David Platt Documentary - Review or No?

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Friday, October 25th, Year of Our Lord 2024, and today we're going to talk about David Platt.

That's right. He's back in the news. You know, there's a new documentary that came out about him in two parts.

If you want to see it, John Harris got permission to put it up on his YouTube channel in its entirety.

We've got two parts, and it's on John Harris's Conversations That Matter YouTube channel. Definitely give it a watch.

Before we get into that, let's watch this nice video from a few years ago from the

New York Jets. This is when we hired the coach of the future, head coach

Robert Sala, who was recently fired from the Jets. Let's talk about it, because I think it's related.

Get used to the mantra, all gas, no brake.

How we wake up in the morning, how we rehab, how we prepare for meetings, how we take the practice field, how we're deliberate in everything we do will lead to the results that you'll see on Sunday.

Waking up in the morning, putting your foot to the pedal, go to bed better than when you woke up.

That's the mindset we're going to have. Identify with yourself and be who you are first, because when adversity hits, your authenticity will shine, and to tell you who you're going to get, you're going to get me.

There you go. I mean, epic. It sounds epic.

Yeah. Thanks for indulging me a little bit. 40 seconds of Jets propaganda there. The mantra that Robert Sala said he was going to bring to the

Jets was all gas, no brake. Now, I'm a pretty negative Jets fan, so I just assume things aren't going to work out, so I'll just preface all this with that.

But it sounds pretty good. All gas, no brake. I mean, if you have a football team, why not play that way?

All gas, no brake. It sounds pretty good, and he definitely looks the part.

I mean, look at the guy. There he is. He looks like he would be a real no -nonsense football coach.

He had a good track record as a defensive coordinator with the 49ers, I believe, and they had some good defenses and everything.

So, hey, the competence plus mantras that make a lot of sense. What could go wrong, right?

What could go wrong? Well, let me just say this. I didn't know it was going to go wrong in the way that it did, but right now the

New York Jets, they fired him partway through this season, and it's as bad as it's ever been.

The Jets are as bad as they've ever been. So, obviously, it didn't work out with Robert Sala, but I knew from pretty much like the fourth or fifth game that Robert Sala was completely full of it.

He was totally full of it. The all gas, no brake mantra, you can actually see that play out in the games.

I could tell that it was a nice thing to say, but he was just completely full of it.

He didn't really believe it. Maybe he wanted to believe it. Maybe he hoped he believed it. Maybe he was hoping people would look at that as his mantra, but you can't change your own spots, right?

A leopard can't change his spots. An Ethiopian can't change his skin, and there would be situations in games where, you know, obviously sometimes you just have to punt on fourth down.

It just is what it is. You just have to, but there's lots of situations where in a football game where it's fourth down, and whether or not to punt, you know, it's maybe it's debatable.

Maybe you should just go for it on fourth down. There's lots of situations like that, and what I noticed with Robert Sala is once the losses started piling up, in those situations where it was borderline, maybe punt, maybe don't, he would always punt, and even in the play calling and the way he organized the offense and stuff like that, it was very clear that he was playing not to lose, not playing to win, and if anything is against the mantra of all gas, no brakes, it's stuff like that.

I mean, there are plenty of head coaches that don't have great teams, but they actually do play like all gas, no brakes.

You know, if it's fourth down and it's close and maybe you shouldn't punt, maybe you should, they go for it, and they, you know, hey, maybe they lose because of it, but they're not scared to lose.

They're like, oh, we're going to try to win this game, and they're people that go for two -point conversions when maybe it makes no sense to.

You know, you love that kind of stuff because, look, if you're going to lose, lose, go out swinging, and the

Jets never did that, so it became very clear maybe halfway through the first season that Robert Sala was full of it, but a lot of people gave him a pass, right?

You know, a lot of people gave him a pass because his teams weren't that talented back then. You know, there's a lot of bad players on the team, and he even used it as an excuse often.

Again, this doesn't really seem to go with the all gas, no brake mentality, but he'd be like, well, you know, we inherited a bad team, and you know, hey, you know, maybe give me some more players.

