Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton shared a message of unity and love when he spoke March 1 to students at Samford University and Beeson Divinity School.
Litton spoke to undergraduate students during campus worship and later preached during Beeson’s worship service. He also participated in a live podcast interview.
Litton, who announced that day by video that he would not seek reelection as SBC president, shared with students his work on racial unity.
“I’m not woke, but I have been awakened by the living God to other people’s pain,” he said, referencing some interpretations of race-based conversations and attempts at navigating the divides as a threat to conservative theology. “This is not a theory. This is the gospel. The gospel requires us to love one another.”
Litton also described the pain that comes with pastoral ministry.
Pain of ministry
“If you’re a leader and you’re not in pain, you’re not leading,” he said, referencing Psalm 84. “When you lead people to change, they’re going to resist because they’re afraid of pain. We’re disconnected in our communities. We stopped feeling the pain in our neighborhoods. We’ve stopped looking upon the brokenness that we are a part of.”
Following the chapel service, Litton was the guest of honor of a luncheon hosted by Samford President Beck Taylor, Samford Provost Mike Hardin and Beeson Dean Douglas Sweeney. After the lunch, Litton was interviewed for the Beeson podcast by co-hosts Sweeney and Kristen Padilla, manager of marketing and communication for Beeson Divinity.
On the podcast, Litton shares about how he came to faith in Christ, his call to pastoral ministry, church planting in Arizona, church ministry in Mobile, his presidency of the SBC, the upcoming meeting of the SBC in Anaheim, and how to pray for the SBC. During the podcast, Litton said that Southern Baptists are “at a very critical moment.”
“There are two profound stains on our garment: one is racism, and the other is abuse,” he said. “The one clear message that came out of Nashville for me was that it was my task to address those two issues.”
Litton is senior pastor of Redemption Church in Mobile and the 63rd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. (Reporting by Beeson Divinity School)
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