Voddie Baucham was born to a be star. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Voddie emerged as a promising athlete, in the midst of crack wars and drive-bys. Think of the movie Boyz n the Hood (1991), for those who are familiar. Without a father in the home, his mother Frances poured herself into her son— protecting and disciplining him, as well as sacrificing and advocating for him.[1] Under God’s sovereign care and his mother’s love, Voddie’s athletic and intellectual gifts emerged early, setting him on an upward course.
1. Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2021), 14–19.
Still, when he arrived at New Mexico State University in the Fall of 1987, he did not yet know the Lord. As he said later, “I did not know Jesus from the Man on the Moon.” [2] Yet, a campus minister explained to him what the Bible was, what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is, and how to “search the Scriptures daily.”[3] In October 1987, God gave Voddie new life, as he took this football star with NFL hopes and made him a Christian who would become a true north star for so many Christians in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
2. Baucham, Fault Lines, 23.
3. Baucham, Fault Lines, 23.
As Voddie tells his story in Fault Lines, he was a young man on the move. After playing football at NMSU, he transferred to Rice, where he met the woman who would become his wife and mother to his nine children. Before finishing college, they moved together to Houston Baptist University (now Houston Christian University), and from there to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. Indeed, long before we came to know Voddie as the traveling evangelist, Christian apologist, church planter, seminary dean, and conference speaker, the Lord was already leading him from one station of life to another.
Accordingly, Voddie was always a man on the move. After finishing his time at SWBTS, he pursued a doctoral degree at SEBTS and began to receive invitations to speak throughout the Southern Baptist Convention.[4] In 2006, he moved to Texas to plant a church with a unique model of family ministry. In 2015, he moved to Africa to start a new theological seminary. And most recently, in 2025, he brought his family to Cape Coral, Florida to start Founders Seminary—a work begun by his close friend and confidant, Tom Ascol.
4. Baucham, Fault Lines, 30–31.
While always pastoral in heart and at times serving as a pastor, Voddie was far more like the apostles and evangelists of the early church. Like Paul and Timothy, who were constantly on the move—preaching, correcting, encouraging, and building up the church—Voddie gained a reputation as someone who traveled the world preaching the Word of God without reservation or apology.
Always On the Move, A Man Who Never Moved
Indeed, while Voddie’s life and ministry was always on the move, his commitment to the truth never moved. From before the time he wrote his first book, The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture? (2004) until his final message delivered at New Saint Andrews College (Moscow, Idaho), Voddie’s voice was always clear and his message was always straight. Combining academic rigor with good humor, he brought biblical exposition to the masses, punctuating sage wisdom with his famously dramatic pauses. He wanted us to think and to feel the Word. The challenges we were up against were greater than we understood. But Voddie understood.
At a time when the world was overrun with deceitful acronyms (e.g., LGBT, CRT, DEI, etc.) and when a promising gospel-centered movement was pulled to the ideological Left by social justice in the church and BLM in the streets, Voddie Baucham remained unmoved.
Indeed, as man who was once reprimanded by Dwight McKissick for wearing Afrocentric T-shirts, Voddie Baucham provided firsthand testimony to the truth of God’s Word and the errors of social justice. But more than just speaking from his experience, Voddie provided some of the most trenchant critiques of Social Justice and Ethnic Gnosticism (a term he coined). He may not have spoken for many African American voices—as criticized by Phil Vischer[5]—but he nevertheless gave voice to many, even as he trained black pastors in Africa. And more, he had been engaging these cultural lies long before they infiltrated the church. Characteristic of Voddie’s unwavering commitment to the truth, he had been talking about the Frankfurt School more than a decade before the SBC resolved to employ Critical Race Theory and its “analytic tools” in 2019.
5. Timothy Martin points out the irony.
Put all this together, and we begin to see how Voddie Baucham served as a North Star in the constellation of evangelical speakers. Or to drop the metaphor, he was an embodiment of everything that Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:1–5. In this final chapter of Paul’s life, he wrote to his protégé and urged him to remain steadfast. He writes,
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
These words are a constant charge for every pastor. And thankfully, in Voddie’s life, he embraced them all. And thus, as we offer tribute to Voddie today, we want to give thanks to God for this valiant servant and suggest four ways that Voddie embodied Paul’s words. As two pastors who preach the word ourselves, want to highlight the ways that Voddie has impacted us, even as we commend his life and labors to others as well.
In short, as a man who is gone too soon, he established himself as a north star to his generation by being a preacher of the word, a lone voice in the church, an apologist to the culture, and an evangelist to the end.