Anyway, we have great players now. We have great players. We've got a Hall of Fame quarterback. We've got great position players.

We've got a good solid defense, and we still are losing. It's still as bad as it's ever been.

In fact, I would argue it's worse than it typically is. This is a bad team, a bad football team, and I think that a lot of the terrible kind of entitled mentality that the players have, that the kind of, you know, we're going to try, but you know, not that hard, that kind of thing, that all came from seeing that your head coach was an empty suit, empty platitudes, and I kind of could see this coming because he was also kind of woke, too, talking about things like empathy and stuff like that.

I mean, yeah, sure, that makes a whole lot of sense on a football team when your whole goal is to defeat without any mercy the team in front of you.

Yeah, we got to really start bringing empathy into that, right? I mean, what does the other guy feel like? I mean, it just makes no sense.

I remember saying when he was first hired that he's the first woke, you know, DEI head coach hire, and maybe

I'm wrong that he was the first, but he definitely is a woke hire. It's as simple as that, and he sucks, and the team sucks now because of it, and there's no turning back.

I mean, we need to bring somebody else in that's actually legitimate. I don't know how it's going to work.

I don't see any way forward, to be perfectly honest, but I can just sit from the cheap seats and make these comments.

It's no big deal. I'm not the one who has to fix it. But anyway, Robert Sala, now that we've talked about him for six minutes, there's a lot of similarities with Robert Sala and David Platt.

David Platt, he's back in the news, got a documentary about how he's completely destroyed the church he decided to take over, and I don't know if you know if he decided to take it over.

It certainly feels to me like the SBC dispatched David Platt to McLean Bible Church in order to assert their will upon it.

It's strategically located next to DC. They've got a lot of financial resources, which were very quickly funneled into the

SBC, and it's a real disaster. I would recommend, this is what I would recommend if you're going to watch this documentary.

Watch both parts, no matter how you feel about the first part, because the first part of this documentary has a lot of personal stories about different things that David Platt did that the congregation didn't agree with.

To be honest, here's what I'll say about the first part. A lot of it, it kind of strikes me as poor leadership.

If you're a new leader in a church, or really anywhere, you're going to make some changes because obviously you're brought in and you look at the situation, and not everything's happening the way you would do it, right?

So you're going to make some changes, but a good leader can navigate that change period. They can manage that change period, and they can make the adjustments that they need over a timeline and in a process in a way that does not alienate the people that were already there.

So this is a problem that happens a lot of times. I mean, this even happens on the micro scale. I've been involved, and I'll talk about this in a minute,

I've been involved in a church situation where there were some changes and some things going on, and of course the old guard doesn't like it, and the new guard has to manage that change situation, and you've got to figure out how to do it to cause the least problems possible, because you're not there to cause problems, you're actually there to move forward.

And so the way that David Platt changed a lot of this stuff, very shady, a lot of backroom deals, a lot of shenanigans and stuff like that.

But the first part, if you just watch the first part, you could kind of come away from this thinking, you know, maybe this is just sour grapes, right?

Maybe this is just sour grapes, and they're upset because their favorite ministry got canceled or whatever, and all of that kind of thing.

But I would encourage you, I would encourage you, this is what I will say. Watch the second part too, because the second part really kind of shows you exactly what a lot of this was all about, and exactly how dishonest and really evil

David Platt and whoever he's involved with on the SPC side really acted in this.

This is a very, very shady situation, probably laws were broken,

I don't know, I'm just saying allegedly, allegedly laws were broken, and there really was a lot of dishonesty in this whole thing.

One of the things that I find interesting about this documentary too, is that a lot of the information comes from discovery.

At one point some people sued the church, and they sued the church to get the discovery, and then they dropped the lawsuit, but they still had the discovery.

So they had personal emails from David Platt behind the scenes to encourage people, or to order people to write certain emails, or certain, you know, messages and things like that, in such a way that you don't know the message is coming from David Platt, but it is coming from David Platt.

