Six months ago, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Adam Greenway was effectively canned for being terrible at his job. Marked by a desire to reshape the seminary’s ethos in his image, at least 45 faculty left under Greenways’ watch, either retiring, resigning, or plain out being fired, such as the canning of the much-loved top professors David Allen and Robert Lopez.
With morale at an all-time low, Greenway dragged the seminary into massive debt, ensuring his vocational coil was swiftly snuffed out. The fact that he recently challenged the biblical definition of a pastor and claimed the Baptist Faith and Message 2000’s restriction of the pastorate to men likely applied only to the (biblically non-existent) office of “senior pastors” and not other ‘pastoral roles’ likely didn’t help matters either.
With full-time equivalent enrollment at SWBTS down nearly 30% from the last two years before (1126 then vs. 793 now) and the seminary desperate for cash, the city of Fort Worth has purchased 140 dorm units on 15 acres of land from them for 11 million dollars.
According to a press release by the city, there are 16 one-bedroom units and 124 two-bedroom units, and they will be used for families struggling with homelessness and domestic abuse.
Last month, SWBTS President Adam Greenway was effectively canned for being terrible at his job. Marked by a desire to reshape the seminary’s ethos in his image, at least 45 faculty left under Greenways’ watch, either retiring, resigning, or plain out being fired, such as the canning of the much-loved top professors David Allen and Robert Lopez.
With morale at an all-time low, Greenway also dragged the seminary into massive debt, ensuring his vocational coil was swiftly snuffed out. The fact that he recently challenged the biblical definition of a pastor and claimed the Baptist Faith and Message 2000’s restriction of the pastorate to men likely applied only to the (biblically non-existent) office of “senior pastors” and not other ‘pastoral roles’ likely didn’t help matters either.
In a SWBTS new brief, chairman Danny Roberts recounted for trustees the circumstances that led to Greenway’s resignation:
“(Roberts spoke) candidly about the Sept. 22 Executive Committee meeting and the “difficult decisions” made by trustees. Noting his role in Greenway’s election as ninth president, Roberts said he is “convinced” God led the search committee and board to Greenway, who “accepted a very difficult assignment, which was further complicated” by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Over time, unfortunately, several patterns developed that board officers and the Executive Committee had a duty to address,” he said. “As those became known, they were addressed in an appropriate manner. Significant financial challenges compounded a growing sense of concern among our board leadership.”
Among “areas of concern,” Roberts said, “were dysfunctionality amongst senior leadership, budget mismanagement, overspending resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars of deficits per month, and attempts to pass the blame for these matters onto three different chief financial officers who were each removed. More recently, it became clear that action was required after evidence emerged of escalating morale problem in the institution, especially among the faculty, and a resistance to safeguards board leadership wanted to implement.”
By the end of the Executive Committee meeting, Greenway “offered his resignation and the trustees accepted that resignation.”
Regarding the questions of dysfunction, SWBTS senior advisor O.S. Hawkins shared on social media that as a result of the findings regarding the inner working of the deviltry inside the school, further audits will be done to ensure a “detailed review” of all raised concerns.
A mere three and a half years after Paige Patterson was fired from his position as SWBTS president and replaced by Adam Greenway, the latter has reportedly resigned and stepped down from a place of leadership, making his tenure the shortest in the seminary’s 114-year history.
Greenway is Al Mohler’s former Dean, famous for recently challenging the biblical definition of a pastor. He claimed the Baptist Faith and Message 2000’s restriction of the pastorate to men likely applied only to the (biblically non-existent) office of “senior pastors” and not other pastoral roles. Greenway also platformed unrepentant plagiarist Ed Litton, giving him cover in hopes of quelling criticism over his many acts of malfeasance.
Marked by a desire to reshape the seminary’s ethos in his image, at least 45 faculty have left under Greenways’ watch, either retiring, resigning, or plain out being fired, such as the canning of the much-loved top professors David Allen and Robert Lopez.
According to David Bumgardner, the disgraced is-he-or-isn’t-he journalist, the cause of his leaving centered around poor financial mismanagement, with SWBTS being $12,000,000 in the hole. He says that retired president of the SBC’s Guidestone organization, O.S. Hawkins, has been named interim president.
Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton did not take the opportunity while speaking at his alma matter this morning to man up and come clean about his plagiarism and the facts surrounding the case, but rather lent a shovel to SWBTS President Adam Greenway, and together they dug Litton an even deeper hole that they backfilled with excuses, all the while repeatedly lying to the students present.
Greenway was given the task of giving cover to Litton, throwing him softball questions designed to create a convincing apologetic for his friend, which he did with gusto, asking:
Adam Greenway: “There’s been a lot of conversation, controversy and claims have been thrown around, particularly as it relates to your preaching ministry in the context of your service at Redemption Church in Mobile, where you’ve been the pastor now for many, many years. Talk to us about that, because there have been all kinds of statements and claims. You can imagine that when I posted on social media that we were hosting you for this conversation, there was a lot of snark that came back, particularly from the anonymous social media accounts that proliferate these days.
Fact Check, at the time of writing this, there are 96 comments to the post he is referring to 8 of which are from what could be described as either anonymous accounts, or accounts that seem anonymous, but rather link in their bio to their organization, with then reveals the person in the about me section. So to say that these were ‘particularly from anonymous social media accounts” is categorically false and a lie, as they accounted for less than 10% of the comments. But this comment echoes what Litton has previously said, that this whole brouhaha is being caused by and being driven by ‘anonymous accounts’ even though it was Jeff Maples at our sister site “Reformation Charlotte” that blew this whole thing open.
Adam Greenway: “But I’d love for you to just talk about- particularly in light of what has come to be known in the common parlance as the ‘sermon plagiarism controversy’. And I’d like to even hear…you accept the term ‘plagiarism’ to describe your actions in terms of your preaching ministry, yes or no/ why. Just help us understand for the benefit of our seminary community the issue here.”
Ed Litton:
The situation that we find ourselves in today is that series of messages we did last year on the book of Romans, which I want to just be honest with you, was intimidating for me. I’ve preached Romans before. But a lot of things have changed in my life in the last 10 years, that I may get to in a moment.
But when I approached that, I noticed that I had my commentaries about new commentaries, preparing for that series, we actually plan our preaching about two years in advance. And in that particular case, I started listening to JD Greer, who had done a series previously, and I was really moved by the way he handled some very challenging passages in Romans.
So I called JD and I asked him, I said, ‘first of all, would you mind sharing with me how you broke down the book of Romans to do it in one year?‘ which he sent me a spreadsheet with all that information, that was very helpful as a part of the preaching/ planning.
But then I said ‘there’s material here, do you mind if I use this material?’ He was very gracious, and I think he even quoted Adrian Rogers ‘if my bullet fits your gun, shoot it’. And I said that’s fine. And I appreciate it.
So there are in particular, a couple particular cases, times where I made statements that others have been able to line up with statements that come from the same text, the same passage that JD used. So to answer your question, I don’t consider that plagiarism.
Where is the acknowledgment of that? Rather, we see a smorgasbord of plagiarized sermons where Ed Litton copied not just the outline and little snippets here and there, but copied illustrations as if they happened to him, and even copied the prayers!
He continues explaining that the reason why he may have copied other parts of the sermon, is because he hears a little too good, and in some way remembered sermons from years ago nearly verbatim, and then in some manner of confusion must have mixed up his memories with his own thoughts. Really.
“Let me tell you where my sin was. My sin was, I did not credit him to my church. And I’ve been asked why. And I’m a little mystified by that too, because I’m very transparent with my people. And the goal of using material, whether it’s written by (unintelligible) or international critical commentary or any other commentary you use, is to expound on the text and to make sure people understand the verse by verse meaning of that text.
So that was my goal. It wasn’t to become famous, because quite frankly, if that was my goal, I would not have picked JD Greer, as someone to quote. The problem was I did not credit him. And I have repented of that to my church. I have repented that to our leadership, and quite frankly, we’re in a process of changes.
I’m fasting from listening to preaching right now, because it turns out, I have a capacity to remember statements that are made in an audible sermon that I hear, that’s a little too good. And sometimes it gets mixed up.”
