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This video is uploaded with the permission of the Church Reform Initiative. For more information go to therealdavidplatt.com.
Hey Pastors, I'm Kevin Eazell, President of the North America Mission Board, here with my good friend David Platt, President of the
International Mission Board. And we are here to serve you and your church. I have failed to act as I ought on the issue of racism.
And I would actually like to make a motion for David's dismissal and removal based on gross violations of Article 9 of the
Constitution. This is not the forum. Hear him out. It is.
Turn on his mic. Turn on the mic. Why are you silencing him? There's nothing going on behind the scenes.
There's no attempt to... I know we don't all know each other really well. All I want are the minutes from the last meeting.
I'm trying to understand what's changed. We're ending the meeting, everybody... Where are the elders?
Where is David Platt? Where are the elders? Why did they all run away? I see drop balls all over the place.
Be careful. Don't treat sin like it's no big deal.
And whatever you do, don't try to hide it. Don't pretend like it's not there.
Sin thrives in secret. And sin will not remain secret.
Dear David, I'm writing this victim impact statement to you because you are lead pastor of McLean Bible Church.
Typically, a victim impact statement allows the person affected by a crime to address the court during the sentencing process.
Written from the victim's point of view, it facilitates their own emotional recovery from the direct trauma suffered by them and or their loved ones.
Although we're not in that sentencing process, I want to be sure you understand the crime of emotional trauma you've committed against me personally through the hijacking of McLean Bible Church.
I'm not merely a name on the MBC membership rolls. I'm more than a unique identifier on one of your open ballots.
Even though you may know my name or might even recognize me by sight, you don't know who
I am. I'm a real living person. When David Platt came to the church,
I didn't know much about him. We didn't think that there was anything up, but we didn't really understand some of his connections and who he was in SBC.
He's a very charismatic guy. If he was running for office the first time you meet him, you feel like you want to vote for him like right away.
I've seen him dodge questions, deflect questions. I've seen him run away, like literally run away.
He's a great actor. He gave Romans 8 word for word, and boy, it was impressive.
It was quite a performance. Sunday was always my happiest day of the week. I served in more ministries than I can remember.
I was on staff twice. The joy that I felt through MBC has evaporated and been replaced by righteous anger, trepidation, and vast sorrow.
MBC is supposed to be my safe place. You've stolen that from me with your lies, gaslighting, and sceptrefuge.
It feels like you came as a thief in the night bent on destruction, but you have not succeeded.
You've been derelict in your duties, and you should be ashamed of yourself, as should the rest of the elders.
And you will have to answer for all of this, but not to me. You will have to answer to the Lord. You are likely surprised.
I do not write this in anger. I write in tears for what I've lost. It's a pain that's palpable.
I pray daily for all of you for repentance and restoration to the Lord and the family of God.
May he have mercy on you. Carolyn Hyben, 25 -year McLean Bible Church member.
My name is Jeremiah Burke. This is my wife, Laura. We started attending McLean Bible Church in 2005.
We became members in 2015, raised our family in this church, and actually moved to the area for this church.
I was actually saved at McLean Bible Church. I heard a sermon from Lon Solomon on God's unconditional love, and that was it.
There was no going back. So, Abby and I became members in 2015, began attending
McLean Bible Church regularly around 2010. It was a great experience. I think the young adult ministry, we enjoyed being a part of and volunteering there.
I've been attending McLean since 2004, approximately. Pretty much ever since 2008,
I was serving in some capacity. And we grew, my husband and I, in our relationship with God and had lots of ways to serve.
And that's what we loved about the church, because it had so many great ministries. I grew up in a completely
Jewish household, but I never felt a true connection and the humility of Jesus Christ.
I ended up in the evening service at McLean Bible. I had just graduated from law school.
I heard Lon Solomon through his radio ministry. He would talk about the evidence for Christ.
That resonated with me, because I had been trained to examine the facts. I eventually went to McLean, joining the men's discipleship ministry, to try to expedite this explanation.
Eventually, I met my wife. I'm very grateful for McLean Bible. So much happened there.
Pastor Lon Solomon is now the pastor of a mega church with thousands of members in McLean, Virginia, just outside Washington, D .C.
The church sponsors Bible study groups on Capitol Hill and throughout the federal government, an inner city ministry in southeast
Washington, credited with helping teenagers avoid drugs and violence, a clothing ministry center for disabled children, and support groups for divorced and abused women.
Doing the Lord's work, says Lon Solomon, is not for the glory seekers. You see,
God's not looking for big shots. God doesn't need prima donnas. God is not interested in divas.
The kingdom of God always has moved forward, and the kingdom of God always will move forward on the backs of men and women for whom no job is too menial if the
Lord asks them to do it. Men and women for whom no sacrifice is too great if the
Lord asks them to do it. I came to McLean, and immediately, the
Spirit of the Lord spoke to me, and I said, okay, this is my church home. I volunteered to teach first grade boys and girls.
Twenty -four years later, I was still teaching, committed to partnering with those parents in the spiritual development of their kids.