He gave you the script, and it comes from somebody else's email address. It's very manipulative. David Platt is a manipulative person, and I've known this for a long time, you know,

I was talking to my brother, and he said that a lot of this documentary is stuff we already knew about David Platt, but when you see it in black and white, it's almost like you get angry again, you get, you feel a certain kind of way again, and he likened it to like, if you're a guy, and you know that your wife is cheating on you, you just know it, you know, all these things fall into place, you know she's cheating on you, you're angry, and then later, maybe a few months later, you actually see the text messages, you actually see the video evidence, you actually see real, solid, concrete evidence that your wife was cheating on you.

You already knew, you were already angry, but you get angry again, because it's so final, you know what

I mean? It's just like so, it's just in your face, and you get all pissed off again. That's what this was, but we already knew

David Platt was a manipulative person. I mean, I've been saying this for years about David Platt, that whole fake crying thing that he does, that's a manipulation, that's a tactic, and listen,

I've seen men cry from the pulpit before, right? I've seen it happen, and I've seen it happen in a way that wasn't obviously fake, that wasn't obviously manipulative, and I've also seen it happen many times, especially in Big Eva, with people who cry as a manipulation.

It's like some women, they get into leadership, and you look at their track record, and you're like, oh wow, she slept her way to the top.

Well, David Platt used the same kind of a tool, except he didn't use sex, he cried his way to the top, and it makes you feel sorry for him.

It makes you, like, you don't want to oppose him, because he might cry, and it's like, when you see a man cry, you just want to put him out.

It's like, and you just want him to stop, so it's like, okay, whatever you want, just fine, stop crying.

It's pathetic, and it's hard to watch this documentary at times, because of this whine that he does, this weeping, this fake weeping that he deploys at any given moment.

I had somebody reach out to me, and I never ran with this, I don't think, did I? I don't think I ever did, and she was an actress, right?

She was an actress, and she reached out, and she said, hey, I'm a trained actress, you know, here's my credits, stuff like that, I teach acting, stuff like that, let me show you how you can know it's fake.

That's what she said, let me show you how you can know that this is fake, and she gave me this list of different things, and it all struck me as true, it all struck me as right, and this is so funny and fascinating, too, because I watch a lot of videos about body language and stuff like that, and there's different tells in body language that when you see it, you know someone's not quite being honest with you.

You can't tell with absolute certainty, but, you know, you can have a pretty good idea if someone's being a little disingenuous with you based on certain body language tactics and things like that, and it's amazing, because a lot of the times you watch a video like that, and as soon as they say it, you're like, oh, of course that's a tell, of course, and you, because you know these tells, because you've got so much experience with people telling the truth and being dishonest, and so your mind is a beautiful thing, it just gives you a funny feeling, and you couldn't put your finger on it, because you haven't studied it, but you know the person in front of you is being dishonest when they do whatever it is that they do.

It's very interesting, and so whenever I listen to David Platt, I always got that feeling, I always got that funny feeling, like this guy's not honest, this weeping is obviously fake, and I couldn't put my finger on it, but once you see someone explain why you know that they're fake, oh, it's like, oh yeah, of course, of course, he's a bad leader, he's dishonest, and he's an empty suit, all of his stuff about the

American dream, and, and, oh, we got to give up the American dream, we could only rediscover the gospel, you know, all that fake stuff, it's all empty suit, it's an empty platitude, it's just like Robert Sala with the no gas, all gas, no brakes, maybe he wishes that he could reject the

American dream, maybe he wishes that he would give up everything for the gospel and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, when he looks at himself in the mirror, he knows that's not what he's about, and you can easily see it, you can easily see it about how he lives his life, you can easily see it about the things that he cares about, the actions that he takes, he's full of it, just like Robert Sala, he's full of it, so Robert Sala, at least

Robert Sala looks the part, right, and at least he had some kind of modicum of success before in the actual thing, the track record of David Platt, sure, he makes a lot of money, sure, he gets on the gospel coalition conference circuits, but the track record of actually pastoring, there's a trail of bodies behind him a mile long, it's chaos all the way through, that's what he brings, if David Platt were to pastor your church, it would be in chaos within months, that's his

