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Adrian Pierce Rogers (1931—2005) was an American Southern Baptist pastor, author, and broadcaster. He was also a leader, a visionary, and a catalyst for change. His influence was felt far beyond the walls of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where he served as senior pastor for more than three decades. As president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1979, 1986, and 1987, Rogers was at the forefront of the conservative resurgence, calling his denomination and its leaders back to an immovable commitment to the authority of Scripture. His impact was profound, his legacy enduring.
Adrian Rogers was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. His parents were Arden and Rose Rogers. Adrian graduated in 1950 as Palm Beach High School’s star quarterback. By then, he had already surrendered his life to Jesus Christ and felt a profound calling to Christian ministry. He often recalled the night when he stretched out alone on the football field with his face to the ground, praying, “Lord, I want you to use me!”
After high school, Rogers continued his education at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where he earned his bachelor of arts degree in 1954. During his time at Stetson, he married his grade school sweetheart, Joyce Gentry, in September 1951. The couple went on to have two daughters (Gayle and Janice) and two sons (Stephen and David). Tragically, a fifth child, a boy, died in infancy.
Adrian Rogers’ early years in the ministry were marked by determination and hard work. At nineteen, he was ordained by the Northwood Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, Florida. While attending college and seminary, he drove hundreds of miles every weekend to pastor a remote, rural church with only fifty members. Rogers also took on various jobs, including construction, butchery, car sales, fruit packing, and elevator mechanics. In 1958, he earned a master of divinity from Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans.
Rogers’ first senior pastorate was at Fellsmere Baptist Church, a modest congregation on the east coast of Florida. From 1964 to 1972, he served as senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Merritt Island, Florida. His next position took him to Memphis, Tennessee, where he became senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church from 1972 until his retirement in March 2005. During his 32-year tenure, the congregation’s already substantial membership more than tripled (from 9,000 to nearly 30,000) under his leadership. Upon retirement, Adrian Rogers was honored with the title of pastor emeritus.
Rogers is the only person in modern history to have been elected three times to the office of SBC president. His first victory came in 1979 through a grassroots movement of conservative leaders to regain control of the sixteen-million-member denomination. At the time, moderates and liberals had taken over and were drifting away from the denomination’s commitment to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. Rogers was reelected in 1986 and 1987 and continued leading the charge to return the SBC’s committees, trustee boards, and seminaries to their theologically conservative roots—a position the denomination has retained ever since.
Adrian Rogers was instrumental in the lives of several U.S. Presidents, including George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Twice, he preached sermons at the White House.
In 1987, Rogers started Love Worth Finding, an internationally syndicated evangelical broadcast that continues to air on tens of thousands of outlets worldwide. In 1998, Love Worth Finding won the National Religious Broadcasters Television Program of the Year Award; in 2001, it won the Radio Program of the Year Award. In 2003, Adrian Rogers was inducted into the National Religious Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame.
Rogers wrote numerous books and held evangelistic crusades around the globe. But his favorite place to minister was in the pulpit. “What really melts my butter is preaching the Gospel and getting people saved,” he once told a Memphis magazine (www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-16-me-rogers16-story.html, accessed 8/3/24). He was fondly nicknamed “Old Golden Throat” by fellow ministers.
His preaching style was simple, practical, and powerful. Richard Land, the SBC’s seventh president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said Adrian Rogers was “one of the giants of the faith” and “perhaps the last half-century’s premier example of an expository preacher who used his gifts to magnify the Lord Jesus Christ and his victory for humanity on the cross” (www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10056815, accessed 8/3/24). In 2016, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary established an Adrian Rogers Center for Expository Preaching.
While receiving treatment for colon cancer, Adrian Rogers contracted double pneumonia and died on November 15, 2005, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 74.
Here is a sampling of Adrian Rogers’ one-liners:
“Faith in faith is just positive thinking, but faith in Jesus is salvation.” (Adrianisms)
“It is better to be divided by truth than be united by error.” (Unmasking False Prophets)
“A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing.” (Adrianisms)
“The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” (Adrianisms)
