By Loretta Fulton

Brandon Hudson, senior pastor at First Baptist Church since February 2023, has resigned.

An announcement was made Sunday and the Personnel Committee sent the following email:

“The Personnel Committee wants to inform the church that Senior Pastor Brandon Hudson has submitted his resignation letter and the letter was read to the church at the end of the service on Sunday, April 7, 2024.

The Deacon Chair has invited the church to gather on Tuesday evening, April 9 at 7:00 p.m. in the dining room for a time of prayer and information.”

The church announced two weeks ago that Hudson was arrested for a DWI.

Hudson’s first service was Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023. He was selected after more than a year of searching for a senior pastor to replace Phil Christopher, whose retirement was effective Sept. 26, 2021. Christopher had served as senior pastor since 1995. 

Hudson, his wife and children, moved to Abilene from Pelham, Alabama, where Hudson had been pastor of Crosscreek Baptist Church since 2013. 

A native of Lubbock, Hudson earned degrees from Texas Tech University and Truett Seminary at Baylor University. Before coming to FBC, his ministry involved five years of service as a youth pastor in Texas churches and fifteen years as a senior pastor in two churches in North Carolina and Alabama.

The following letter from Hudson accompanied the email sent by the Personnel Committee:

First Baptist Church,

With a broken heart, I am writing to let you know of my immediate resignation as you Senior Pastor at FBC Abilene. In the same breath, I want to let you know that I love you. You are special and beautiful and beloved by God.

Over the past several months, I have struggled to deal with concurrent issues of grief and stress that have placed me in mental strain. I have not dealt well or fully with the emotions that have been attached to those griefs and stresses. These factors culminated in an episode of horrific decision making. A decision I regret and am already working to address in multiple ways. I tell you all of this not to seek any exoneration on my choice, but to encourage all of you to take care of one another, to seek help when you need it, and to practice vulnerability about your struggles. I am working to do that myself these days.

When God called us here last December, I believed that God had a purpose for us here alongside you and with you. When we attempt to walk into God’s purposes, we are rarely given a glimpse of where the road of that particular purpose will end. Sometimes, those paths end with an abruptness that leaves us wondering “why” take the journey at all. I do not know all the “whys” of any of this, but I do know that this ending does not mean that God did not have a purpose in all this, simply that we may not be able to identify it yet.

Or, to put it more succinctly, I do not believe that this step in the journey is the end of God’s work at FBC Abilene or God’s work in my own life. What is amazing is that we worship a God who is never done with us! Our God just keeps calling us to what is next until we are called home (and then God is still not done with us!)

Over the past several days, many of you have poured out love and compassion for me and my family. Thank you for that. Your kindness has been a pure reflection of God’s grace on heavy days. To those who have expressed a desire for me to continue on as your pastor, I respect deeply that desire in you and want you to know that I hear you. I am resigning my position, but not my love for you.

In these unknown days ahead, I encourage you to remember the message of Easter. The darkest moment in all of history, the moment of Jesus’ condemnation and death, was vindicated by the God who compulsively and without reservation chooses paths of restoration and love. The glory of Easter is the reminder for us that our darkest days are always being redeemed when we have eyes to see it. 

This is, in the end, my prayer for all of us. That we would be given eyes to see God’s continuing movement in this dark moment and in all moments until we learn to see the world in the way of God.

I am thankful for the journey we have taken together and look forward to where God is moving next.

Love,
Brandon Hudson