2012, my son said, Dad, why don't you come to church? This guy, Lon, really, he teaches a lot of history, teaches a lot of things.
I said, well, okay. Nothing else is working. And the very first sermon I heard from Lon was on Isaiah 36, 37,
Battle of Jerusalem. Lechesh had a profound impact on me archaeologically because I said, these are real stories.
And then one cold, dark night in my garage, I had a long talk with Jesus, gave my life to Christ, and boom.
It's amazing what the Holy Spirit will do even in one week. Those chains were gone.
Just started absorbing all this and trying to learn. And then I got into the position where I was helping to run the security teams through training and everything else with Lon and upping the ante on that.
My first visit to McLean was in the summer of 1983. I've defended the Christian faith for 20 years, both as a volunteer and professionally.
I'm a scientist and engineer in biomolecular physics. And I always felt welcomed at McLean because Lon Solomon became a
Christian in part because of his study of enzymes in the cell. He went from being a
Jewish atheist to one who believed in God. And a few years later, he became a Christian. So I felt kind of a big welcome coming to McLean Bible to be able to give teaching there.
I have a lot of friends there from years past. It was always a wonderful experience up until around the time of David Platt.
Well, we started attending when our family was going through a big -time crisis. That was about 20 years ago. And it was just an amazing transformation.
And we just felt like we found our home there. My wife and I began in 1975, and it was a small rural church.
And, you know, we were involved in many different levels. I served in some leadership positions there up until the time when
Lon Solomon was asked to come be the pastor. I was privileged to be on the committee that called him.
I've served in pretty much every position in the church, treasurer for a while, youth ministry for over 20 years, elder.
When it came time to find a new location, I actually wrote the contract for the new building and the new property on my living room floor.
My name is Michael Russell Lynch, 27 years, United States Navy. We've been at McLean since 2002.
My wife and I were the leaders, or still are the leaders, of Discovering the Word, which is a main community group there that was at McLean, not anymore.
I just immediately loved the church. Like, I visited the church one time, and I didn't even visit any other ones when
I moved to the D .C. area because I just loved it. It was just so vibrant. My name is Pam Guerin.
My family, in 1961, the Wilsons moved from Beckley, West Virginia, to McLean, Virginia, and found
McLean Bible Church. As a child, in particular, I loved it. You know, all my friends were there. We were taught the
Word, and it was just a wonderful experience. I was actually led to the Lord by one of the founding members,
Betty Wright. My name is Chuck Wright, and I was at the very first church service of McLean Bible Church.
My mom, Betty Wright, was very instrumental in starting the church. At the time,
I was a junior at McLean High School, and JFK was president. We had no idea back then when we first met in that elementary school cafeteria on Chesterbrook Road, with only 25 people in attendance, that the church would eventually grow exponentially into a megachurch by the 21st century.
My name is Craig Prew. I was an elder a little over 25 years, so I have an immense respect and an immense awe for McLean and Lon and what
God had done there. I can't put that into words. So when I think about it now,
I feel like some of the prophets in the Old Testament. They look over at Israel, and they just shake their heads, and they cry.
I feel somewhat maybe the same way. I just, oh, what is going on there?
It's not good. David Platt had a different mission he wanted for the church.
I know as a white pastor, I am part of the problem. I do not want to speak from the
Bible on issues that are popular among white followers of Christ while staying silent in the
Bible on issues that are important to non -white followers of Christ. That's not a faithful pastor.
I was seeing things that bothered me, that concerned me. We started to see the implementation of some of these
DEI principles. I think David Platt is weak. I think that David Platt is a coward. He is a false teacher.
He is a wolf. He is a liar. We've been lied to from the pulpit. We were lied to from David Platt.
There's no doubt about it, he's in it for the money. And in so many ways, my world has been so white.
But I look around in my country, it's not so white. So why is my world so white?
Why have the churches I've been a part of and led in been so white? The founders wanted
McLean Bible to be an evangelistic outreach for Christ in the
Washington, D .C. area. So the simplicity of this founding formula brought about incredible growth with attendance starting at 26 people in 1961 all the way up until 2017 when there were well over 13 ,000 people per week in attendance every
Sunday at McLean Bible Church under the ministry of Lon Solomon. We have a patriotic service every
July 4th weekend. Without apology, we've got some wonderful songs that thank
God for this wonderful country, America. So I want you to enjoy singing them. Let's stand together and start with my country,
Tis of Thee. Here we go. Let's sing together. He had led the church for 30 years and was loved by its congregation.
I'm a Jewish person who believes Jesus is the Messiah. Don't you let these people teach you a myth out there.
Forget dialogue. The word doesn't even appear in the Bible. You understand what I'm saying? God didn't call us to dialogue the world.
God called us to reach the world for Jesus Christ. Don't you go out there and dialogue. You go out there and preach
Christ. The board and Lon, we had a very good relationship. Lon realized,
I think, very early that we appreciated him and that we would go the extra mile for him even if he messed up.
