I don't do this lightly.
I also know that if you looked hard enough you would find many things about me as a man that would cause some to want me to resign from the things I do. So, please know that I am not approaching this as a hypocrite, a superior man, or a moralizer....NO! Not at all. We are ALL sinners and we ALL have our demonstrable faults.
But to be the CEO, the Head "Pastor" of the largest Protestant Christian Denomination requires a lot out of a man. And Ed Litton has demonstrated that he doesn't have what it takes.
First of all, I don't know Ed Litton personally. Never met the man. But I have tried to practice Matthew 18 and the Biblical instructions on a brother of offense. I've written him, 3 times, with NO return answer of any kind, not even an acknowledgement that I have written (Was the SAME with J.D. Greear, the past president that I also had many, many problems with!).
Let me explain why I have asked Dr. Litton to resign as President of the SBC.
He has been "caught" in a pretty stout plagiarism scandal. What that means is that he has copied other men's sermons, word for word in many instances, and preached them as his own.
Now, let me hasten to say that I would be lying if I said that I had never used some material from another man's message. When I was younger and looking to learn how to preach, I on occasion took a message preached by Dr. Adrian Rogers and used his thoughts and sometimes even his outline for one of my messages. God eventually convicted me about this, so much so that when I finally had a chance to meet Dr. Rogers I asked for a private meeting. He granted me a few minutes in his study at the old Bellevue location in downtown Memphis. I sheepishly confessed that I had taken a couple of his message ideas and preached them myself. He laughed and said, "All is forgiven my friend! Listen, if I have any bullets that will fit your gun, SHOOT THEM!"
So, I stopped doing that. EVERY PREACHER that has preached for more than a minute, has learned from others, used ideas, illustrations, and fashioned them into his own messages from time to time. That doesn't make it right! It is NOT wrong or immoral to learn from others and even to use some of the ideas and concepts that they have presented and preach them in your own messages. It IS wrong, however, to take a man's sermon and re-preach it word for word. It is also wrong to use the words of another man and not to give him credit for the work and thought that he had put in to the building of that sermon himself. There are books and books that share other's illustrations. But it is wrong to use an illustration that belongs to another man's sermon and re-preach it as if it were your own life experience!
And herein is the problem with Dr. Litton!
He has taken many sermons (We don't know exactly how many because his church took down over 120 sermons from the online listing, so we can't examine them) of Dr. J. D. Greear and re-preached them. He has re-preached them in many instances, WORD FOR WORD. And the worst offense was he took some of J.D.'s personal illustration stories and retold them as if they were his own personal life experiences! He has also failed to give J.D. any credit for any of the material he used.
But J.D. is not the only person Dr. Litton copied. He has copied at least three other pastor's sermons in the very same way! There are those folks online who are really nifty at taking the two preachers and putting the copied portions of the sermons side by side so that there is NO QUESTION that Dr. Litton has committed these offenses! The VIDEO evidence is overwhelming!
I am far more forgiving of Dr. Litton for these violations than most others would be. The problem that I have is how he has handled the scandal since it has come to light.
At the beginning of it all, he denied that he had ever copied anyone. Then the video comparisons came out. No denying this, Ed! Then he brushed it off as, 'well, yes I may have taken an outline or two of Dr. Greear's and expanded on them and preached them as my own'! He was, after all, only using the other guy's sermons as "COMMENTARY" help him study for his own messages. Honestly, that's what he has said in a statement of defense on a recent podcast!
The problem is all of those pesky video comparisons! You cannot deny what is seen on video! He got caught red handed and all he has been able to do is to whitewash it with excuses! At one point, he even tried to blame his "preaching team"! Yeah, the man has a "team" of 11 others who meet with him every week and help him develop his messages. He once said that he actually spends hours and hours putting his own messages together! I honestly don't know how he does that when he has a team of 11 others doing it for him, and apparently, they just copied other preacher's messages!
