Brandon Scroggins grew up in Alabama as a shy kid in small-town Watumpka. Plagued by the fear of man, he was deathly afraid of speaking or the spotlight. Then God powerfully saved him at age 15 and later shook him when he heard Paul Washer’s now-famous 2002 gospel message in person at a youth rally in Montgomery, after which Brandon gave his life to the ministry. In this podcast, Brandon shares his life story, relating how the power of God’s word has transformed his outlook and changed his approach to church and family. This shift, as he forsook seeker-sensitive and youth-driven outreach to follow the Bible, led to adversity within his church. Yet Brandon has seen God’s kindness through it all, as Christ has refined His bride and brought those hungry for His word together into sweeter communion.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and as we do that we bring in preachers to preach that Scripture that's sufficient. And today we're gonna hear a testimony of one of the preachers that preaches at our conference, and it really is such a delight to do that, to hear their stories, their whole life story. Well, our hope is that as people listen to that preacher, that they'll have a sense of who that man is and what he's gone through to just sort of fill out the story of that man's life from what he's preaching. So today we have Brandon Scroggins.

Hey Brandon. Great to see you guys. Thank you for the privilege of being on. Yeah, so you are the pastor at Reformation Baptist Church in Watumka, Alabama. That's right, and you said it correctly, I'm impressed.

There you go, well I've been to Alabama a couple times. We've been there, we've preached in your church. That's right, yeah, that's right. Oh, that was so fun, That was a real delight. Wonderful evening.

Yeah, that was neat. We were celebrating our five-year anniversary. Right, that's right. You guys were so gracious to come in and I encourage our people. Wonderful response.

Fun evening. Yeah. Okay, so tell us your life story. Well, first of all, again, thanks for the privilege of being on my my family is so jealous that they can't be here because they love the podcast. They don't miss.

So what a what a blessing We've been really thankful for your ministry. But, uh, well, I think of my life story and two different compartments, uh, my call to salvation and, uh, my family and then more of my call to ministry. And so I grew up in a wonderful home. I'm an only child, small family, small rural town. I hear where I am now and we took Alabama.

And very much in many ways a sheltered life, but I grew up in public school and just two parents that love one another raised me well. I'll skip ahead and then go back, but I have asked my my parents over the last few years. Hey, you know, I was raised in public school. We never really practiced family worship. Is there a particular reason?

And my parents laugh and they say, we did not know anything about that kind of stuff. We know so much more now. And so I said, oh no, I'm just so thankful for the way that God's kindness to me. God has been unbelievably kind to me in my home life. I grew up in and through the local church and not far from where I live now.

And I grew up in very much of a youth group culture. And through that, my youth pastor really took an interest in me and discipled me. And I was raised in church here and there. We were mostly there on Sundays, but we were typically the last people there and we were the first people to leave and we did not go beyond one hour on Sundays, but I was in Sunday school from here at various times in my life. Well, Skip ahead.

I was 15 years old and very, very shy kid. Very intimidated by the world, plagued with a fear of man. Small high school, but we pretty well knew. Everybody knew everybody, but I had a couple of friends and that's all I wanted. The idea of public speaking or being in the spotlight was terrifying to me.

Hiring. But I had the courage, yeah, and it gets better. I had the courage to join the baseball team, and in joining the baseball team we ended up in this youth rally, And God reminds me that he uses the foolishness of men because the things that were done in that youth rally were unbelievable. But God used it and he saved me. And I remember when he changed my heart.

We were going back to the fieldhouse at the local high school and and all of my buddies were just doing some very, very simple things. And God cut me to the heart. And for the first time, I realized how how can you hear what we just heard and not be cut to the heart with a love for Christ. But I didn't know anything. I remember having conversations with other people that were believers and they said that they had gotten saved.

And I said, saved from what? Was your house on fire? I had no clue. All I knew is that God changed me and my heart was different. How old were you?

And I was 15 at that point. 15, okay, wow. 15, so I'll fast forward from there in my story, I'm being discipled in my local church. And the first time after I was saved, God really woke me up. I was in Montgomery at a major youth rally.

There was a preacher there that you may have heard of, I don't know. And there were some pretty crazy things going on in this youth rally. But there was one voice that just thundered unlike anything I'd ever heard. And this was a major stepping stone after salvation. Afterwards, I looked at my youth pastor and I said, that was a really bizarre experience, But there is something in what he said that's true.

And he said, I think you're right. I realized later that that preacher was Paul Washer. And that sermon was that youth ministry sermon that would later really resound. You were there, wow. So I'm there and God just uses that to open my eyes to a brand of Christianity that I had just grown up in.

I don't blame that on my parents, they were wonderful. My youth pastor was wonderful. We were just swimming in a culture that we couldn't see beyond. Well, kind of fast forward beyond that, God begins to stir in me to call me to ministry. And I don't know why.

