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Defamation?! Man At Center of Massive SBC Sex Scandal Sues Denomination, Along with 11 Prominent Southern Baptists For Lying About Him

Former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor David Sills has filed suit against the SBC and 11 other high-profile personalities, including current SBC President Bart Barber, former president Ed Litton, Albert Mohler, Jennifer Lyell (the woman who accused him of sexual abuse) and others. Sills is requesting a trial by jury, claiming that he’s been repeatedly and unfairly maligned for years, and is seeking monetary damages and compensation for having his reputation destroyed by his denomination. Baptist Global news, citing the brief, quote from the lawsuit:

“Rather than seek the truth, defendants repeated and circulated false statements about Dr. Sills, causing him to be cast as a toxic pariah. After various mischaracterizations, misstatements, and a contrived ‘investigation’ by defendants, the plaintiffs, David Sills and Mary Sills, have been wrongfully and untruthfully labeled as criminals and shunned by the SBC.” 

and

(The defendants) understood the value of making an example out of SBC member and employee David Sills who, without controversy, had admitted to an affair with Lyell and willingly accepted the SBC requirement that he depart from his position at the seminary. In essence, defendants saw an opportunity to improve the appearance and reputation of SBC’s handling of abuse cases, long under fire, even though there had not been any legitimate and proper investigation into the allegations, nor was Dr. Sills adequately informed of the specific nature and extent of accusations made by Lyell.

Several years ago, Lyell, then a Vice-President at Lifeway Christian Resources, admitted to being involved in a sexual relationship with David Sills for over a decade. She claimed that it resulted from him ‘grooming’ her while enrolled in a missions class at the seminary in 2004 when she was 26 years old, ending 12 years later when she was 38 and having long moved on. She says that he “sexually acted” against her but never provided details or offered what the grooming looked like throughout their relationship, particularly when they were away from each other for months at a time. Once their affair was revealed, however, it resulted in his swift termination and public disgrace.

A year later, she would seemingly walk back any suggestion that she was guilty of any sin for the relationship, explaining in an update that just because she was ‘compliant’, it did not mean their relationship was ‘consensual.’ As her understanding of her role in the whole affair continued to evolve, she also appeared to dispel the notion that there was any sin on her part for which she ought to apologize, supposing that she was and remains a complete, guiltless victim in every sense of the word, sharing the same culpability of a 4-year-old being, molested by her step-father.

Everyone agreed with her. The SBC Committee ultimately defended her victimhood the Sexual Abuse Task Force dedicated approximately 35 of its 288 pages to Lyell’s story and the circumstances surrounding it, repeatedly castigating Sills not as an “alleged abuser” but a definite, for sure, unequivocal “abuser” while framing the 12 years together as one long incident of “nonconsensual sexual abuse” between adults.

The SBC Executive Committee, in a rare move, also issued a personal apology to Lyell for failing to “adequately listen, protect and care” for her after she came forward with allegations of sexual abuse by her professor, as well as acknowledged the “unintentional harm” they caused her by not correctly reporting her case and framing what happened to her in a blameworthy and distressing manner, resulting in a confidential monetary settlement to Lyell of $1,500,000. The Baptist press writes further:

Sills has not denied engaging in an inappropriate relationship with Lyell, and he resigned his post at Southern Seminary after being confronted about it. However, in the new court filing he insists he did not sexually abuse Lyell, force himself upon Lyell, use violence against Lyell, threaten to use violence against Lyell or “engage in sexual intercourse” with Lyell “at any time whatsoever.”

The filing says Sills acknowledges “a personal and emotionally intimate relationship” between the two but claims it was initiated by Lyell, who was “well above the age of consent.”

Further:

The court filing further claims Lyell maintained the relationship by driving several hundred miles — from Nashville, Tenn., to Louisville, Ky. — to see Sills. It also claims Sills “ended the relationship with Defendant Lyell who nevertheless persisted her pursuit of Sills and undertook efforts to reach Dr. Sills through his family.”

David and Mary Sills also contend that Lyell, “relying on her expertise as an accomplished writer and executive in the fields of advertising and publishing within the SBC, a lucrative and powerful position, constructed a false narrative against Dr. Sills and Mrs. Sills, at the height of awareness of SBC scandals.”

“Thereafter, Ms. Lyell engaged in an effort to restore her reputation and preserve her powerful position of doling out lucrative book deals, while affirmatively and skillfully dismantling the reputations, careers, and family life of David Sills and Mary Sills,” the court filing states.

Sills has apparently taken umbrage with everyone who decried him as a sexual abuser and engaged in both slander and libel against him, including:

None have publicly responded to the suit.