A Preacher of the Word
The first time I (Dave) heard of Voddie Baucham was in 2000, when he spoke to a gathering of 40,000 college students at One Day (Shelby Farms, Tennessee). While summer plans kept me from joining my friends at this Passion event, the sermons and the music of that day reverberated across college campuses. Twenty-five years later, John Piper’s “shells” sermon might have the most notoriety, but I cannot forget hearing Voddie speaking the words of Isaiah 53. And thus, I was introduced to Voddie as a preacher.
Indeed, when Paul exhorts Timothy, this is his simple word: “Preach the word!” More fully, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.” Ever since Paul wrote these words, men have sought to preach with an eye to their Lord, knowing that they will give an account to God (cf. James 3:1). Tragically, many famous preachers in our own day have broken their sacred duty by drifting into error or diving into sin. By contrast, Voddie Baucham was a faithful preacher to the end. His life and ministry bear testimony to the truth he proclaimed and the character that he possessed.
Together, his life and his preaching have left an indelible mark on all those who listened to him. From the first time I heard him, until the last (at the 2025 Founders Conference), his sermon was never to be missed. He had proven himself to be bold and biblical. He was a proven expositor and careful student of history, theology, culture, and the human heart. Combined with humor and gravitas, his ministry defined what it means to be a preacher of the word—and what it means to preach the word in season and out of season.
A Lone Voice in the Church
When Paul wrote to Timothy, he told him there would be seasons when God’s Word would be agreeable and others seasons when it wouldn’t. Across the ages, this axiom has stood the test of time. And even in the last three decades we can see ways that the church was pressured to whisper about sexual sin and shout about social justice. Ironically, many of the traveling evangelists that preached next to Voddie would take very different approaches as cultural winds picked up. One can hardly imagine a conference today that would include Louie Giglio, John Piper, Beth Moore, and Voddie Baucham.
For anyone who has been around Big Eva for the last twenty-years, they can see the cultural changes. We wrote about some of them in the book Dividing the Faithful: How a Little Book on Race Fractured a Movement Founded on Grace, and not surprisingly, Voddie’s work preceded and shaped our own reflections. Yet, it did so amid much controversy and even cancellation. For if Voddie was once a rising star in the Southern Baptist Convention and a popular preacher at events like One Day, it did not continue unhindered. He was cancelled twice. Why?
First, as he tells it in his book Fault Lines, his commitment to the doctrines of grace ran into problems with SBC leaders who opposed Calvinism. Likewise, his commitment to training up children at home, instead of in government schools, also invited ridicule. In a denomination that sent eighty-five percent of its children to government schools, Voddie stood against that common practice. While applauded by some, he was a lone voice in the church. Yet, wisdom is proven by her children, such that today, Voddie’s caution—that children sent to Caesar will become Romans—is undeniable true. Still, to speak such truth came with a cost.
Yet, what was the SBC’s loss was TGC’s gain. As The Gospel Coalition began to pick up steam, Voddie Baucham became a fixture in the movement and a Council Member. He spoke at many events, including TGC’s national conference in 2015, where he spoke on the resurrection. But this did not last.
Indeed, it’s difficult to understand Voddie’s transition out of that council apart from his famous article, “Thoughts on Ferguson” (November 2014) and his unwillingness to go with the rising narrative of America’s structural racism. In point of fact, Voddie’s article on Ferguson was not the last time his name showed up at TGC, but clearly his views on race were not in season to many evangelical gatekeepers.[6] And if, in 2015, his move to Africa made his absence on the evangelical speaking circuit understandable, it was not because he had changed. Rather, as he pointed out in Fault Lines, the shift was caused by the introduction of CRT and cultural Marxism—ideologies that Voddie had been fighting for decades.
6. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that many of Voddie’s books on Scripture, family and apologetics continue to be commended. But not so his views on race and justice.
On the one hand, his cancellation in the SBC over Calvinism and schooling proved a point Voddie was eager to make: the SBC was not racist. His melanin was welcome, just not his views. This did not offend Voddie, for this ultimately affirmed his treatment as an equal.[7] On the other hand, while Voddie’s race was welcome in both the SBC and TGC, his views on America’s challenges around race were quite unwelcome.
7. Baucham, Fault Lines, 33.
To return to Paul, the Apostle urges Timothy to “be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” In Voddie’s case, he was. As you can see in this panel on politics, he was always ready to give an answer for the hope that he had in Christ and to explain why his commitment to Christ required him to stand for the truth. As one of eleven evangelical leaders engaged at an event on following Ferguson in 2014, “A Time to Speak,” Voddie’s perspective was outnumbered, ten-to-one.[8] Voddie felt the fault lines personally and early.
