Category 4
Verdict: David Platt is woke preacher and a terrible influence on the church.
Preface
Part of how this Discernment ministry operates is taking in reader questions about prevalent teachers. David Platt has the most active requests. You can make a request here and see our answered verdicts here.
Bio
David Platt is an American pastor, author, and former president of the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was born on July 11, 1978, in Atlanta, Georgia. Platt grew up in a Christian home. He attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a degree in journalism. After college, Platt pursued a career in Christian ministry and attended New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned a Master of Divinity degree. He later earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in New Testament and Greek from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In 2006, Platt became the senior pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2010, Platt published his first book, “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream,” which became a New York Times bestseller. The book challenged Christians to live a life of radical obedience to Christ and engage in global missions.
In 2014, Platt was appointed president of the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2017, David Platt became the teaching pastor of McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia. This influential church, founded in 1961, has multiple campuses in the Washington, DC area. In 2023, David Platt would step down as the leading pastor of McLean Bible Church installing Mike Kelsey as his replacement.
Radical
Radical is one of the most influential books in Evangelicalism in this century. The book has all of the worst qualities of the Young, Restless, & Reformed movement paired with the complaints of Gen X. David Platt has valid critiques against consumerism and its influence on the church. He is perhaps rightly disillusioned with the American Dream as many Gen X men are. Whilst a pastor of a megachurch, he describes his efforts to fundamentally change the culture there. However, David Platt’s solutions amount to a legalistic Poverty Gospel.
One of the boldest claims that Platt makes is that all believers are called to international missions. Ironically, this seems to only apply to Americans. There is no suggestion in the book that believers in jungle churches should come to America for international missions, as the Great Commission is pitted against the American Dream as the subtitle indicates. Platt assumes that third-world churches are carrying on the Great Commission superiorly despite America being the hub for international missions for over a century.
Additionally, David Platt argues that all believers should set a limit on how much income they need and to donate any income above that to missions or to alleviate poverty. David Platt employs emotional manipulation amounting to the “starving child in Africa” argument.
Suddenly I began to realize that if I have been commanded to make disciples of all nations, and if poverty is rampant in the world to which God has called me, then I cannot ignore these realities. Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so many are urgently hungry. If I am going to address urgent spiritual need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process (108-109).
Platt seems to believe that throwing away middle class savings so that 26000 people can have one day’s worth of food is good stewardship of resources.
Moreover, David Platt seems to celebrate wildly irresponsible decisions all done in the name of the Great Commission but might have been vainglorious. On page 176, David Platt celebrated a missionary who went to evangelize cannibals bringing his pregnant wife along. Months into their journey, she and her newborn died. David Platt hailed them as martyrs willing to die for the faith. But there is no indication that they were murdered in Platt’s writing. It was rather disturbing that Platt celebrated this. Because no matter how great a missionary this man was, he was a terrible husband and father. The Christian tradition has never encouraged believers to recklessly pursue martyrdom, and the Bible shows counterexamples as well. It is the neglect of family that is Radical’s most glaring weakness.
David Platt has had a career where his ability to do international missions has been subsidized by the giving of those whose incomes are not. Platt values traveling abroad to be with Christians overseas, but this is not sustainable for everybody.
It’s not a matter of aging poorly, as a book published in 2010 was written during poor economic conditions. This book was shortsighted when written and advocates elders in the church to throw away their children’s inheritance. Now in an apparent hypocrisy, David Platt’s tenure at the International Mission Board was characterized by reducing the number of missionaries sent.[i] Moreover, David Platt is known for living a far more lavish lifestyle than the average American including first-class travel, a million-dollar home (albeit in an expensive real estate market), and being the pastor of a multicampus megachurch.
David Platt’s most famous teaching is an emotional manipulation that if heeded is unsustainable.
Critical Race Theory
David Platt is an extremely woke pastor. At the beginning of 2017, David Platt is brought on to become the interim pastor at MBC to replace Lon Solomon. During this time, David Platt reaches out to Paul Akin, his aide at the International Mission Board, to ask about diversity hires. David Platt immediately makes it clear that he wants to hire non-Whites. Despite this, he is intent on denying the leadership position at MBC to a racial minority. Wokeness is generally hypocritical and David Platt is no exception to this trend.
The race-based hiring that David Platt intended to do was part of a larger trend at the time to make the church less White. David Platt is clearly pursuing a multiethnic model, something that was also part of his reasoning for elevating Mike Kelsey in 2023 to his position. Mike Kelsey is best known for telling Jennie Allen that he wanted to torch all White people. So, David Platt’s subversive actions were par for the course for woke preachers at the time.
In 2020, David Platt would promote a Black Lives Matter protest while he locked down his church.
Branch Covidianism
As previously mentioned, David Platt locked down his church while promoting Black Lives Matter and the woke narrative surrounding George Floyd. In a in this sermon preached on May 23, 2021, David Platt goes on at length saying that the church could not meet when he made the decision to not meet.[ii] Coronavirus was not a hurricane that would blow down your building or a snowstorm that would impede travel. He goes on, at length peddling panic porn about India. He even says “by God’s grace” we had lockdown measures. This is only grace if the government is your god.
McLean Bible Church would take between $1-2 million in PPP loans from the government. David Platt would further contort Hebrews 10 to argue against gathering as a church. In his exegesis, the church was “considering one another” when it decided to lockdown. This is a blatant misapplication of the text. Moreover, David Platt is using verse 24 to justify disobedience to verse 25. A pastor should never justify sin from the pulpit, as David Platt did.
It’s worth noting that Evangelical Dark Web would hold that the majority of pastors failed their duty in 2020. David Platt does go above and beyond in his justification of sin and promotion of Social Justice gatherings during this providential test which he failed spectacularly.
Lying to McLean Bible Church
One of the more unique problems with David Platt that has not been found in any other teacher Evangelical Dark Web has researched is that David Platt participated in an elaborate lie against his church. McLean Bible Church has a unique identity as an independent Bible church, and not being in any denomination is a key distinctive for this church. The elders of McLean Bible Church secretly joined the Southern Baptist Convention to court David Platt to be Lon Solomon’s replacement. These elders sinned, and David Platt knowing that MBC was an independent church took actionable steps to increase their involvement with the Southern Baptist Convention, including sending messengers to the 2018 Annual Southern Baptist Convention.
In 2021, members of MBC caught wind of their church being in the SBC and David Platt doubled down on the lie. Platt’s willingness to participate in a conspiratorial lie against his own congregation is disqualifying.
Conclusion
Despite his fame, David Platt is a horrendous preacher, in terms of skill. Perhaps downstream from John Piper, David Platt and Francis Chan elevated a style of hyperemotional preaching where the pastor sounds as though he is about to cry. His writing is similarly emotionally manipulative, though more sufferable.
David Platt is one of the most malevolent pastors of this century. And despite numerous reasons to be cautious, he is still prominently promoted by Right Now Media and others. He has helped destroy McLean Bible Church, a once historically influential church, through his liberal theology and mismanagement.
[i] https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/imbs-platt-sends-open-letter-to-sbc-family/
[ii] McLean Bible Church Sunday, May 23, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmTswK_ekiQ
One Response
Frankly, you can make the Bible say anything you want, hences the vast array of Christian denominations, mostly defined by disagreements, and differences in doctrine. It always comes down to power and money, always. Sad.