MO, and it's so funny, too, because there's another part in this documentary, this is one of the best parts, in my opinion, where they talk about David Platt resigning from the

SBC mission board, whatever he was a part of, and if you remember when he did that, he wrote this letter or a blog post or something talking about the politics of the

SBC, and how he hated it, and how he didn't like the little club that they have, they've got to pat each other on the back and money and all this stuff, he didn't like it, he felt dirty, and he was part of it, he didn't want to be part of it anymore, and he didn't like all the backroom deals and the things like that, and when

I read that, I was like, oh, that's really interesting, right, but also I knew he was a fake person, I mean, I already knew that, why is he saying this?

That's what I thought to myself, why is he saying this? But at least there's some self -awareness, right, that's what I thought, that's what I thought, maybe this is a of good things to come, who knows?

So he resigns from the SBC, talking about all the backroom deals and the shadiness and the politics, and then he goes to a church, there's a hostile takeover of McLean Bible Church, allegedly, and he does the same stuff, and you could see the emails where he's posturing, and he's like, yeah, you know,

I don't like that it's a game, but let's posture, let's be the biggest giving church in the SBC, oh, by the way, we're not part of the

SBC, even though we're just as much a part of the SBC as any church has ever been a part of the SBC, yeah, let's just, we move money around, and we got a slush fund over here, and we're gonna fund radical, we're gonna, and it's just, it's unbelievable, like, he knows what he's doing, this is the thing, this is how you know he's a fake person, he knows that the shady backroom deals and the money and all this stuff, and the scratch, you scratch my back,

I'll scratch yours, he knows that that's messed up, and that he shouldn't want any part of it, and he tells you,

I don't want any part of it, all gas, no brakes, but at the end of the day, when he looks at himself in the mirror, he knows he does it, and he's good at it, and he will continue to do it, and he'll never, ever, ever stop, he's full of it, and he knows it, he's a fraud, and he knows it, and he does not care, he doesn't care, and he'll do the backroom deals, he does it, no problem, he has no problem with it, he says he has a problem with it, but he doesn't have a problem with it, his actions show that that's a lie, and he hates the political games with the money, you scratch my back,

I'll scratch yours, but he participates in it, even after he identifies it's a problem, he still participates in it, the guy's a fraud, the guy's a fraud, and he's not necessary, this is the other thing that's so unfortunate about this, and by the way guys, watch the documentary, and make sure you watch both parts, like I said, the first part, you might not understand really what's going on, it just kind of seems like sour grapes, maybe a little bit, the second part ties it all together of what's going on, you can see why the people are so upset, it's not so much that their ministries got cancelled, it's that their ministries got cancelled, so they could freaking fund radical, so they could freaking fund the

SPC, that's why they got cancelled, so that he could consolidate power around him, and he'll tell you, oh these are not yes men, even as he's pulling the strings behind, we have the emails now, of how that's exactly what they are, they're yes men, they don't even write their own freaking emails, he writes them for them, he's a fraud, and the sad part about this is, he's not even necessary, he's not that insightful, he's not that great, this is his most famous book,

Radical, David Platt, Radical, the funny comment here from private

Aurelia Buendia, Buendia, Buendia, next time someone tries to sell you something and advertises it with an upside down home, don't buy it, yeah, there you go, there you go,

I remember I read this book, and I was a young, impressionable, naive Christian, you know,

I didn't know too much, I didn't know too much, I had read my Bible, I had become a

Christian a few months prior maybe, and I read this book, and I read this book because my wife recommended it to me, now my wife at the time wasn't my wife, we were dating, and everybody loved this book, everybody loved it, and she liked it too, and this is nothing against my wife,

I mean this is a book that a lot of people really liked, and I remember I read it, I read it in like an afternoon, because it's a quick read, and I remember

I read it, and I really didn't like it at all, I knew that this man was full of it,

I knew that this could not be correct, the way, and, but the thing is, he's got some decent points, right, he's got, there's some good points in this book, so you can't really hate on it too much, but I knew that the fundamental thrust of this book was bull, and, and, and, you know, it's like, you know, obviously like, okay, yeah,

