David Platt’s Woke Pastor, Mike Kelsey Attacks Charlie Kirk

Two years ago, David Platt elevated Mike Kelsey as the leading pastor of McLean Bible Church, while Platt remained on staff. Mike Kelsey is best known for his “torch all White people” comments from around the time of George Floyd, but was nevertheless David Platt’s pick to lead MBC into the future. This past Sunday, Kelsey spoke on the death of Charlie Kirk in a sermon loosely based on Genesis 1:26.

To his credit, Mike Kelsey strongly denounced the murder of Charlie Kirk and those celebrating it. But then he went on to lament how he had to explain to his daughter the mean things Charlie Kirk said.

he went on to use Charlie as a negative example of how Christians engage unbelievers, citing Charlie as someone whose speech “dishonors” God.

But I also had to sit with my high school daughter and help her process some of the things Charlie Kirk said. There’s some rhetoric from Charlie Kirk that followers of Jesus should firmly denounce. He says some things clearly and
unapologetically true from a biblical perspective. And I know there were some clips that were taken out of context. I understand what it’s like to have that happen to you. It’s probably going to happen today after this message.

But y’all, I was getting bombarded by so many questions over the last couple of weeks and quite frankly, bombarded by so many unsolicited opinions. And so I spent hours, hours just watching long form debates, interviews, speeches, and just to be frank, in a lot of cases, the context didn’t help at all.

In fact, in some cases, I was shocked that so many professing Christians were rationalizing things that were so demeaning and uncristlike, and not just rationalizing things he said, but idolizing him as the prototype for a new
generation of Christians. And here’s my point in all of that. This is not just Charlie Kirk. This is all of us.

He would not provide any examples of Charlie Kirk’s unChristlike rhetoric, but broader context suggests race and immigration.

I had to process with so many people. One woman that I know well in our congregation, a Latino woman who when we mentioned Charlie Kirk, she wept. and not because she thought we shouldn’t, but because what it raised for her as a Latino woman who works in social work here in the DMV area, what it raised for her is, man, I’ve been sitting in this church through all of these immigration issues that directly affect me, directly affect my family, directly affect so many of the people that I serve in my career, and I haven’t heard it meaningfully addressed in my own church family.

And so, let me say this. It’s one thing to disagree on immigration policy. It’s another thing to talk about and treat immigrants in ignorant and derogatory ways.

Mike Kelsey concludes with a struggle session appeal to emotion using an anecdote. The rest of the Kelsey sermon was loosely based in Scripture, where he bastardized the concept of imago Dei to tell people to be nicer than God.