore. I think we’ve all, across the board, suffered tremendous losses. I recently saw a statistic that on average somewhere between 30-50%. I know that’s a big bounce. But 30-50% of our people have just stopped coming. And so it’s interesting, Carey Newhoff, in an article recently said that it’s really not fear that’s driving that. It’s not fear. I forget the other thing he said. But ultimately he said it’s indifference. And as I mentioned in the message today, indifference is a serious sin. And we have to ask ourselves – if you’re indifferent toward the Lord, that’s troublesome. And our people need help finding, again, a motivation to gather into the house of the Lord. Look at what we did. And we had to. But we had to make convenient ways for people to stay together separate in their homes. But some people just got comfortable with it. And some people just said, “Uh, I don’t need to go anymore.” And the reality is we’ve got to not only reach them, but we’ve got to reach new people, too. Because there’s never been a time in my life where the nation that we’re in has been so hungry for reality, hungry for something that gives hope, and we have it. And we need, our people need to re-engage with the gospel. You can be the best preacher in the world but if your people aren’t preaching it in their daily life you’re stuck. We have to multiply our effectiveness by re-mobilizing our people. But our church was going through one of those re-birthing cycles where we, we realized the things we’ve done took us so far, but the whole landscape changes and now we’re playing a whole new game. All of us who pastor know that we’re in a territory now we’ve never been in before. And so I feel like Toto telling Dorothy, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Or was it the other way around? I don’t remember. But the truth is we’ve got to look at this landscape and say, “All right, what’s it going to take?” In our church, we really changed how we do disciple making. Somehow we made the most relational thing Jesus did with his 12 disciples technical sit still while we instill experience, when discipleship is a relational experience. It’s people helping people grow. And you don’t have to be a genius theologian to help somebody understand the ABC’s of scripture. If you’ve got them, if you know how to tithe, you can teach somebody else how to tithe. If you know how to witness, you can teach somebody else how to witness. And so we lost that sense of relationship. So, we started returning to that. In the process, other things began to change. One in particular is we realized that a large number of people coming to our church lived in a part of town that was 16 miles away from us. And so we said, “Why don’t we take you and put you over there as a campus of this church and when you invite your friends they’ll have a place to come to.” Because they were inviting, but the people wouldn’t travel across town, which I wouldn’t blame them. So, we did that. And God has continued to bless that. So, ultimately, that’s why we changed the name of the church. We felt like we had a great name, but First Baptist North Mobile and West Mobile was just too much to put on a sign. So, we said we’ll just change it. I asked some young people in my church ... formed a little committee for them to study it and they came out with the name Redemption Church. And our church embraced it immediately. >>Kristen Padilla: That’s beautiful. You recently referenced the message that you gave in chapel a few minutes ago. We want to encourage our listeners to go to our YouTube Channel so you can hear that excellent message that you gave. Also in your message you said that your wife, Tammy, tragically died in a car wreck and I believe that was in 2007. And your second wife, Kathy, has also experienced a similar loss with her first husband. One of the jobs of the pastor is to counsel and shepherd others through loss and suffering. But here you were experiencing it. So, I would just love to hear what got you through that time? How did you congregation minister to you? And how did God eventually bring you and Kathy together? >>Dr. Litton: Oh, that’s a great question, great series of questions. First of all, the Lord obviously protected us because he promises that he does that. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death with him. His rod and staff comfort us. But it was friends like my friend here with me, Gary, that loved us, took care of us, the practical things at first. But you’ve got to re-engage life, even though you don’t want to re-engage life. And so we knew the power of prayer. We knew people were praying for us. I have two boxes in my office with literally three to four hundred prayers cards that came from one church in Memphis, TN called Bellevue Baptist Church. That people were praying for us. Prayer ministries ... it really gave me a whole new heart for Southern Baptists and other groups that genuinely pray for people in their suffering. And so we learned that we were in a place of suffering and that God was taking us through it. We had great support and God continued to bless us in that. And we had other tragedies that followed that. But through it all it was the Lord. Kathy and Rick, he pastored the Riverside Baptist Church in Denver, Colorado. They were on a family vacation and they had a piece of metal hit a tire, it blew out, they were pulling a boat, it jackknifed. They flipped. Rick was killed. Kathy and their 17 