This is terrible theology, but I remember thinking, Lord, I'll do anything you want me to do, but I'm not going to Africa. I don't know why I envisioned ministry in Africa. And I said, I am not speaking in front of people. I'm not speaking in front of people. So my pastor asked me to preach on a Sunday evening.

There were several hundred people there. And I remember sitting there right before I went up and I was so terrified and I thought, God I can't believe that you let me get into this. And I honestly began to pray that God would give me a heart attack and build me out of that building. What is the world? That's a new one.

I haven't heard that one before, Brandon. No. I said, Lord, I cannot do this. And God was breaking me. And He really used that in my life.

When I stepped down with just pastors in my life, it was clear I had a lot of work to do, but God had a call in my life. And I couldn't run from it, but it was outside of my interests, outside of my personality, but it was clear. Okay, how old are you? How old are you when that happened? At that point, I'm around 17.

Okay. Somewhere in there. Well, I kind of to weave another portion into the story, there was another young lady that I went to high school with, which takes me back to my 10th grade year. And we also went to church together, and my family would probably laugh and enjoy this. But I remember the first time I wanted to go back on Sunday night, just before I really sensed a call to ministry, and I looked at my mom and I said, I said, Mom, I really want to go back to church tonight." And she looks at me and she says, I'm confused.

We're not Sunday night people. We're Sunday morning people. What she realized is that there was an interest there. And so we had no clue what courtship was. That was not on the radar.

But I knew that I needed authorities and guidance in my life. And so I talked with my parents, with my youth pastor, and they guided us through what was really somewhat of a courtship without realizing what it was. And so I married her and that's my wife, Christy, and we've been on the road together since before I was even saved. It's been remarkable. What are some of the sort of theological shifts that you've had over the years?

Paul Washer might have been step one, right? One of those that was massive was the doctrines of grace. And As we began to study more and begin to just really love the Scriptures and study, I thought, I wonder what my wife is going to think about this, God's sovereignty and salvation. And so we just sat down, I began to share with her and teach and talk and uh and and she says well that's that's what I always believed I just didn't know that's what you call it. That's beautiful isn't that nice.

Yeah well shifting from there we I remember hitting a crisis point uh we were ready for children and my wife was She had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, manager home. We agreed on that from the beginning, even though we didn't really have the way of saying it, the language we might have today or the understanding of scripture, but I hit a crisis right before we were ready for our first child, and I began to think, you know, we're so busy. By that point, we were in youth ministry, and I said, I just don't know. I don't know that I'm really up for children. God began to really convict me of my selfishness.

I'll never forget. I was reading George Mueller's biography and watching how God used that man and in reading that biography God convicted me of my selfishness because that was the motive of my heart. I can't speak for anyone else, and I began to realize that I'm going to always be busy, but when it comes to the end of my life, what sort of busyness do I want to give myself to? And being in the midst of youth ministry and seeing a lot of messes there, I began to realize I want to pour my life into my family and my children. And God really began to change my heart.

So we have three children now, Harley, Micah and Owen. And we're in the process of hopefully adopting a whole heap more. So we're just really, really thankful about that. We shift as we begin to walk through youth ministry. So I kind of shift to another place in my story.

At this point, I am 18 or 19 years old, and I get an opportunity to be a youth pastor at a small church of about 40 or 50 people. And so we walk through just all of the traditional ways of youth ministry, and we begin to realize something is wrong. Something's not. Something's not fundamentally working here. And I heard about a terrible book from just a person that I was told you need to stay away from called A Weed in the Church.

I don't know if you've ever heard of that book. It's a terrible book. Nothing piques interest like being warned about something. Isn't that true of human nature? So, Jason, that's exactly what happened.

I thought, tell me more. So combined with that experience and seeing the brokenness of ministry, we shifted to a family ministry and God really used that in many ways. But what we realized is that what we were doing was just not working. And we began to think that what I was doing full time and the system that we were brought up in was actually hurting families, not helping families. But I did not know about NCFIC or any of those things.

But you'll really enjoy this because of the theme of your ministry. What really wrecked me was I was preaching on Wednesday nights to our whole church and I decided that we would go through the pastoral letters and Titus chapter 2 came up in my expositional preaching and as I walked through that passage God already dealing with my heart it just became so clear about God's plan for the family and for the church and for the integration of the family together and the way those jurisdictions works. And as I preached that in and at that point, our church was well over 400 people. Wonderful place of ministry, but in part due to mistakes that I had made. It had become a very seeker sensitive, entertainment driven church in many ways, despite all of the wonderful things God did.