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J.D. Greear Encourages Pastors to ‘Invest’ in Sermon ‘Research Assistants’ Once The Church Has Enough Money

Former SBC President J.D. Greear, the pastor of Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, has given some advice to beleaguered pastors with a few extra bucks in their budget; ‘invest’ in several ‘research assistants’ in order to help write and craft the sermon.

It is unclear if the research assistants are all Summit staffers or if he’s still using Docent hired guns– that infamous company that creates sermons and sermon outlines for pastors. You’ll recall that previously, in a glowing endorsement (that has now been removed but is still available on a Wayback Machine archive), Greear not only admitted that he has used this service, but that he uses it to make him look good.

Docent has been a humongous help to me, saving me literally hours each week and improving the quality of my preaching dramatically. These guys are the real deal. I give them assignments and questions on everything from interpretation to cultural analysis to illustration, and they get me thorough answers, always on time. They are outstanding scholars and really “get” my job as a communicator. I often have people remark to me, “How many hours did you spend on that sermon? Where do you get time to do all that research?” Ha. Thanks, guys for making me look so good!

On a recent Church Leaders podcast with Ed Stetzer, he explains how he collates content for his sermons:

And to be totally transparent with our listeners here, now that I, you know, we have a larger staff, some of this is easier because I can actually appoint people. I can- to give people like, hey, I want you to go listen to this text by and we have a list of like 30 preachers, I’m like ‘just go find where any of these people have talked on this text and let’s just use five or six of them that look really interesting’.

So I will actually sit down to what is a ‘digested outline‘…And that’s really helpful, it means I can do it a lot more quickly. But I will say before I had the resources to do that team, I just, I did it almost all myself.

He continues:

Between between my notes, my compilation as well as what now happens through some research assistants, I will just spend that time on Monday morning. One more thing, just for people that are early in the process, what I would do is, if I knew I was going to preach on John 4 in in three weeks, because I’m working my way through John, three or four weeks before, I just spend an afternoon collecting a lot of those sermons, you know, online, you know, DVDs, whatever, stuff.

So and I would just start, like using devotional reading, you know, an hour a day or so, getting ready for this thing that was three or four weeks away. So it’s harder if you don’t have research assistants. At some point as gives you the resources, I’d encourage you to invest in some of that, it will help. But it’s possible to do when it’s just you.”


Bonus. Don’t forget that in our article Ed Litton Sometimes Skips the Sermon Prep: Preaches what His Team Gives Him, former SBC president and serial plagiarist Ed Litton explained the resources he uses to craft sermons, including a whole preaching team,

We (his 8 member preaching team) meet on Monday afternoon. And all the members of the preaching team which we’ll talk about later, they come together, they have been studying the same text and we work on it now. Actually, the interesting thing was that’s become so helpful for me, is that I got an email Monday evening from the preaching team, they went over the text without me. Which was awesome, this is what we do.

And I said, alright, I need to know, and here’s where I’m thinking–in a letter–I just said ‘you guys tear it apart, tell me where I’m wrong, tell me what you think is best” And language, we talk about language, we talk about tone, all those things cause they’re all younger.

And so that week, actually I had a little bit of study to do in between killing pheasants and taking pictures… I literally walked to the church and filmed it.

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Podcast: The Fall of Litton, Potential SBC Prez Picks, and Pastors Prohibiting Impreccatroy Prayers Against Drag Queen Story Hour

On this episode of Polemics Report for March 2nd, 2022, JD joins from parts unknown and discusses the SBC machine’s new pick for president, as well as Ron DeSantis, Lauren Boebert, and Megan Basham breaching woke decorum. In the patron portion, we answer sincere questions including one about a pastor forbidding his flock to pray against Drag Queen Story Hour.

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Bart Barber Opposes Conservative Baptist Network’s Message of Unity In the Gospel of Christ

Bart Barber, pastor of FBC Farmersville and Chairman of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Resolutions Committee really wants Russell Moore’s old gig in the ivory tower of the ERLC, and he is willing to do just about anything to align himself with the establishment liberals of the SBC to obtain the position. Since the election of Ed Litton as SBC President, Barber has been unapologetic in his defense of the plagiarizer-in-chief. Barber despises conservatives and consistently complains about conservatives who oppose critical theory, leftward drift in the SBC, and compromises on abortion

Barber recently found himself in hot water after bashing the Conservative Baptist Network’s Twitter messaging in response to the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s Racial Reconciliation Sunday.

