Chaos at McLean Bible Church Business Meeting/Worship Service

All right, so I thought I was gonna do a much more light-hearted video today, but I saw that Capstone Report posted another video onto YouTube. If you're not subscribed to Capstone Report, I definitely recommend subscribing.

He's gonna always have some interesting things for you. But anyway, this is a video that was taken at a congregational meeting from McLean Bible Church, and if you don't know, McLean Bible Church is where David Platt is the teaching pastor, and Joe Carter is one of the executive ruling pastors, I guess you could say.

And they've gone woke, and from what I understand, many, many people have left the church because of it, because they don't think that the woke church stuff is biblical in any way. In fact, it's very cultic in almost every way, and it actually overturns the law of God in many ways.

And so people don't put up with it. Most people don't make a huge stink about it. They just leave. But some people do make a huge stink about it, and that's fine. Now, this is...I don't have the whole context about exactly what's going on here, but what I wanted to do is I wanted to show you this video as a...let's call it a teachable moment.

I'm gonna increase the speed of this a little bit so it won't be totally natural, because it's a 15-minute video, and I just wanted to comment on it as it goes. I think you need to see this, because the question that everybody should be asking when they see a video like this, or if they participate in a church meeting like this, because I actually have.

On a much smaller scale, I participated in a meeting that was very, very similar to this. In fact, I was actually a point of controversy in that meeting unknowingly. Like, I didn't do anything wrong, but somebody was accused of putting me on the church membership doles without saying anything so that I could help them vote or something like that.

I had no knowledge of this. Like, I didn't even know what was going on, so I was a bit of a lightning rod, not because people didn't like me, but because I was brand new to the church and people thought there were some shady stuff going on.

Looking back on it, I kind of wonder if it was shady, because I just assumed, you know, I came to the church as a pastoral resident that I was automatically going to be inducted into membership. I was a little bit naive.

I don't really know if that was legit or not. So anyway, that's not even the point of this. The point of this is what I want you to think about when you watch this video is who is in the right here in the sense of who is doing things according to good order and the right tone and, you know, who is acting as a Christian here?

Because that's a very important question to ask yourself, and I think you'll see what I mean when you see the contrast between the behaviors of the men involved. So let's watch this, and we'll take it from there.

Oh, hold on. Let me get the audio going. What I really appreciate about Capstone is he put the very ominous music. It makes it all that much more dramatic. I appreciate that, Capstone. I like those little touches.

The Congregational Meeting Is Convened to Vote on Elders

Thank you, David. And before we start, I just want to say a special word for Ken and Judy. I so appreciate their transparency, their vulnerability, and what they shared with us. And I can just tell you that they're wonderful, wonderful people.

And I would just... I don't know that I would have the courage to stand up here and do that, do what they did.

It takes a little time to get going, but just sweet.

Yes. As David mentioned, we have some family business to address today. To that end, I officially convene our previously announced special congregational meeting. Its specific purpose is to vote on elder nominees.

However, I just want to acknowledge to you that we know that there are other questions and issues which we need to discuss together as a congregation. We will be establishing forums to do this in the near future.

So that's not the purpose of the meeting today, but we will give opportunity in the near future.

Okay. So this is important. So how he sets this up is actually pretty important. So he says that we're convening a congregational meeting, and he says, the purpose of this congregational meeting is to vote for elders.

There are other issues, of course, that we need to address. We will set up a meeting to address those issues at some other time. That's how he sets it up. Now, let's listen in.

I will also announce that a quorum is present. Quorum is present. We have a quorum. So for today, if you're an active member of NBC, you should have a ballot. You should have checked in and already have a ballot.

And I would like to ask you to fill it out now if you haven't already. We are voting on whether or not these three men on the ballot are biblically qualified to serve as elders at McLean Bible Church in our church family.

Chuck Hollingsworth, Ken Tucker, and Jim Burrus.

All three of these men. Let me say this, that this is something that was likely discussed very carefully. I remember when I was in a situation like this, there was some backroom finagling where they said, okay, we're not going to vote for individual elder candidates.

We're going to vote for them all as a slate. And the reason why they did that is because they knew that some candidates were well-liked and others were very, you know, debatable, debatable. So they strategically said, okay, we're going to vote as a slate to sort of counterbalance the impact that the congregation could have on the elder candidates.

Now, I'm not a congregational guy, so this is not my preferred method anyway. But the point is that you have to understand that everything that this guy is saying, there's been some discussion behind.

Nothing is by accident here. And I don't know if this is good or bad. I'm just presenting this to you because this is all carefully laid out.

