Who was Jennifer Lyell? Author and key figure in SBC abuse crisis dies at 47

Jennifer Lyell, one of the key figures in the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) s**ual abuse crisis has passed away on Saturday, June 7, after suffering a massive stroke. She was 47 years old.

According to a report in the Baptist News, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, said:

“Jennifer Lyell’s death is tragic and heartbreaking. My heart goes out to everyone who loved and cared for her because of the magnitude of their loss today."

He added:

“While her life was marked by much pain and turmoil, now she knows only peace and rest. The eternal good news of the gospel is our only source of hope today, and we are grateful for the sure hope it provides.”

Lyell was a prominent editor, author, and former vice president at Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), according to Christianity Today.

During her tenure at Lifeway, she contributed to about a dozen New York Times bestsellers. Her life changed when she accused David Sills for abusing her. Sills was a former seminary professor and missionary leader.

Here is more to know about the late Jennifer Lyell.

What do we know about the life of Jennifer Lyell?

A report in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary indicated that Jennifer Lyell began her journey into the Christian ministry at the age of 20.

She decided to attend the Billy Graham crusade in St. Louis to convert to Christianity, following a period of homelessness and personal crisis in her life. Despite having a job in a major theatre company, she experienced unhappiness and eventually quit her job. She said:

“I was still very young. I had a lot of power. I was making good money. And yet I was still pretty miserable. And that pretty much crashed my entire worldview because those were the things that I thought led to happiness. So recognizing that they didn’t … I was just kind of confused and couldn’t see the point.”

It was after she attended a sermon by Billy Graham that she decided to welcome Christ into her life. Within weeks, she was baptized and grew closer to God. She enrolled at Southern Seminary to prepare for a career in ministry after earning a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University.

She taught the bible to hundreds of children over many years. By 2019, she became one of the highest-ranking women at a Southern Baptist entity.

In the year 2004, she met David Sills when she was 26-year-old. He was a professor in his late 40s who became her mentor and a surrogate father figure.

In 2018, as per a report in Christianity Today, Jennifer Lyell told her supervisors at Lifeway Christian Resources of the alleged abuse she faced at the hands of Sills. She said that he used force and his spiritual influence to engage her in nonconsensual s**ual acts for 12 years. He eventually resigned from his seminary post as the president of Reaching & Teaching International Ministries, a missionary nonprofit.

Things took a worse turn when she shared her story with the Baptist Press which instead of accurately reporting her account as abuse, published a story characterizing the situation as a “morally inappropriate relationship,” which led to her public fallout. However, the article was later retracted, and Baptist Press issued an apology.

According to Illinois Baptist, she was a co-defendant in the ongoing defamation suit filed by David and Mary Sills. The case is reportedly set for trial in February 2026.

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