8. This event video offers a time capsule of the discussion within the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement including the Who’s Who of conference speakers at the time: Matt Chandler, John Piper, Darrin Patrick, Eric Mason, etc. This panel took place four years before two high profile moments in 2018, MLK50 and Platt’s T4G sermon, “Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters: Racism and Our Need for Repentance”; five years before the SBC’s Resolution 9; six years before George Floyd; and seven years before Voddie’s, Fault Lines. Today, Voddie’s views expressed in this panel are more widely engaged and even appreciated. At the time, while many in the pews were making similar arguments, Voddie stood alone among his peers, those setting the agenda for public conversations such as the one held at this event. For this he deserves honor.
A Prophet to the Culture
In 2015, Voddie not only moved on from evangelical panels, but he also moved continents. Receiving a call to serve as the founding Dean of Theology at Zambia Christian University (Lusaka, Zambia), he did the hard work of raising up a school to equip the saints in that nation. For us, his name was not forgotten, nor his place in the universal church. But continuing in America, Voddie dropped off our radar until the zenith of social justice hit the streets with BLM marches in the summer of 2020.
As evangelicals went in search of leaders who were not woke, Voddie’s voice came from across the seas to provide immense wisdom and clarity. At a time when lock-downs made everything go online, his voice began to re-emerge in conferences and other places of biblical proclamation. In January 2021, his presence at the 1500-person Founders National Conference in Fort Myers—the first large gathering in more than 18 months—will never be forgotten.
And since that day, Voddie’s frequent visits to America have filled the land (and the internet) with cultural apologetics for wandering sheep. Indeed, 2020 has been called the “Great Sort” because so many previously-trusted leaders stumbled in their treatment of COVID and the culture. Equally, with the rise of online communications, many evangelicals began to go in search of new voices. Some went in search of false teaching, but many found themselves in places where the sound teaching had been captivated by social justice. And at this time, few men were ready for the season more than Voddie Baucham.
Indeed, by means of his traveling and preaching, he brought truth to those who were wandering. And thus, while many shepherds wandered from the truth—and thankfully many have returned—Voddie Baucham was again a North Star. At a time when many church-goers would not “endure sound teaching” and would “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,” Voddie began denouncing things like Ethnic Gnosticism and Social Justice that emerged from the Frankfurt School and Critical Race Theory.
To be sure, such plain speech offended many—including those who once walked beside him. But true to form, Voddie did not deviate. Instead, he continued to explain the Bible and the world to those who love the Bible. And thus, the years of 2020 to 2025 made him one of the most trusted voices in America—a seminary president from Africa who even preached the gospel to the likes of Ben Shapiro.
Recently, it has been observed by Jason Whitlock, Chad O. Jackson, and Virgil Walker that Voddie’s name was not well-known among the so-called Black Church and that major publications have not recognized his untimely death. But clearly, Voddie was a public theologian par excellence and one whose voice will continue to speak to matters of Christ and culture, by means of the countless videos that captured his preaching.
An Evangelist Until the End
If Voddie was a voice crying out for truth in season and out of season, he was also a man who fulfilled his ministry until the end. As Paul told Timothy, “As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
Voddie wore sober-mindedness on his sleeve. Before preaching, noticeably, Voddie was consumed with his task. Like an athlete preparing to take the field, he prepared his heart and mind to preach the gospel to those who needed the truth. And in the words that he leaves behind, it is clear that he did the work of an evangelist until the end.
Even in the week before his death, Voddie preached the gospel to the saints at Grace Baptist Church and proclaimed God’s truth to the students at New Saint Andrews. Like Charlie Kirk who preceded Voddie’s ascent to glory by days, Voddie was preaching the good news. To do this meant that he had to endure suffering—both physical and relational. It cost him a great deal to be faithful. And yet, such fidelity reflects his all-consuming commitment to God’s Word.
From the days when he preached the gospel to teens in Texas to the days when his sermons would travel the earth, he was a man on the move whose biblical convictions did not change. For a generation, he was a north star and one whose light continues to shine.
As Paul said in Philippians, when he contemplated his own earthly passing and his impact on others, he urged the saints to shine as lights, “holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain” (Phil. 2:16). Applied today, one of the best ways to honor Voddie Baucham is to give thanks to God for him, to examine his life and ministry, and imitate his faith.
Voddie ran hard and he did not run in vain.
May we run that same race, stand in the same truth, and shine like stars with Christ’s light until he comes.