Have been nominated by church members, examined and unanimously affirmed by a nominating committee made up of both elders and church members, and recommended unanimously by our current board of elders.

If you believe they are biblically qualified to serve and shepherd our church, please mark your ballot, yes. Or if you believe they are not biblically qualified to serve and shepherd our church, then mark your ballot, no.

For the purpose of voting, this congregational meeting will be open through the end of our 11 o 'clock worship gathering, at which time it will be adjourned. So if you're an active member, you have not yet received your...

I don't know about you, but I think this is super weird. So if you hear what he just said, the congregational meeting will be open until the end of their worship service, which means that it's kind of being held in the middle of their worship service, which I think is odd.

I mean, I don't know if Sunday is the greatest day for a congregational meeting like this, especially these kind of contentious ones. But, you know, a lot of churches do that. I'm not going to say it's necessarily wrong.

But that's weird. That's going to come up later as well. Your ballot, you can go to the lobby at your location.

You would think that you'd do it at the end or before or later in the day or something like that. I mean, I don't know, just trying to, like, jam it in during your worship service, that seems super weird.

Get a ballot and submit it there.

But for those who have a ballot now, we ask you to mark it and pass it to the aisles where we will be collecting them. You may have seen in the e-news that described the collection...

Stop one second. So I don't know if you heard that, but someone from the audience said, Larry, and Larry kind of acknowledged him but continued speaking. So this is where it starts to get a little spicy.

...and counting process.

But if not, it is this. Ballots from each location will be secured and handled the same way that we safeguard cash and checks and will be transported to Tysons from our remote locations in special lock containers, the bank lock bags that we use for cash and checks.

Opening the containers and counting will take place here at Tysons under the observation of a qualified neutral third party from the law firm of Holland Knight.

This sounds more secure than the actual presidential election, in my opinion.

The results will be announced via e-news as soon as possible, possibly tomorrow afternoon. For the next few minutes, though, while we collect these ballots, our musical worship teams at our different locations are going to lead us in song.

We ask you to stay seated until the ballots in your area have been collected. Again, when they're complete, we'll ask you to pass them to the right. Larry, point of order. Point of order, he says. Just a minute, sir.

Just a minute. Well, I'm not accepting your point of order. We're conducting this meeting, sir. We're conducting the meeting the way it's been orchestrated. Here's the question, sir.

No. I'm pretty sure I spoke to this guy before. If you remember my little episode with Joe Carter, I was called by one of their security officers, and I'm pretty sure it was this guy just kind of hearing his voice again.

And he was a very, very polite guy, and he took care of the situation that we had pretty politely. He gave me the gospel. It was actually a very pleasant conversation. And you can see even here, he's going to be very polite throughout this whole thing, but he's going to be kicking this guy out.

Now, this is the first time I want to kind of question to you, or rather pose the question to you, that who's out of line here? Because this man has come up, he wasn't invited, obviously. He came up, and he has a point of order.

He has a point of order that he wants addressed on the floor. We're going to hear what that point of order is in just a moment. But the guy on stage says, oh, I'm not recognizing your point of order. So, you know, we're doing this the way I said we're going to do it.

So the question you need to ask yourself is, okay, who's right here, right?

Let's continue. Please don't think you can do this. This is a congregational meeting. Everybody, we're just going to hold off for a second, and I'm going to have you step out. We're not going to proceed until you're adjourned.

Thank you, Bill. How many of you know me? How many of you know who I am? This is a congregational meeting. We have shifted from praise and worship to a congregational meeting. We're going to escort you out, sir.

All right. So the question I've got is, what is the purpose of today's meeting? It's a special meeting, and the voices need to be heard. My point of order is very simple. Can we start the meeting with a reading of the minutes of the prior meeting of June 30th?

Hey, everybody, I'm going to ask y 'all just to take a step back. Now, this is his point of order.

He wants to start the congregational meeting with a reading of the minutes from the last meeting. He says it was on June 30th. Now, I don't know why he's asking for this. I have no idea. Now, there could be some strategic reasons why he's asking for this, and I think we'll get a little bit of insight into that later in the video.

But you can see the security guards jumped right in. It seems like they were expecting this, and the guy's pleading with him, please don't do this. I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Please, please, please, please, please.

What I do want to point out, though, is that these guys don't have any power unless you give it to them. What is he going to do, tackle them? Maybe he would, but he's probably not going to do that. So that's one thing I wanted to point out.

But again, I want you to think about who's in the right here. So he has a point of order. He's brought up for the congregational meeting. This guy's not accepting it. Who's in the right? Because it certainly looks, it appears, at least to me, that this guy is out of order.

