15 Sermons and Counting! Ed Litton Tag-Team Preaching With Wife More Extensive than Revealed
Videos continue to pour in documenting that embattled Southern Baptist President Ed Litton preached far more sermons with his wife than was initially thought, despite claiming that women do not preach from his pulpit.
At this point, we have saved and documented at least 15 sermons (courtesy of this guy) from both him and his wife, Kathy, but also another couple named Justin and Trish took to the pulpit to preach between 2012 and 2018.
Said another way, 5-8% of the sermons preached from Redemption Church in some of those years were by a woman.
In an interview with Alabama.com, he justified his soft egalitarianism by explaining that he only preached sermons with his wife on marriage and family, and that the BFM2000 doesn’t always speak to them.
I’m a complementarian. I believe the roles that God gives us, I believe that the pastor, and this is right in line with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the elder of the church has to be a male, the primary teaching pastor. But I also believe in the autonomy of the local church. The truth is, the Baptist Faith and Message doesn’t speak to my wife, with me, on a series on marriage, or a series talking about family…I don’t contain all the wisdom in the world.
I believe the word of God does, but my wife is an apt teacher and she helps me communicate to our people. She also provides a voice that our people need to hear. So, I felt absolutely free, within my convictional status and the Baptist Faith and Message and the word of God, to invite my wife to come up. She is under my authority as her pastor. We did that together. I’m very proud of her. She did an outstanding job.
That’s straight trash, of course, but as we’ve discovered with Ed Litton, who frequently bends or blows past the truth to fit his agenda, it’s also a lie.
One of the sermon series he preached with his wife wasn’t about that at all, but rather a broader sermon series examining the Christian life, holiness, and overcoming worldliness. It is a similar title to the book and Bible Study by Craig Groeschel, WEIRD: Because Normal Isn’t Working published in 2012…Sermons in the 2013 Weird series were: Weird: Because Normal Isn’t Working, co-preached; Lifestyles of the Weird, co-preached; Weird Pleasures, co-preached; Playing Weird with the Truth, preached by Ed Litton; Weird Sexuality, co-preached.”
In introducing the sermon series, Litton explained that “the ultimate purpose of this series is so that you and I will not only get comfortable with being weird but that we will embrace our weirdness and that we will encourage one another to be weird.”
During his questionnaire for the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s Candidate forum, which he participated in order to win the presidency, he said that “The only ministry the Bible limits to God-called and qualified men is the office of pastor, which is rightly designated by the title of pastor and elder,” he also specifically said that women do not preach from his pulpit: a revelation that is patently untrue.
Ed Litton is an unrepentant liar, and anyone wanting to learn more can watch this mini-documentary to learn more.
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I’m starting to think Litton will do anything to get out of preparing a sermon. Every time his wife co-preaches with him she’s taking on part of the load of preparing that sermon. That’s less he’s required to do. Then, if he can’t find one to fully plagiarize or have his wife prepare for him, he’ll just bring other people altogether like the other couple mentioned in this article.
Idk, I’m growing weary of all the Ed Litton bashing. I don’t agree with some of what he’s doing, but we’re one month down, eleven to go, of his presidency. He’s not going to get removed guys. Instead his presidency has highlighted some weaknesses going on in the Baptist church.
A golden opportunity to address two things- taking a hard look at the buying and selling of “industrialized sermons” as one writer put it and how common it is especially in mega churches. How should this be addressed? What do we need to know about contracted sermon agency staff writers? What should the congregation know about this? Mr Litton was just the thread that started the sweater unraveling.
And the second issue – what does it mean to “have authority?” If we’re tying it to nomenclature we’re never going to fix this. Are our preachers ‘episcopoi’ or ‘presbyteroi?’ Or ‘poimen?’ That last word only comes up as a church office in Eph 4:11, in a list of undefined offices, two of which Baptists don’t believe exist anymore. I’ve been schooled about the word presbyeros, apparently it means “old man,” so “elder.” (Catholics sort of hi-jacked it and turned it into “priest” some time long ago. But they don’t use it correctly either, since Catholic priests are not elders, they are intercessors, modeled on the priesthood of the temple.) But Baptist and evangelical preachers aren’t considered elders in most churches. They’re more like a CEO of a business.
We can’t match our evangelical preachers to any New Testament title because we don’t really use a New Testament model. New Testament churches don’t seem to have CEOs and a bevy of paid Assistant or Associate pastors. The modern, large, American evangelical church is really modeled on a corporate management model, with a chief officer and a bunch of assistant managers, over various “departments”- men, women, missions, finance, youth, children, outreach, inreach, small group. Sunday school, etc. How do we decide which of them has “authority?” Over who? Once they’re invested with authority, are they “ordained?” In practice, some of the animals are already more equal than others, even though we pretend no one is ordained when we need to.