But I saw for the first time in my life the power of God's word, and I began to see specific people that I can think of say, we've got to make some changes in our life. I'm not leading my family. Ladies saying, I need to quit my job. I'm not managing my home. And I began to say, wait a minute, Let's work through this one piece at a time.

But the power of just God's word. Well, God really began to use that. He was kind to us, he was gracious to us through that season. There was a lot of reformation that we were trying to lead in the family to really ground it more in the word and a healthy understanding of church membership, church discipline, all of these fundamentals. And the short story to that is that ended in a very, very painful church split.

And out of that church split, we planted another church, Reformation Baptist Church, six years ago today. And we planted that as a Reformed Baptist church and a more family-integrated church. But through that season, God is continuing to sanctify. He's continuing to break me. And we brought a lot of issues with us, a lot of very hard mistakes that we made and learned.

And that ended up in another major, major church crisis. And at least on the surface, the topic was over, Are we going to have youth groups and children's ministries? Are we going to be family integrated? That was a extremely low season in my life and led to just a hard season of depression, Just a lot of very difficult physical effects. And so that comes down to now we planted a church.

And now we're going through another season of crisis where A group had came and brought some false charges against me and and many of the church saw through that it was it was really bogus. There was nothing to it. It's just that they wanted a form of ministry that that I just didn't think we had agreed to. And so anyway, in that meeting, another piece to the story that's interesting is Scott Brown's name comes up. And with all due respect, I think that you would appreciate this Scott.

It was brought up that Scott Brown says this about family integration and I got one opportunity to make a statement of clarification in a meeting and I said I want to be really clear that no one here including me has cares about what Scott Brown says. My question is, what did the scripture say? What did the scripture say? I heard that had gotten back to you, and I thought, I hope that didn't get back to him in a way that I did not intend. That's fair.

Well, to kind of pull this full circle, the church is just in a very difficult season through that, through yet again another church split. And so we're trying to navigate COVID and all of the chaos around that and the church is hurting. We go from a church of about 130 in the plant to about 45 And we're meeting online because we're just not really sure what to make of this. And the church bands together. They love one another.

There's older men in our church who are trying to navigate technology and different things. So younger men in the church step in and begin to teach them how to navigate a Zoom call. Older men in the church begin to teach these younger men just life skills. And, uh, and, and so, uh, right after the split, seven weeks later, we hit COVID. And I thought, guys, I thought God has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, But I don't know that he's made that promise to our church.

And so if two church splits don't do the job, COVID might. I don't know what's going to come from here, just to reveal my own lack of faith and uncertainty. And I am so overwhelmed that God grew us more through that season, I believe in maturity and numerically, than we ever would have without. Through COVID and the year that followed, we doubled in size nearly overnight. People just looking for answers, looking for the substance, wanting truth, warning truth without compromise.

And so it is just blown my mind to see the overwhelming kindness of God in saving me and giving me the family that He has, the way that He has provided redemption in our church. And then just this spring, We have finished one of our men's studies. We do once a year. We walk through two books out. I would recommend your book on William Gouds, Volume One, and then we walk through Matthew Henry's book on the family, the church, the family as a church.

And we had about 20 plus, 20, 25 men go through that. And they're just so hungry to lead their families. And it's been so sweet to see. That's really transforming when a father does that, the whole earth shakes when he does the simplest thing in his house. Brandon, who's, who's your favorite living author and who's your favorite dead one?

Favorite. I'll start with Favorite Dead One. That one is easier. But Thomas Watson just puts things so clearly and reading him is like eating honey. It just is sweet and it's clear.

Living author. Now, you only ask for one, but I'll tell you, in studying The conscience, which you assigned me with, I am really enjoying William Perkins. I believe it's volume eight on in his selected writings. Living author is is difficult. There's so many.

But I really enjoyed reading Joel Beakey and the way that he has unearthed the Puritans. He's had a transformative impact. There's many, many. Well, that's wonderful. That's so good.

It's great. Great to hear your, your story. Is there anything else you want to tell us before we wind it up? Well, that's a lot of different threads to pull together. One, maybe a lot of different, uh, aspects to my story.

Some jumping around a bit that The overarching theme that I think when I look back from being saved to getting married, to God calling me to the ministry that I would have never planned for myself, to His grace and redemption in our church family. God has been unbelievably kind to me more than I would have ever planned for myself. And His redemption through afflictions and through suffering and through difficult times has never been more real and more sweet. So I'm just thankful. Very thankful.

Amen. Well, we're thankful for you. Thank you, thankful for your church down there. I hope we can go visit it again. Jason, let's go down there again.

How about that? If they would invite us, we would go. Let's do it. You have a formal imitation right now. Okay, there you go.

Good deal. Brandon, thanks so much and I can't wait to see you at the conference. Thank you very much for the invite. I look forward to it. Good deal.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you