Jesus did tell the one guy to sell everything he had and follow him, but we obviously can't all do that, uh, we live in reality here, this is,

I mean, and, you know, the thing, at the time I was young, and maybe I just didn't get it, but I, that's how I felt, I felt this is, obviously you can't apply this to everybody, because if you apply this to everybody, we'd all be homeless, and I'm pretty freaking sure that David Platt's not homeless, you gotta have resources, you gotta accumulate resources, because otherwise, how are you gonna move the mission of the gospel forward, money's a key part of that, money is a key part of that, and you gotta support people that are bringing the gospel, and you gotta, you know, donate to Radical, and stuff like that, like, you got all these stuff to do, and you, in order to have resources, you need to have a surplus, you need to have, you need to have capital, you need to, in order to make money, you gotta spend money, that seemed so obvious to me, and he really, he really didn't argue against that necessarily, but that was obviously the thrust of this book, you guys are too comfortable, you guys, you guys want to have a house,

I mean, what kind of a pagan are you? This is a bunch of bull, I knew it was bull, so I never,

I never got tricked by this, and there's been other books that I've been tricked by, so I'm not saying I'm, like, awesome, and smart, or whatever, but, but I never got tricked by this book, but I could see why people were tricked by this book, because he writes like he talks, very emotional, only we could discover, it's just ridiculous, it's just ridiculous, my point is that, that David Platt's so unnecessary, sure, he, he, he says insightful things every now and then, but this is not, like, we're not talking about a genius here, we're not talking about an indispensable part of the church, that's not what we're talking about here, we're talking about a guy who's not that great in the first place, he's not that great in the first place, and he cries his way of the time, he's just, this is not a person that I would want my sons to be like,

I would want my sons to be anything but David Platt, oh, but he cares about the admissions, the international missions, like, yeah, sure, that's good, international missions are good, but if you're a disaster on the home front, what's the difference?

So, anyway, all that to say that Robert Sala really has a lot in common with David Platt, empty suit, not a good leader, empty platitudes, just complete nonsense, totally unnecessary, we should never have hired him, we should never have hired him, but at least

Robert Sala had some kind of a track record, this guy does not have that, he does not have that, he has a track record of destruction, and so the next team that hires

Robert Sala, that's going to be, like, more like David Platt, because someone will hire this guy as a head coach again, and when their team falls apart with the empty platitudes and none of the men are buying into it, oh, all gas, no brakes, oh, sure, you know, nobody's buying into that again, then you'll know it's more like David Platt, but anyway, anyway, all this, this whole video, now that I've talked about David Platt for 23 minutes, this whole video is this, so I, obviously,

I cannot respond and react to the entire documentary, that'd be like a 30 -parter, and I'm not going to do that,

I can do it in some instances, I'm not going to do that in this instance, so what I'm asking you is if you'd like me to cover the

David Platt documentary and make my comments on it and things like that, let me know what parts of it that you want me to cover, if you want to, include a timestamp, and if you, if you don't want to, that's okay, just tell me, like, roughly what part of it you want me to comment on, and I'll find it myself, but let me know, and the ones that I get, you know, decent responses on,

I'll cover, and I'm willing to do, I'll call it a four -parter, I'm willing to do a four -parter here, if there's a lot of stuff, though, maybe

I'll do more, I mean, who knows, it's all, I do this for you guys, you know, I do this for you, so let me know in the comments, send me a

DM, text me, whatever you got to do, just send me what you want me to cover about that documentary, and I definitely will, and even if it's something that you might not expect me to want to cover, like, something that's like, hey, is this documentary, like, what about this part that's,

I don't really like this part, what do you think about this? I have no problem criticizing the documentary, too, because I've got some criticisms of this documentary, as well,

I do, I definitely do, but overall, I think this was awesome, I'm glad it was made, and I would love to talk about it more, if you guys want me to, and let me just say this, too, while we end here, this is a big church with a lot of resources, and so it's a bigger deal, and, you know, the

