Jennifer Lyell Was Much More Than An SBC Abuse Survivor

A tribute to a brave friend who stood for truth

More than a dozen people, friends and family, stood in silence around Jennifer Lyell’s hospital bed as her death was imminent. It is a hard and holy moment to witness the end of someone’s life. We cried copiously, passing tissue boxes back and forth. Worship music played quietly as we stood wordlessly.

Later, I thought that she would have laughed heartily that this loquacious group was assembled in silence before her. We shared that kind of humor. It was dangerous to be around her in solemn occasions if something unintentionally funny happened—one look at each other and silent laughter would shake us both.

Today the news reports and social media streams anchor her identity in being a key figure in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) sexual abuse crisis. I grieve that her initial confidence that the SBC would handle her disclosure correctly was irretrievably destroyed. Yet even to say that is to be too broad. There were thousands of SBC members who in 2021 voted for the independent investigation of their leadership, so insistent on the truth that they voted to waive attorney-client privilege to do so. But even after that investigation was published, certain social media hornets would never relinquish their self-appointed roles to endlessly harass Jen and other survivors.

May God silence the liars.

Jen died at 47 from complications of a series of strokes, passing away the day before this year’s SBC Annual Meeting. I hope she was aware of how many people were at her bedside at the end and how many more sent notes to be read to her. Popular wisdom says hearing is the last sense to go, so we comforted her, reassured her, prayed over her.

I noted that her hospital wristband inexplicably listed her as being 105 years old. I couldn’t resist leaning over to whisper that to her with a quiet laugh. The last time we were in a hospital together, the admitting nurse asked Jen if she could see well enough to fill out the paperwork or if she wanted “her mom” to do it. Jen had an eye injury but she shot me a look with her good eye and grinned as she told the nurse that “mom” could fill it out for her. I was not old enough to be her mother, but she relished the moment to tease me.

“Suffering Is Not For Nothing”—Elisabeth Elliot

Jennifer had a lifelong driving passion for truth and justice. Her faithful companion, a Cavapoo named Benson, was named for Olivia Benson, the crusading investigator of sexual crimes on the TV show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She had a tattoo on her wrist—24601—a reference to her favorite story of redemption, Les Miserables. She endlessly watched The West Wing TV series, finding comfort in a TV world where the powerful characters made right and just choices. Her favorite movie from childhood was Annie, the orphan whose hard-knock life she identified with.

As an editor with Moody Publishing and later as a publisher at LifeWay Christian Resources/B&H Publishing, Jennifer ensured dozens upon dozens of Christian books were published for the benefit of the global church. That’s how I met her—she published two of my books. But I know without any doubt that her two favorite book projects were Being Elisabeth Elliot and The Promises of God Storybook.

The former was a biography she published, which gave Jen the chance to meet Elisabeth shortly before she died in 2015. When Jen reflected on this for The Gospel Coalition, she foreshadowed a lesson she would soon learn herself:

In that moment, I realized the years of suffering she bore in the end didn’t in any way contradict what she taught throughout her life. If what she taught was true, as I believe it to be, then the suffering she experienced in her final years was just like the suffering she experienced at other times in her life. It was a means by which the joy that was to come was being perfected and by which God’s love was known. It was not for nothing.

“God’s love is unstoppable. And that’s a promise.”

Jen delighted in teaching Sunday School class to preschool children. So it’s fitting that the only book she wrote herself was for them. The irony is that she wrote The Promises of God Storybook Bible while she was in therapy for her yet-undisclosed abuse by a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor.

She narrated the book promo video and I know she meant every word when she said, “God is good and all His promises are true.”

Years later, though, as she struggled with the physical effects of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, the crushing weight of a civil lawsuit initiated against her and several other SBC defendants by her alleged abuser, and the lack of any meaningful progress in abuse reforms by the SBC, she would question whether God really did love her. She endured Job’s suffering but didn’t live long enough to see the Lord restore her fortunes as He did for Job (Job 42:10).

Yet her last known words to anyone were in a text to me asking for prayer because she felt “extraordinarily sick.” She never responded to me or anyone else who checked on her … then came the heart-dropping call that she was unresponsive in the hospital.

Out of Darkness

Four years ago, I started work on a documentary film about the decades of mishandled claims of sexual abuse within SBC churches and by SBC leadership. At the time, it seemed like there might be a turning point in the typical narrative of large institutions protecting the powerful instead of the vulnerable. So I made a short film called OUT OF DARKNESS as a proof-of-concept for funding a larger project and Jennifer agreed to be in it, as did Rachael Denhollander and Dr. Albert Mohler, Southern Seminary’s president. Then came a rash of civil litigation against the SBC by some of those named in the independent investigation—and the project ground to a halt as the turgid legal process took over.

Jen never got her vindication in a U.S. court. But she is now with the One who keeps His promises, will never forsake His holy commitment to justice, and who loves her with an everlasting love. She stood on His truth as she spoke about hers — and that’s her true legacy to the rest of us.