Southwestern alumnus Lee Chitwood follows God’s call to music ministry

Lee Chitwood’s Baptist roots run deep.

“[I] was taken to a Southern Baptist church for nine months before I was born,” he said with a grin. That church, Calvary Baptist in Williamston, S.C., was where 8-year-old Chitwood accepted Christ at a church revival. He’s “been walking with the Lord ever since; at least trying to.”

Music has been a big part of that walk. The past 25 years and counting have found him serving as minister of music at First Baptist Church in Newnan, Ga. Chitwood initially had another career in mind, though.

“My early-on goal was to play football,” he recalled. “I had started playing football at age 7 and that’s all I knew. [I] ate, drank, and slept football.”

In his junior year of high school, Chitwood was awarded a four-year scholarship to play football at Charleston Southern University. Going into his senior year, however, Betty Sims, director of the school chorus, asked him to consider being in the choir.

“And so I’m like, ‘Okay, this is senior year, I’ve got an elective [to take]. Why not? What could go wrong?’” he said. “Long story short, I became president of the choir, joined show choir, made advanced choir.” Sims then suggested he audition for the South Carolina All-State Chorus. After making that choir, Sims encouraged him to audition for a vocal scholarship at Anderson University, a private Christian university in Upstate South Carolina.

Despite his plans to play football, Chitwood said, “I couldn’t say no to Miss Betty.”

He was offered a four-year scholarship to study voice at Anderson and had a big decision to make. He ultimately committed to full-time Gospel ministry and turned down the football scholarship.

Chitwood met his future wife during his first week at Anderson. He and Andrea Griswold, who also was a music major, dated all four years of college and got married after graduation “before we spent a three-and-a-half-year honeymoon out in Fort Worth, Texas, at the hill,” he added with a smile, referring to Seminary Hill, the nickname for the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary campus.

Chitwood had heard about Southwestern from Robert Heritage, his voice teacher and choral director at Anderson. Heritage, stepson of Edwin McNeely, a longtime music professor at the seminary, “grew up on campus there, and of course he would tell me stories about Cowden Hall and the Oratorio Chorus and hearing all the great things that took place there on the hill.”

Chitwood planned to go in a different direction, though, after meeting Benjamin Harlan at the South Carolina Church Music Conference during his junior year of college.

“He was coming up with these tremendous congregational arrangements of hymns, and they were just outstanding,” Chitwood said. Harlan at that time was a professor of church music at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Chitwood was offered a position as his assistant. Andrea Chitwood would take the position Harlan’s wife held at a school she was leaving.

“And so everything seemed to be heading in that trajectory,” he said. “But I just sensed a calling to Southwestern. I just felt that God was going to use us greater there; there’d be greater opportunities and learning.” He turned down Harlan’s offer, but unbeknownst to him, Harlan, a Southwestern alumnus, had accepted the post as dean and professor in the seminary’s School of Church Music and was leaving for Fort Worth.

“He did not divulge that information,” Chitwood said with a smile. “So I wound up getting to work with him anyway.”

Kenneth S. Hemphill had just begun his tenure as the seminary’s president, and students were nervous about any changes he would make in the music school, Chitwood said. Hemphill met with them and addressed their concerns, he said, adding, “it was just some great days while I was there. Some really good memories.”

Chitwood served as associate minister of music at Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth while studying at Southwestern Seminary. His classmate Craig Anderson (’97) became the minister of music at the church. “The musical ensembles that we were able to begin together, the music evangelism that we were able to do with going outside the church with these musical ensembles was tremendous,” Chitwood said. “And so it made a great impact on what we’ve been able to do in ministry even now.”

After earning his Master of Music degree from Southwestern in 1996, Chitwood served as minister of music and youth at First Baptist Church in Chatsworth, Ga., before taking on his current role at First Baptist Newnan in August 2000. His wife Andrea directs the church’s School of the Arts, where he and their two daughters also teach. He has seen generations of students coming through the church’s music ensembles, describing it as “quite humbling and unique” to have former students’ grandchildren now coming up through the children’s choir.

The church honored Chitwood’s quarter-century of service with a surprise party in 2025. “I knew they were doing a covered dish meal for the day, which they had advertised, but there were way too many more surprises for the day,” he said.

Those surprises included the performance of a special arrangement composed to celebrate the anniversary, followed by a banquet at the county fairgrounds. “It was just a great, great, encouraging day,” Chitwood said.

In addition to his work with the church and its School of the Arts, Chitwood is part of professional Gospel music groups the Sons of Jubal and Jubal Tones. He also was a member of The CenturyMen, a Grammy- and Dove-award-nominated men’s chorus. The group performed its final public concert in 2022.

Chitwood also leads the church’s senior high choir on national and international mission tours. With those travels, as well as tours with the professional choirs, he said, “God has allowed us to minister the Gospel now on four continents. And so it’s been amazing to be able to do that.”

When asked what has kept him at First Baptist Newnan for 25 years, Chitwood noted that no church is without struggles, but “when God calls us to His ministry, it’s to endure all things and to be open.”

He recalled that when graduating from Southwestern, “we put our names in what was called the ‘funny book’ … It was almost a directory book that was sent out to everyone in the Southern Baptist Convention, I think.”

Students were required to check whether they were unwilling to serve in a particular area or if they were willing to serve anywhere.

“And you know, you would think that’s something so simple to answer, “ but committing to serve wherever called required a lot of thought, he said.

“And that’s been our prayer … ‘Lord, You keep us here until You move us. Come what may, no matter the struggle, no matter the trouble, Lord, You keep us here until You move us, and may we be found faithful in that call during it, no matter what happens.’

“And so there’s been great times, there’s been hard times, but through it all, God has been faithful every step of the way. And that’s been our continued prayer: ‘Lord, keep us here until You move us.’”