year old son, Justin, survived. The other two kids were in a car behind them and watched the whole thing. It was tragic for a family. The impact of grief on a family is profound. But through it all they had a similar experience. But let me tell you something that is interesting that I never thought about. If I pastor loses his wife he doesn’t lose his church, he doesn’t lose his identity, he doesn’t lose his income, he doesn’t lose his home. But when a pastor’s wife loses her husband, she loses everything. And so my wife went through a very different valley of Bakha than I did. And yet that perspective is what brought us together. She was invited to come and speak to our women’s ministry. It was the first time we met. There’s a rumor on the internet that we met online. That is just not true. (laughs) She looked online ... no, I’m kidding. She did not. But the truth is God brought us together and it’s an amazing sense when you walk into our home. You see pictures of both of our mates. You see pictures of our family together. And for people in a divorce culture that are not used to that, it becomes quite surprising when they see it. And it always raises questions. There’s no sense of anything except that God in his grace and mercy had this planned for our life. And that can be challenging theologically, emotionally. “God, this is not what I wanted.” And yet I have a great comforter and a friend in Kathy who understands that even to this day, and I understand about her, that we’ll have times of sorrow and grief, because we lived a very real life, a full life, great marriages, and God has blessed us twice. But it’s still, it’s not a consolation prize. It’s not the puppy that replaces the puppy that God had. It’s just the reality that this was God’s plan before the foundation of the earth. I want to tell you this real quick. I had a seminary student ask me this about a month after Tammy died. He said, “Did your view of God’s sovereignty help you or hurt you when your wife died?” And I said, “Yes.” It utterly devastated me that God would let me hurt that bad and it utterly comforted me that God knew this before the foundation of the earth. I felt helpless. But I knew I was in his hands. And that’s the only way I know to survive anything. That’s true of anything we go through that is devastating. >>Doug Sweeney: I was in Nashville last summer when you were elected the 63rd President of the Southern Baptist Convention. My goodness that was a highly publicized election. >>Dr. Litton: People kept telling me, “You’re 63.” I said, “No, I’m not. I’m 62.” (laughter) Sorry, cheap joke. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. We all know this is a pretty wild time to be the President of any denomination, let alone the biggest protestant denomination in the country. How has that been for you? What have been some of the surprises? What have you learned? What’s God been teaching you through all of this? >>Dr. Litton: Well, I will write a book someday about it. No, I won’t. (laughs) Let me say this, we are at a very critical moment. Our polity, a lot of things we’re having to look at is being tested. But there are two things – and I shared this with the executive committee last week – there are two profound stains on our garment. One is racism. The other is abuse. And the one clear message that came out of Nashville for me was that it was my task to address those two issues. There were a lot of thoughts about how that should be handled. I’ll be honest with you, God gave me the grace and the wisdom and the wise counsel to appoint a task force that would not bow to any pressures, except the mission that the Southern Baptist Convention gave us. Now, there’s a lot of debate about that, even a motion on the floor, but it was very clear that this had to be investigated and a report would be turned over to the convention at our next meeting in Anaheim. And I believe we did that. I had a conversation this morning on my way up with the chair and vice chair of the task force. And these are two men, Bruce Frank as the Chair, and I think that they are two of the bravest men I know. They’re strong. And they, Barshall Blalock is the Vice Chair. And the whole committee has pushed forward a thorough investigation. I do not believe there will be a shadow on this investigation. And it’s largely because of the people that were placed on it. They’ve done an amazing job. But, the fear is that this report is going to reveal some things that are embarrassing, that are not good, and people will be mentioned and that should concern all of us. At the same time the light of day is the greatest sanitizing thing you can experience. So, we are serious as a convention about getting this issue addressed, not to get beyond it but to find out how does God want this culture called Southern Baptist to change? At the same time I have a deep passion, as I’ve already shared in the chapel message and here that we have to address this thing that’s been a part of us from the very beginning. And we have to address it not to deny it but to confront it and to say this is how we should treat one another. One of the things I see very profoundly and most of my dear friends who are African American pastors really have helped me in the last eight to ten years see this, that we are a strong great commission people. But the scripture, our Lord Jesus combined the Great Commission with the Great Commandment. Because the Great Commandment is our