The statement by the CBN, which began with a recitation of 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, and contained numerous passages of scripture, called for unity in the Gospel and the avoidance of partiality on the basis of skin color. Apparently, the CBN got under Barber’s skin, because Barber constantly pushes the partiality-laden Critical Race Theory drivel that has been common amongst Big Eva types in the SBC for the past three years. In addition to direct references to scriptural guidance on Biblical Unity in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the statement calls out Southern Baptists, such as Barber, who have resorted to worldly anti-Biblical strategies for racial reconciliation rather than relying on the all-sufficient scriptures which call for impartiality.

Numerous Twitter responses to Barber called for him to explain exactly how the statement by CBN was off message in any way. Barber refused to answer the question, dodging personal responsibility for his statements and accusing the CBN of being an agent of division in the SBC, because they don’t agree with social engineering in the church.

Bart understands that in order to earn Big Eva capital, he must constantly condemn the Conservatives in the convention. Eventually the race-baiters will show up to defend him, and hopefully the horrible Twitter trauma that he experiences will allow him to earn the reward of sitting in Russell Moore’s old chair as head of the ERLC. If all else fails, maybe Eddie Munster himself will invite Bart to join him at Christianity Today. In a stroke of irony, Bart Barber described his accusatory ways in a tweet, just days before the controversy.

Bart Barber loves himself some Bart Barber. Unfortunately, Bart is frequently Bart’s standard, rather than the eternal word of God.


Editor’s Note. This article is a guest post by Paul Brown for Protestia.

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Unity Baptist Church Releases Statement Demanding SBC Prez. Ed Litton Resign

A Southern Baptist church in Tennessee has publicly called for SBC President Ed Litton to immediately resign his post and ask for repentance, the result of the ‘sermongate scandal’ that has plagued the beleaguered leader since his election 8 months ago, after our sister site Reformation Charlotte broke the news and publicized the fact that Pastor Ed Litton has been plagiarizing his sermons for over a decade. If that wasn’t bad enough, Litton has repeatedly lied over and over in his public statements about the nasty affair, showing himself unapproved to the extreme.

In a public statement, Unity Baptist Church, led by elders Dr. Louis Brenton and Mark Driver, condemned the actions of Litton, pointing out “this is the kind of sin that even non-believers know is wrong” and called for him to repent and resign. Further, they call on their local and state association, the SBC Executive Committee, and the president of the six SBC seminaries to do likewise.

Dr. Ed Litton is the pastor of Redemption Church in Mobile, Alabama.  In June of 2021 he was elected as the 63rd President of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Within weeks of his election, videos began appearing on YouTube that demonstrated with certainty that Dr. Litton participated in a long ongoing pattern of plagiarism of other men’s sermons.  Links to evidence about this behavior and discussion regarding it may be found here.  Since these initial revelations, Redemption Church has pulled down more than 100 videos from their sermon archive.  Dr. Litton has consistently refused to take ownership of the magnitude of this sin or to truly confess the scope of this sin and express repentance of it.

Plagiarism is the act of stealing other people’s work and then presenting it as your own.  It includes the sins of theft and dishonesty.  In addition, it shows that Dr. Litton has not been faithful in fulfilling his pastoral duties at his church. 

Dr. Litton’s behavior brings reproach to Redemption Church.  In addition, he brings reproach to the Southern Baptist Convention, as he is the chief public representative of our convention.  Lastly and most importantly, Dr. Litton’s behavior brings reproach to the reputation of our great Savior. 

This is the kind of sin that even non-believers know is wrong.  Dr. Litton’s behavior has been widely reported upon by secular news networks, so that the name of Christ and His church is being derided.  Dr. Litton should clearly be considered disqualified to hold his office as a local pastor.  Even more so, he should not be considered qualified to represent the entire Southern Baptist Convention. 

In light of these facts, the Elders of Unity Baptist Church issue these public callings:

1.We call upon Dr. Ed Litton to take public ownership of the full scale of these offenses, confess them, repent of them, and resign immediately from his office as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

2.We call upon our nearest local Baptist Associations (Mid-South Baptist Association & Big Hatchie Baptist Association) to publicly denounce Dr. Litton and to call for his immediate resignation.  We further extend this call to all local Baptist Associations.

3. We call upon our state association, the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, to publicly denounce Dr. Litton and to call for his immediate resignation.  We further extend this call to all state associations. 

4. We call upon the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to publicly denounce Dr. Litton and to call for his immediate resignation. 

5. We call upon the Presidents of each of the Southern Baptist Seminaries and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary to publicly denounce Dr. Litton and to call for his immediate resignation.

In the meantime, we pledge to pray for Dr. Litton’s repentance and for the good of his church and call upon our fellow Southern Baptists to do likewise.