He's just taking the stand. He's just taking the stage, right? That's what it appears like. But let's think that through for a minute as we watch some more of this video.

Step up for a second, and we're going to push you guys out of the way. All right, I'm so sorry. I want to talk about adultery.

You can. I want to talk about fornication. I want to talk about financial damage that's going on here at the church. This is a congregational meeting where the congregation gets together and has the opportunity to speak amongst ourselves.

You can't just ask him to come out.

We're going to have him. No. I think, honestly, I think things should not be reduced to this level. Hello? Chairman, please, can you please let's talk this enough for peace sake?

Larry, you need two-thirds of the congregation to vote. Move it away from the questioner. All right, I'm coming here.

Okay, so he directly addressed this guy, who kind of looks like John MacArthur, if you know, I don't know. But anyway, he's not acknowledging him. He's just standing there, stone-faced, like, no, nothing's happening.

Nothing's happening. And he said, you need two-thirds of the congregation to move forward. And I don't know if you caught that, but when the camera panned this way, you could see people were leaving, right?

People were leaving the congregational meeting. And I think the point he's making is that you don't have a quorum anymore. So you got to leave. You got to stop this now. So there's some strategic things going on here.

There is no question about that. I think that this was probably planned out. I mean, I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying that. But yeah, this is interesting. So again, he's got a point of order on the floor.

This guy refused to acknowledge it. And now he's saying, well, you don't have a quorum anymore. So who's in the right here? What's happening here, right? Who should we be wagging our finger at?

They want to have a congregational meeting. That's why they came here today. You guys have piggybacked this to put it right after a praise and worship ceremony. I've done this before. It's unfair to the congregation.

We should be doing this at a picnic. We should be doing this in the evening. But they chose to do it during the middle of a congregational service. I agree.

That's super weird. And so what this guy is acknowledging is, look, I understand your strategy here. This should have been done at a separate time, either a picnic, either in the evening, so that it's not sandwiched in the middle of this worship service, which doesn't make any sense.

So basically what he's saying is, I see what you're up to. And so to contango here, I can do strategy as well. And I think that's a very interesting point. So this guy, I have no idea who this is. I have no idea his background.

But he certainly seems to me to be quite a strategic person. So let's continue. It's getting pretty tense. Again, Capstone, killer music, man. Maybe that's not your music. Could this be the music that they're playing during this?

It could be. Let me know, Capstone, did you add this music? Or is this music they're playing? Because if this is the music they're playing, that's weird. I'm requesting that they listen to it. I do need a mic.

I do need a mic. We're being censored by the church. Yes. I'm serious. Can we just talk outside? Can we just talk outside? We do want to hear what you have to say. Then listen. OK, but can we do it in the open?

That was a good one. We, please, sir, please, we do want to hear what you have to say. Then listen. Yeah. How about that? You hear that all the time. Where I usually hear this is video game companies, when they release a half-done video game and everyone gets all upset.

And they say, we hear your feedback. It's like, OK, so if you hear our feedback, then why aren't you responding to it? Why is everything going on? And it's the same thing with Big Eva. They often say, oh, we hear you.

We hear you. But meanwhile, they obviously don't. And oftentimes, they don't actually hear you. They're just saying that, but they refuse to meet you. They refuse to talk to you.

Anyway. How many people would like to hear what I've got to say? Yes, yes, yes.

Speak up. Yes. Folks, we anticipated that as we're following our normal protocols here, we will reconvene at the time this is resolved. We will reconvene as this is resolved.

So it looks like he's adjourned the meeting. He didn't say that, but he said we would reconvene when this is resolved. So this is interesting. So he's not acknowledging the point of order. And the security guards are now here.

And he's saying, well, we're going to shut down the meeting and reconvene when this is resolved. So if he's reconvening and they don't have a quorum, well, how do they move forward? I'm not really sure.

This is a business meeting. Give him the mic. Why are people opposed? This church for 15 years. Why are people opposed? Listen to what this man says. I don't know who this is. He's not on screen. He says, why are people opposed?

Why are people opposed? Do you think we're some kind of weirdos? And it's like, I don't know. I mean, it seems to me that you shouldn't be opposed to a conversation. I don't even know what perspective this guy is talking from, who's off screen.

But it's a good question. Why would anybody be opposed to let's read the minutes so we can do our thing, we can understand where we're at, that kind of thing. He's like, I've been a teacher here for 15 years.

I'm not a weirdo. I just want to do this according to normal order. That's what this guy is saying. Where's the mic?

