At Memorial, Friends Mourn Loss of Jennifer Lyell, SBC Whistleblower and Publishing Exec

NASHVILLE (RNS) — On a hot and humid summer day, Thursday afternoon (June 26), a group of mourners gathered in a small chapel at Immanuel Nashville church to say goodbye to Jennifer Lyell.

In the pews for the invite-only memorial service were former co-workers, activists and church leaders, all there to pay their respects to Lyell, a former Christian publishing executive whose career was derailed when she accused her former Southern Baptist mentor and seminary professor of sexual abuse. She died earlier this month after a series of massive strokes at age 47.

“This is a friend’s service, a service put on by friends to celebrate a friend and to celebrate friendship,” said Keith Whitfield, pastor of Temple Church in North Carolina, who officiated.

The service also marks the end an era — one in which leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination admitted they had mistreated survivors of abuse in the church in the past and pledged to make amends. The Southern Baptist Convention passed reforms meant to prevent abuse and to keep track of pastors guilty of abuse as a result.

Those reforms have now largely stalled, undone by lawsuits, denominational politics and lack of funding. However, Lyell’s story played a role in sparking those reforms.

In 2018, she told her fellow executives at Lifeway Christian Resources, the SBC’s publishing arm, that her mentor, a missionary and seminary professor named David Sills, had sexually abused her — forcing her into sex acts she did not consent to. Sills was fired from his job at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for what the seminary’s president, Al Mohler, has referred to as abuse. Sills also lost his job as the leader of a missionary organization.

But few details of Sills’ misconduct were made public until a year later, after Lyell learned her former mentor, who had once been a father figure to her, had returned to the ministry. She then told Baptist Press, a denominational publication, about the abuse. But her story was changed in editing to claim that she had admitted to a “morally inappropriate relationship.”

The story led to a firestorm online, with Lyell being accused of being an adulteress and sinner who had led a good man astray.

At the time, Lyell was the highest-ranking woman at any of the SBC’s major entities — a publishing editor and publisher who’d worked on a dozen bestsellers and a faithful church member who had dreamt of being a missionary and taught the Bible to young children. However, Lyell lost her reputation, left her job and struggled to find a way forward. Though Baptist Press eventually apologized, and SBC leaders reached a settlement with Lyell, the damage was done. Lyell felt abandoned by the church she loved and the leaders she trusted, said her friend, Rachael Denhollander.

That was especially true after Sills, who has admitted misconduct but denied abuse, sued Lyell and SBC leaders after he was named in the denomination’s 2022 Guidepost report about how its leaders had responded to abuse.

Denhollander said that in the end, Lyell was seen as disposable.