By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Kathy Litton says it began as a conversation, and then another, and then another.
It gained some traction at the 2018 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting in Dallas with a resolution on the dignity and worth of women, and it got some momentum when several dozen women leaders gathered together for a summit at the same meeting.
And now the idea of mobilizing women leaders across the SBC has materialized in the launch of the SBC Women’s Leadership Network, a “collaborative community of women from the Southern Baptist Convention family who long to lead in diverse ways to significantly impact the kingdom of God,” according to its website.
The group will hold its first event at this year’s SBC annual meeting in Birmingham on June 11 at 7 p.m. in the ballet rehearsal room on level 1 of the BJCC Concert Hall.
Litton is director of planter spouse development for the North American Mission Board, and her husband, Ed, is senior pastor of Redemption City Church, Mobile.
Women for the gospel
Litton also is on the network’s steering committee and she said their hope is the network will be a place “where we really sharpen each other.”
“We want to influence women in our local church, leaders at all levels and strengthen our denomination’s reach for the gospel,” she said. “We’re working on content for the site. We want to train and coach and instruct each other. We have a lot of women to draw from — we just have to
administrate all that and collect it.”
So far the network has a blog and a podcast, and Litton said the concept is growing as they go. More than 500 women have already joined the network’s Facebook group — it’s labeled “closed” but it’s open to anyone who wants to request to join. It’s just to have a small gatekeeping element that allows leaders to keep the group true to its intended purpose — for SBC women leaders to have a safe place to converse, Litton said.
The website notes in its purpose that the network doesn’t “intend to address or discuss denominational issues” or “entertain various perspectives of women’s roles either in the home or the church.”
‘Where it takes us’
The network’s leadership team includes Litton and 13 other women who serve as leaders in local churches or at the denominational level.
The site also notes that team members “are loyal Southern Baptists and convictionally complementarian,” upholding the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.
The group is endorsed by SBC President J.D. Greear and a host of other pastors and leaders across the convention. Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, is one. Litton’s husband is another.
Greear said he is “praying for a new era in the SBC, one in which all people — male and female — would exercise their God-given gifts for that mission. The SBC Women’s Leadership Network is one more step along the way, and I’m excited to see where it takes us.”
For more information visit sbcwomen.net.
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