I'm the head of the elders of this church. And I asked them to respond on specific questions. And I got stonewalled. I got crickets. Nothing. Don't tell me that people have come to you and you have plucked them because you have not.

Wow, that was epic. So pretty based right there. He said, look, I have had questions before. And I submitted them all the way I was supposed to do to the elders, this and that. And he said, I got stonewalled.

That's quite an allegation. I don't know if it's true, of course. But it's extremely believable because that typically happens in these Big Eva churches. You can't talk to the pastor. You can't talk to the elders.

They don't talk to you. I mean, I've heard this story many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. And you can see the congregation is applauding that guy. So either they are just applauding him because they like him or they've experienced something similar.

I don't know which is which. But again, I want you to think, who's in the right here? Because this guy looks like a bit of a rebel rouser. The guy on stage is very collected. He's like, we anticipated this.

We are ready for it and we'll reconvene. And so you can see the contrast here. One guy looks like he's out of order. The other guy looks like he's in order.

All I want are the minutes from the last meeting. Tell us what happened on June 30th. You couldn't even get a quorum for the March meeting. What does that say about the elders in the church? So we've got to admit that December minutes into the June meeting, they should be read here now so we understand where we were and where we're going.

This is a very interesting moment because he's kind of revealing why he wants the minutes read. So we didn't know that until now. Now he's saying, the reason why I want the minutes from June read is because we didn't have a quorum for the meetings leading up to that time.

So really what's going to happen is you're going to read the December minutes. And so we're going to read the December minutes, admit them into June, and now we're going to read them in July. And this is going to give us a very nice, clear picture about where we were and where we're going.

And where we're at now and where we're going. And I think what he's trying to say is you're going to see a contrast. You're going to see a degradation of what has happened. And we all need to have that fresh in our minds as we vote for elders.

And that seems very reasonable to me. It seems very reasonable to me. Now I'm not naive, right? So I'm not going to say that he just wants to be reasonable. Obviously he has an angle. There's no question about it.

There's nothing wrong with having an angle. But his point of order seems very reasonable. Who would oppose that? Who would oppose that? Well, I'm not really sure who would oppose that. But what I think is interesting here is that as much as a rebel rouser as this guy appears on the surface, it certainly seems to me that the person who's actually out of order is the person who's leading this meeting.

Because he's refusing to acknowledge this. He just wants to ramrod the vote in and stop everything. He himself said it was a congregational meeting that he was convening. Therefore, you would think that a congregant who has a point of order would be addressed.

Especially when that congregant who has a point of order seems to have a lot of support for that point of order within the rest of the congregation. Probably not total support, but a decent amount. So you would think that if you're trying to do things in order, you're trying to have unity in the body, you would do things according to order.

So in my opinion, though, this guy seems to be out of order with his tone. He just kind of yelling because he doesn't have a mic and he's not on stage. Doesn't have the official, you know, power here.

Then the guy who's refusing to acknowledge this. I don't know this to be true because I haven't seen their constitution. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, what's it called? The bylaws of the church, right?

There are probably bylaws for this church. In fact, I think it's required in most jurisdictions for a church or an organization to have bylaws, how they operate. So. That's really where the rub is. Who's operating according to the bylaws here.

So the church has decided that it wants to have an open ballot, your rights to vote secretly after 60 years in the plain Bible church. Look at your ballot. It has your name on it. This is.

Ugly guys. You know, there's no question about it. This is ugly, but you know, there's, there's, there's, there's often no way to do this kind of work and it not look ugly. You know what I mean? You know, churchmen have been getting their hands dirty for a very, very long time.

And they are going to into the future as well. I, I, what I, the reason why I wanted to do this video, we're going to finish it, but I want you to understand that sometimes appearances aren't always what they seem.

There's a passage in the scripture where it talks about some of the enemies of God. And he says in this passage, he says, his words were smooth as butter, but there was war in his heart. And so what he, what he, what the passage is saying is like, look, he sounds really nice and collected and, and, and, and in order and stuff like that.

But really it's war in his heart. He's actually raging on the inside. And this guy appears to be, I don't want to insult the brother, but he appears to be raging on the outside, but on the inside, what he's, at least from his perspective, he's trying to do this according to order.

So, so you gotta, you gotta look beyond appearances, I think. That guy says it's unconstitutional what you're doing. I don't think he's talking about the U S constitution. He's probably talking about the church constitution and that's the rub.

It depends on what that constitution says. It who's out of order here. It depends on not appearances, not who's common collected and who's having to yell because they don't give him a microphone. That's not how you judge who's out of order.