He continues, explaining that he is being refined by this persecution and that while his critics have meant this all for evil, God meant it for good.
“But the truth is, this has been a very painful process. It’s been a hot process for me, let me explain what I mean. You’re very familiar with the fact that the Scripture teaches us that we are being refined and I feel like I’m in a refiners fire. Now, I want to tell you this; it’s easy to criticize the force of the fire. Nowhere does the scripture tell us (unintelligible) The Scripture tells us to put our eyes on the refiner. Because he knows when to turn up the heat, he knows when to allow it to get to a certain place, he knows when to shut it off.
And so through this, I have accepted the reality of this fire, and I embrace it by the grace of God, and God is refining me. There is a depth in me that I have discovered, of insecurity, that needed praise for my preaching, that God has been in the process of burning out.
And it is a painful thing. And there are more things. As a matter of fact, some of my critics, if they knew what God knew about my heart, this would be a never-ending Twitter feed. But the truth is, God is far more gracious than I’ve ever been….
I could say what some may have meant for evil, God has meant for good. Because at the end of the day, the purpose of preaching is the saving of many souls. And my church has been incredibly gracious and loving and supportive. And I also have a unique process too. I’ve been mentoring young preachers for many years now. We have multiple campuses. We have live preaching on all of our campuses. And so we have a process of studying together and we have a process of working it out.
Now, when that became public knowledge, that opened up even more criticism, that I was perverting or misleading other students. But we’ve had honest candid conversations about how we credit and what we do with the information that we’re sharing with our people. And so we’re learning and growing through this experience.“
Greenway ends this portion by asking Litton what pastoral words he would give to students to learn from his mistakes with this whole scandal and the SBC President gives some very hypocritical advice.
“So if, if our view of the sovereignty of God is such that we believe he controls everything, even the suffering we live through, I think we have to embrace it. But let me say this for young pastors, or pastors (unintelligible), be transparent as you possibly can. Be real.”
Litton concludes by painting himself as a victim that is basically getting canceled, engaging in a bit of martyrdom
It is frightening to think about what can happen to your reputation. It is terrifying. But that is a danger. Proverbs chapter 19, or 29, rather, says ‘the fear of man is a snare’. And to me, it is probably one of the greatest struggles we as Southern Baptists have. We’re terrified of being ruined in public.
When this president, when I asked people to serve in Southern Baptist life, the most common question I get in response is ‘will they do to me what they’ve done to you?’
So what we’ve done is created an atmosphere that is quite toxic, to where good people will not serve for fear that a mistake or a sin that they committed five years ago could be brought up on YouTube, or that they could be paraded out and embarrassed and ashamed. And I’m gonna tell you something, it’s not fun. But by the grace of an Almighty God who died naked on a cross for me, you can overcome it.
“How can a seminary, of any denomination, allow a plagiarist to speak in chapel to students threatened with expulsion if they plagiarize? Blows my mind!” @PastorLunsford
Mere weeks after Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler took to the Briefing and gave Ed Litton a paddlin’, explaining that plagiarism was “theft, that “we at Southern seminary take plagiarism of first-rank priority.” and that Litton was “precisely not what we are trying to teach or to hold up as an example here, ” another SBC seminary President apparently doesn’t feel the same way, with Litton being invited by Adam Greenway to speak at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas about ‘serious issues’- none which are his plagiarism.
Of course, there are a few people who know what’s up.
Though many have accused us of treating this as a mere exercise in equine beating, this is not the case. This will continue to adversely affect his presidency and bring reproach on the name of Christ until he comes clean and does more than denying all blame and culpability, with having real-world ramifications on what he even preaches at SWBTS.
Nathaniel Jolly notes that some of the things he can’t talk about are “Integrity, sermon writing, sermon delivery, pastoral faithfulness, study habits, living in the Word you preach, being filled with your own sermon, work ethic, righteous living, humility, and repentance.”
Adam Greenway is not doing his students by having him speak, but rather is lifting Litton up as one big middle finger to them, a living emblem of what it means to get a pass and have your sins covered up by virtue of being in a position of power.