–The Elders of Unity Baptist Church

Sadly, while this call is absolutely deserving and necessary, Unity is one of the few SBC churches to release a statement, with Kenwood Baptist Church being the only other known one to do likewise, having written “We believe that Dr. Litton would do well to resign voluntarily. His credibility as a leader and a preacher has been too compromised for him to continue. He may choose to muddle through the next convention or two, but we believe that would be a mistake. He should resign.”

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An Orderly Account of the Ed Litton Plagiarism Scandal

(The Majesty’s Men) I have been asked to provide an orderly account of the sermon plagiarism scandal involving Dr. Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, AL, and the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I published a guest article in July from Tobby E. Smith, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in New Castle, IN. You can still find that article here. But I had yet to chronicle my own account of these events in which I have been involved.

The student handbook of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary defines plagiarism as “the use or theft of intellectual property without attribution, both a moral and educational transgression” (pg. 8). Of this transgression Dr. Litton has yet to repent, and Southern Baptists have done little to hold him accountable. Will Southern Baptist churches, seminaries, and other ministries obey the call to keep the counsel of God “unstained and free from reproach”?

The following account contains links to all sources, including videos that demonstrate Litton’s plagiarism of the sermons he stole. If you listen to the audio of this article, you will hear more broad examples of Litton’s plagiarism and the dishonest ways he has attempted to cover himself. I have also included trustworthy words from other teachers commenting on the matter.

As an aside, lest anyone say that I have a responsibility to contact Dr. Litton first, I attempted to open a dialogue with him privately on July 8. There were two witnesses to this engagement. Dr. Litton did not respond.

I have no…

To continue reading, click here:


Editor’s Note. This article was written by Pastor Gabe Hughes and published at the Majesty’s Men. Title changed by Protestia

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John MacArthur Beats up Ed Litton Over Plagiarism Scandal: ‘Lazy, Incompetent and Unsanctified’


During the 2021 TMS Day for the Master’s Seminary, Chancellor John MacArthur did a Q&A with Austin Duncan, answering questions about the seminary, how they are preparing grads to preach, about the Legacy Standard Bible, MacArthur’s history of translation usage, the convictions that need to be in place before someone goes to seminary, Covid and resisting the government, and other such things. Among these was a question from the audience about Ed Litton’s plagiarism scandal.

Duncan: The intersection of pastoral integrity and a confidence in the Bible leads to expository preaching. But what we’re seeing now in a failure of pastoral integrity and a misfire in preaching is the issue of plagiarism. High-level pastors are being accused of plagiarism and using someone else’s sermons. The question is, John MacArthur, where are you getting your sermons from?


MacArthur: Well, that’s why you want to come to The Master’s Seminary because we’ll teach you how to get your own sermon.


Duncan: Talk about getting your own sermons, what did you think when you heard all that stuff about plagiarism by these pastors? Why does a pastor plagiarize, why does he use someone else’s sermon? Why does that happen? And how does it?

MacArthur: He’s lazy and incompetent.


Duncan: Well, besides that.


MacArthur: I’m gonna go third point, and unsanctified. I think you become a showman at that point. You’re an actor. You’re playing a part. You’re playing a role. And the one thing that expository preaching does, that is apart from the congregation, is it sanctifies the pastor. The relentless study of the Word of God is how God sanctifies and protects the pastor.

So when you’re just opening your iPad and reading somebody else’s sermon, you’ve never been exposed to the sanctifying work of the word, to say nothing about the fact that you’re playing a role and you’re an actor. You’re not a true messenger from the Lord.

I think for many men in ministry, there’s an unwillingness to be disciplined at that point. Because being an expositor is work, and it’s relentless work, because you got to keep doing it week after week after week after week. But it’s the most rewarding thing. There’s no honesty in a man who does that. There’s no honesty. That’s fraud, ministerial fraud.


h/t to Reformation Charlotte for the video

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Ed Litton Sometimes Skips the Sermon Prep: Preaches what His Team Gives Him

Days after Ed Litton’s church hosted a worship and prayer service populated by Roman Catholics, United Methodists, Charismatics, pro-choice and pro-LGBT AME churches, women pastrixes, Liberation theology- you name it, a newly unearthed video has him explaining that he sometimes skips the sermon prep and rather just preaches what his team gives him- with them deciding even the tone of the sermon.