You actually have to look at the rules that were set up ahead of time. That's what you have to look at. I've got a motion on the floor. Vote on it. I want second. Two thirds vote to move it, to stop the discussion.

This is our meeting. All right, I'll step out. Trespassing. Hold on a second. This is our meeting. He said he's trespassing the security guard here, the nice security guard. He's trespassing. So this congregant, a member of the church has a point of order on the floor and the leader of the meeting doesn't acknowledge it, doesn't like it, whatever, doesn't acknowledge it.

And so now he's trespassing. That's pretty flimsy. It's a lawful order. You're trespassing, sir. Okay, if that's how you want to play it, but the thing is like, man, I got nothing. You're trespassing.

Thank you, Jim. My goodness, what a way to go. I don't like what you have to say. Therefore, you're trespassing. Let me get my goons to kick you out.

The purpose of this meeting is a congregational meeting. Keep in mind, take a call, exercise his right. We've asked you, we've lawfully requested. Please come on. We have lawfully requested. That's all we are asking.

We have lawfully requested.

You leave, sir. You leave. We have lawfully requested. You are trespassing, sir. That's a goon, man. I mean, that's a goon. It's a straight up goon. He's going to do whatever he's told. It doesn't matter if it's a member of the church.

It doesn't matter if he's got a point of order. It doesn't matter. He's going to, he's going to go in his little microphone. It looks like he's protecting the president, and he's going to, uh, he's going to do what he's told.

I got it.

Vote no, or don't vote, but don't support this. Hit the pause button. Let's have a legitimate meeting.

Look at this lady right here. She's like, she's, she's like so embarrassed to be here. She's just like, oh, no. I was like that when I, when I was in my meeting that was like this, and I was like the lightning rod, uh, again, I was brand new.

It was like my first weekend there, or my first Sunday. I didn't know anybody. You know what I mean? Um, and I was just like, oh, should I leave? Like, what am I, I didn't, I didn't do anything. So it looks like they convinced him to leave.

Somebody just asked him to like, acknowledge the constitution or something. And he's like, oh, I can't hear it. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I don't know. I mean, I've never seen the church constitution.

My point of this whole video is not to take a side here, but to say, you got to look beyond what your eyes see at the outset. Cause that guy just got kicked out by security. And so if you want to spin a yarn that says, see, that guy was out of order.

He got kicked out by security. I guess you could do that if you'd like to, but that's, you got a Christian needs to look a little deeper than that. Because again, the word, sometimes the work of a church is dirty and to know who's out of order here as calm and as well put together as this guy looks, you have to look at the constitution because people run roughshod over the constitution, over the Bible, over the rules of order, all this stuff with a smile and well-collected all the time.

That's the primary scam that they run. They've got some decorum, but they're running roughshod over what was agreed to ahead of time. That's what typically happens. They've got buttery words, but war is in their heart.

Is that happening here? Well, I don't know, but it could be. And so we need to always acknowledge that possibility.

So we're going to proceed. And if you've already passed your ballot, I know some of you pass it in already. Please continue to do that. Pass them into the right of your aisle. And we will, we will do what we said we would do with the ballot counting.

And folks, you know, this is just not the way we're supposed to do things in church. We agree. We agree, Larry. We agree on something,.

Larry. He walked into that one. He walked into that one. This is not the way we're supposed to do things at church. And everyone's like, yeah. Oh man. Oh man. You see, that gives you a window into their mindset.

It's like, well, if anything looks a little ugly, then it can't be churchly. And that's just not the case, man. You know, the guys in Moscow got arrested, you know, that can't be true. That's not the way to do this.

That's not the way to do this. It's like, there's the people that don't do anything. Always disagree with how you do things. It's just that simple.

Closing Reflections on Order, Appearance, and Church Discipline

All right. As we wrap up our time together, I'm going to ask DJ to come out and just beat us in a song. And we'll conclude our time together. All right.

So there's a number of charges. Now they're going to go into song. So weird. There's a number of charges here that, you know, I think that are, obviously they need to be addressed at some point. But, but yeah, that's what I wanted to do.

I just, I just wanted to present that because to know who's acting in a godly way, it can't just be who appears to be a rebel rouser, who appears to be in order. You can't do that because so often the Pharisees appeared to be, to put together.

And the apostles will appear to be the ones that were out of line and out of order and causing riots and stuff like that. And we know from that, that experience that that biblical witness that, you know, who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

And so I just wanted to present that. And I just, I'm praying for the members of McLean Bible church. I've been talking to people from that church for a very long time. I don't know all the details there, but obviously it's, it's a, it's a distressing situation.

Thanks again to capstone report for providing that video. I hope you found this video helpful.