His maternal grandparents, Jacob and Theresa (Oster) Rettinger, emigrated to the United States from Austria-Hungary with their children prior to World War I, having lost their fortune in a series of bad investments.

[3] Louton spent the first years of his career gaining exposure to missions by assisting with the prominent ministry begun by his parents in the Northern Transvaal.

[15] In the 1960s, Louton focused his ministry in the Northern Transvaal area, forming an alliance with Nicholas Bhengu, a powerful evangelist dubbed the "black Billy Graham of Africa" by Time magazine.

He was heavily involved in the distribution of Christian literature and music in the 1960s and was appointed to a number of leadership positions, notably as the director of the Assemblies of God Youth program in South Africa, and then as the District Superintendent of the Northern Transvaal from 1965 to 1970.

After publishing The Crisis of Christian Credebility in South Africa, an academic paper critisizing Apartheid he and his organization were allegedly placed on government watchlists.

[17][18] In January 1988, he joined the faculty of Africa School of Missions, a well-known missionary training college in Mpumalanga, where he taught courses focusing on anthropology and cross-cultural communication.