credibility. I can say all day that I love you but if I treat you with disrespect, dishonor, or overlook your suffering, or pain, and do nothing about it when it’s within my grasp to do something, then I have to question whether the love of Christ is really in me. And so it’s by this he said, Jesus said we will know that you are my disciples that you loved one another. And so what it does is it increases and intensifies our credibility to share the gospel with other people. And so I’m not saying wait to share the gospel. We’ve got to share the gospel, but it shines when we do it and people see that we truly love one another. >>Kristen Padilla: Dr. Litton, how can people, Southern Baptists and non Southern Baptist, pray for you specifically, and the Southern Baptist Convention? >>Dr. Litton: Well, first of all, pray for those two things. Pray, and I’m telling people ... Don’t brace yourself for the task force report. Brace to act. Don’t brace for a crash. Brace to come to this convention in Anaheim in June ready to do something that really shapes the culture of the future. Another thing, too, is learn the simple practice in your own community of loving people who don’t look like you, think like you, or vote like you. And to begin to unify with them because they know the Lord, they’re preaching the gospel, and what if our community saw us serving our schools and our churches together? What if they saw us in the neighborhoods loving people together that we need each other? I have developed the most amazing respect for the African American church. It is a miracle. The African American church in America is a miracle of God. And you look at our history and you see how they formed and how their strengths ... and the way they work in communities. We have much to learn. And so relationship with each other raises the level for all of us. So, we hear a lot of talk about, “Well, our churches should be this many Black, this many White.” No, no, no, just love each other. Gotta work out all that stuff. And he will bless us as we continue to show his glory in our communities and it’s not as hard as people think. Again, leading change is painful. I said that in the chapel service with the undergrads. Leading change is painful. If you’re a leader and you’re not in pain, you’re not leading. Because people resist change for fear. The Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear. Matter of fact, it says the fear of man is a snare. What we need to do is fear the Lord. There’s a lot of things that have been said about me as President of the Convention. And there’s things that have been “exposed” about me. Can I tell you something? They don’t have a clue. If people knew what was in my heart, the sin that I wrestle with, oh my word. They would never ask me to be the first, second, 63rd, or 7,000th Southern Baptist President. But the reality is God’s grace has enabled all sinners to serve him and to be used by him, and I’m grateful for his grace. But I want to encourage you that we’ve got to ... we want to unify on the things that matter. We don’t have to see eye to eye on every secondary tertiary issue but we do have to see eye to eye that Jesus called us to reach the nations and to do it loving one another in the process. >>Doug Sweeney: That is a wonderful word. Dr. Litton, Kristen and I always end these podcast interviews with guests by asking them if they would to edify our listeners with a little word about what the Lord is doing in your life these days? People think of you these days first and foremost as the President of the denomination but of course you emphasized at some length in chapel this morning the importance of a regular daily walk with the Lord, spending time with him and so on. Whether or not you’re the president of a major denomination. So, as you sought to walk with the Lord in recent days, as you listen to his voice, and dug into scripture, what kinds of things has he been teaching you that might be edifying for our hearers? >>Dr. Litton: That’s a great question. I would say these simple words: trust me. I’m not talking about trusting me – trust in the Lord. There are times when I’ll be under pressure with a decision or under pressure with something and I will hear the voice of the Lord simply say, “Do you trust me?” And things change. Matter of fact, you may hear news about me today or tomorrow. And you may go, “Wow, I didn’t know that was going on while we were with him.” But the reality is I’m trusting in the Lord and I encourage you to trust in the Lord, because he is faithful. And you will never trust him too much. So, what he keeps telling me is that his plans are greater than our plans. His ways are higher than our ways. And so that it’s our joy and our delight to trust him. Whatever problem you’re facing, trust him. Trust the Lord. His timing is perfect, his ways are just, and you can trust in him. Amen? >>Doug Sweeney: Amen. You have been listening to Ed Litton. He is the Senior Pastor of Redemption Church in Mobile, Alabama and the 63rd President of the Southern Baptist Convention. We are deeply grateful to him for this time that he spent with us today. It’s been a wonderful day. Thank you for your chapel message. We’ll have to put that on the podcast one of these days, too. Kristen and I thank you for this time in the podcast studio. Thank you all for being with us. We love you. We’re praying for you. And we say “goodbye” for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.