When his church was asked why they took down over 100 sermon video's of their pastor, they first responded that they were doing website maintenance! Then, they openly admitted, "We didn't want our pastor to keep being embarrassed by all of these comparison videos!"
My problem with Dr. Litton is if he doesn't have the spiritual weight to honestly accept his own undeniable violations of the long accepted rules of plagiarism violations, and if he won't, I mean, WON'T honestly repent, then he doesn't have the right to be the leader of the pastors and churches of the Southern Baptist Convention!
He will not respond to his critics. In fact, he publicly denigrates those who have criticized him for these violations. He has called them names. He has accused them of being "unnamed internet trolls". This is not only incorrect, it's just plain wrong! A man who is wanting to lead the Southern Baptist Convention of Churches and he can't even admit that he was CAUGHT redhanded doing what many other men in the past have had to leave the ministry for doing? Are you kidding me? What kind of lower standard have we sunk to if this is where we put the bar for the SBC President?
Well, I have figured it out, so let me tell you why he won't accept his failure and resign the Presidency.
He will NOT ever resign for this one reason alone: If he were to resign, the person that would move into the office of President is the man who is the First Vice President of the SBC, and that is Lee Brand, Jr.
Lee is a black man (not an issue at all, just an FYI), who is an administrator leader of the Seminary in Memphis. Lee is an awesome Brother in Christ! He is a great preacher, a man of integrity. He would make a wonderful President of the SBC. And in this day of everyone worrying about being called "racist", this would go a long way to prove that the SBC is NOT! But, here is the REAL problem. He is a member of the Conservative Baptist Network and one of the Conservative candidates that ran in this past summer's SBC elections. DR. LITTON WILL NEVER RESIGN BECAUSE HE AND THE POWERS THAT BE IN THE SBC WILL NEVER ALLOW A CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST NETWORK MEMBER MOVE INTO THE PRESIDENCY!
Period! Mic drop!
That's the whole reason for the completely immoral, lying, deceptive and unBiblical response of Ed Litton to his scandal.
There are other things that I could lay at his feet as well. His church website listed their belief in the Godhead, the Trinity as the completely unBiblical, heretical view called "the fragmented" view. That was caught before he was voted in as President at the Convention in June and his church rushed to change their website within 20 minutes of the voting!
His sermons, that were the same sermons J.D.Greear preached on homosexuality, were just awful! They both preached such ridiculous statements as, "Homosexuality won't send you to hell because heterosexuality won't send you to heaven....", and "God's Word only whispers about sexual sin...."! He also allowed his wife to "co-preach" sermons with him (about 12 so far that we can find) when the Baptist Faith and Message clearly states that we don't allow for women preachers! I mean, how are you the President of the Southern Baptist Convention when you violate the terms of the Baptist Faith and Message?
Listen, Ed Litton might be a fine brother. He might also be a fine pastor, other than the violations I've mentioned here. But he was without question the WRONG BROTHER to become the president of the Southern Baptist Convention and that's why I, without hesitancy, have called for his immediate resignation!
So, why is it important to me?
I was a part of the 1980's resurrgence of the SBC when we were fighting to get back to the complete trust in the innerrancy of the Bible. There were seminary and Baptist College professors that taught there were things in the Bible that just weren't true! We fought hard for that and we WON THAT BATTLE!
The same battle is waging right now, except the issues are a bit. different. The issues now are Critical Race Theory, Social Justice, WOKEism, sexual assault violations, misspent money, missions issues (Money, clarity of the Gospel, etc), and on and on. The ELITES in the SBC upper leadership are acting exactly like the "swamp democrats" in the Federal Government! God's church should not be executed that way!
I care because if we don't straighten out our convention at the upper levels of leadership, we will NOT HAVE AN SBC within the next 5 years!
And with the soon return of Jesus Christ on the horizon, we need to be more evangelistic, winning more to Jesus now than ever before!
I am not "hating on" Dr. Litton. I love our Convention and long to see it flourish with God's Anointing and Power. As long as we lie, mismanage, violate Scriptures and refuse to communicate, God will never bless us again!