We know that Ed Litton, who has been plagiarizing sermons for a decade now used to lie about the time he spent preparing sermons, explaining in a 2020 interview that “I used to lie. I used to tell people 24 hours a sermon… but I would say 8-10 hours average.” Despite this. we assumed that he would at least have had SOME hand in crafting the sermon, of doing some study and spending those 8 hours doing sermon prep, but this is not always the case. In a podcast with Justin Taylor he explains that he’s not always the most involved pastor. :

We (his 8 member preaching team) meet on Monday afternoon. And all the members of the preaching team which we’ll talk about later, they come together, they have been studying the same text and we work on it now. Actually, the interesting thing was that’s become so helpful for me, is that I got an email Monday evening from the preaching team, they went over the text without me. Which was awesome, this is what we do.

And I said, alright, I need to know, and here’s where I’m thinking–in a letter–I just said ‘you guys tear it apart, tell me where I’m wrong, tell me what you think is best” And language, we talk about language, we talk about tone, all those things cause they’re all younger.

And so that week, actually I had a little bit of study to do in between killing pheasants and taking pictures… I literally walked to the church and filmed it.

You can hear the audio HERE.


h/t to Reformation Charlotte

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SBC Prez Ed Litton Hosts Worship Service with Roman Catholics, Pro-Choice/ Pro-LGBTQ United Methodists

Southern Baptist President Ed Litton hosted on Monday a worship and prayer service for ‘Shrink the Divide’ an event sponsored by ‘The Pledge Group’- a collective of churches whose mission it is to “shrink the racial divide in our own community and throughout the Body of Christ by establishing and fostering relationships across ethnic and denominational lines.”

The group, who makes recommendations that churches who particulate in it (such as Ed Litton’s Redemption Church) do things like “Take steps in the community to reflect equality and create a ‘level playing field’ and ‘Hold a joint regular worship service at one of the churches; then alternate locales” is led by a steering team of churches and lay leaders across denominational and even religious lines, and is populated by Roman Catholics, United Methodists, Charismatics, pro-choice and pro-LGBT AME churches, women pastrixes, Liberation theology, you- you name it. We’re talking as ecumenical as they come.

In this event, Litton’s church hosted the fracas, which had hundreds of people show up, hold hands, and have a service together, with the President of the Pledge Group Roy Hill gushing:

Today is an opportunity for a diverse group of believers to come together and communicate the fact that we believe the Gospel is the way to bring racial reconciliation in every situation. In fact, we believe that’s the only way to do it effectively.”

Given that there is a focus on having service at each other’s churches, we wonder how often Litton attends service at the thoroughly apostate ‘Little Flower Roman Catholic Parish” or “Christ United Methodist Church”- the latter which is hosting the next worship ad prayer service on October 14.

Yet during the message, Litton had some friendly words for these Steering members, noting:

But what a joy it is to be with you tonight, what an honour It is to be asked. I’m gonna ask everyone who’s a part of The Pledge Steering Team just to stand right now. These are my brothers and sisters, we have walked together, worked together. We love together, we see God move together. They are the heart and the inspiration for why we do what we do in this city.

Litton went on to claimthat he’s not the president of a denomination (hunh?) , but a collection of 50,000 churches who just recently committed to dealing with racial reconciliation and sexual abuse in the church, saying “That’s something we’ve avoided for years.” In a 25 minute message he unpacks the story of the good Samaritan and how the priest left the injured and wounded man in the ditch but the Samaritan didn’t.

This is a model for how white folk needs to care more about black folk and racial reconciliation, not leaving them in the proverbial ditch, and vice versa, noting:

I’ll tell you what’s killing us today. Nobody in the Southern Baptist Convention that I’m a part of, and nobody in my church, probably nobody in your church would ever want to be called a bigot. But indifference is killing us.

The event concluded with everyone joining hands across the aisle in prayer and all the leaders of the various churches getting up on stage and reciting the pledge together.

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Breaking: Pastors, SBTS Professors Call for SBC Prez. Ed Litton to Resign

(Capstone Report) The leadership of Kenwood Baptist Church, which includes Dr. Jim Hamilton and Dr. Denny Burk, called on Ed Litton to resign as SBC President. The call for Litton to resign came in a letter to the congregation delivered via email Thursday.

We believe that Dr. Litton would do well to resign voluntarily. His credibility as a leader and a preacher has been too compromised for him to continue. He may choose to muddle through the next convention or two, but we believe that would be a mistake. He should resign,” the pastors said in the congregational letter.

 The pastors argue that Litton has disqualified himself from leadership because of plagiarism.

“In spite of the fact that Dr. Litton had permission to use Greear’s sermons, what he did still constitutes plagiarism,” according to the email.

The email letter to the church detailed the plagiarism allegations against Ed Litton.

“Over the summer, numerous news outlets …

To continue reading, click here


Editor’s note. This article was written and published at the Capstone Report