Trump went to this church, so it's in the news, and stuff like that, so it's a bigger deal, but this kind of thing, you've got to watch out for this kind of thing, because this kind of thing happens on the micro level, as well, for smaller churches, and I've got to say, like,

I'm not trying to, like, diss the SBC, but oftentimes, when I hear stories about this kind of thing, it's

SBC adjacent people, even in my own story, I've got a story that,

I've got to organize the details of this, so I don't want to get anything wrong, but I'll tell you the gist of it right now, involving an

SBC person, and I, A .D. Robles, I was used as a pawn in one of these kinds of shady, like, church controversy type of deals,

I really was, I'll never forget this for my whole life, I was at a church, and I was brought in, and, you know,

I was there for, like, a week, right, I was there for, like, a week, maybe a little bit more, but not much more than a week, and we had a congregational meeting, that's another thing about that, it really kind of shows you some of the, some of the challenges, let's just call them, with congregational polity,

I'm not going to get into that too much, not really that big a deal, but we're at a congregational meeting, me and my wife were sitting there, and they were having a vote that the person

I was with knew was going to be a controversial vote, and he kind of gave me the land, he kind of told me what to expect, and things like that, and how to operate in the meeting, which

I thought was weird, like, can't I just sit in on the meeting, like, I mean, I've been here a week, like,

I don't really know what the heck is going on, like, but I just filed it, because, you know, I didn't know any better, I was young,

I was naive, I didn't know what was going on, so, you know, the congregational meeting happens, we're going to vote on elders, that's what the main point was, and, you know, there was some controversy, some people didn't like this elder, they felt like they was being ramrodded in, and there were issues, and, you know, maybe they're yes men, and stuff like that, and,

I mean, again, I didn't know what was going on, right, but it was a controversy between the old guard and the new guard, you know, a lot of the old guard didn't like some of the changes that were happening, and they felt like this elder board was going to just be another thing that was going to, you know, get rid of all their ministries, and stuff like that, whatever, and I'll never forget this, like, me and my wife, it's our first week, and this affected my wife big time, and, you know,

I was, I didn't care that much, but, like, my wife was very upset, so I cared about that, people from the other side started saying, because we voted, and, you know,

I voted, and my wife voted, and people there said, well, hold on a second, these guys can't vote, and I'm like,

I'm like, oh, no, they're talking about me, you know, what do I do, you know, and it wasn't my fault, obviously, I didn't know any better, and there was a big controversy about whether or not

I was qualified to vote, and honestly, I didn't know, I didn't know, and I was happy to just not vote, like, whatever,

I don't care, I don't know anything, and there was a big controversy, and a couple things were said by the new guard that I didn't think was correct about our eligibility to vote,

I didn't say anything at the time, because I could easily see that, like, this was above my pay grade,

I'd never seen the, I had never seen the, like, the church bylaws, so I didn't really know what was what, right, maybe

I wasn't eligible to vote, and there was this big controversy, and I remember a couple things being said about, yeah, of course we're eligible to vote, don't you remember this, this, and it didn't sound right to me, and I was very uncomfortable with that, and then

I'll never forget, the meeting was adjourned, and I don't even remember the outcome, honestly,

I don't even remember the outcome of the meeting, and then I saw the new guard make a beeline to the office, and do something that I was like,

I'm pretty sure he was just dishonest there, he's, I think I'm being added to the eligible to vote roles right now, after I, they were already told

I was eligible to vote, and I remember thinking to myself, like, this is pretty shady, and I was used as a pawn during this, as a no -nothing pawn during this whole controversy, and I'll never forget that, like, the shady behavior that goes on, on the macro scale, like with the

McLean Bible Church, and then on the micro scale, and other things I've heard about, and things I've been involved with personally, it really, it's really a shame that it has to be this way, and this documentary really shows you kind of behind the curtains of how things work with your evangelical leaders, it's a real shame, it's a real shame,

I encourage you to watch it, let me know what you're interested in, if you want me to respond, or react, or comment on,

I'll gladly do it, in any case, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.