He's not perfect. Nobody's perfect. There's no perfect church. We had Lon's back. I just could see from the early 80s up until the time
I got on the board, I could see God using Lon in immense ways. I look back 45 years now and I see how the
Lord led me here to McLean Bible Church, a little tiny church in a little tiny yellow brick building with a couple hundred people.
And now I look around. God took those meager beginnings and has turned
McLean Bible Church into the 21st largest church in America, the largest church on the
East Coast between Charlotte and the North Pole. You know, some people are skeptical about megachurches, but I just never felt that way at our church.
It was so easy to get plugged into people and the people were just so warm and welcoming and it wasn't fake.
As far as the Bible's concerned, we only taught the Bible. And they modeled Christian community for me. It was so vibrant and there was so much joy before.
But then something happened that changed all of this. Just imagine leading churches to multiplied churches.
All right, we're going to make disciples. We're going to multiply churches. Don't we want to be a part of that here?
When David came on board, it didn't take long for people to realize, wait a minute, we're not getting the same teaching as we did with Lon.
And the first sets of sermons did have some decent theological meat in them. But now, I've watched his sermons.
He wouldn't get past a hermeneutics 101 class. They're horrible. You know, he draws pictures and things on his tablet.
Like, really? We're not getting this exegesis. We're not getting this expository preaching.
David was teaching, essentially, CRT. What he said was that the whites were privileged, first of all.
When I was walking out of the parking lot one day, a group of four black gentlemen said,
Craig, would you mind giving David Platt a message? And I said, no. And this older black gentleman, he put his finger in my face and he says, tell
David to stop it. I go, stop what? He goes, there's nothing wrong with the white people in the church.
He said, we love this church. He says, and you tell him to stop it right now because you're dividing us.
And I said, okay. I said, I will tell him. Well, the next elders meeting,
I said, David, I said, I had a couple of African -American gentlemen, very devout Christians. They asked me to tell you to stop it.
David goes, stop what? And I said, stop dividing us. What really stunned me, he looked at me, and he went back and sat down.
Didn't say a thing to me. That really had an effect on me.
I'm thinking, he can't even give me an answer. I don't know what his thought was. That's what happened.
It felt like we were being told because we were white, we were racist.
Now, I don't believe I have a racist bone in my body. It was so devastating to hear. And I kept thinking, well,
I must be misunderstanding. He said, you're guilty of not exactly racism, but racialism, I think.
Racialization. And I never heard that before. Then I started rethinking. Gosh, I thought
I loved everybody. David Platt had said, well, yes, McLean is diverse, but it doesn't have the right kind of diversity.
It's not good enough to be biblically impartial because that in itself is racism.
One of the members in our small group had brought up something in the SBC with Resolution 9 that got passed.
I move that the convention adopt Resolution 9 on critical race theory and intersectionality.
Resolution 9 was to introduce critical race theory to be used as an analytical tool to inform preaching, teaching.
What does that mean for McLean Bible Church? Why does it affect us? We started to see that kind of come out during the course that David taught.
He wanted to reprogram the members in the church leadership. And I use that word very carefully.
He wanted reprogramming. So he put together this class called The Gospel, The Church, Justice, and Race.
And he gave that to the elders to take a look at. And we said to David, David, this isn't good.
This is very mild, subtle CRT. There were some problems there. David Platt had said that, no, we've got nothing to do with CRT.
And just gaslighting a woman who was asking her questions about it, because I'd seen evidence for it.
It was very, very clear during the class. The language of oppression is not worldly language.
It is biblical language. He stated we've got nothing to do with critical race theory.
And I'm glad to hear that, but I fear that the congregation doesn't understand what is critical race theory.
I would kind of appreciate you actually defining the terms that you have used.
We reject critical race theory. That's a great question that I don't think we're going to be able to dive in depth into tonight.
An examination of critical race theory would definitely take a long time, and there would be a definition of words and phrases throughout that conversation.
Because you could ask ten different people what critical race theory means, and you'd have ten different definitions.
We took this discipleship class that David was leading. I found myself questioning all the things that I had learned about the gospel and what is salvation when you start to introduce things like corporate repentance because of the color of your skin, or accepting that the tenets of critical race theory.
It really kind of caused confusion for me. But I would point you to the latest draft of the discipleship resource on the gospel and the church and justice and race.
My concern starts with the class. The class didn't start with the Bible. The class started with, divided by faith, and the book is critical race theory.
So I have a concern. Thank you. Sure thing. Thanks again for sharing that.
And please send feedback on, I would not endorse everything divided by faith says, but I would endorse everything the
Bible says. So the extent to which you have any feedback on that document that's intended to represent the Bible, please send that in.
They're very good at question deflection. I loved the church.
I loved our pastors. I thought they left me back, and they didn't. If you look at David Platt's legacy at McLean Bible Church, from a spiritual sense, it's carnage.
That's all it is. It's an absolute bloodbath. That's all he's left. David Platt did not act alone.
I mean, how did he even get to the church? I want you guys to notice something, and those of you who know
Lon will especially appreciate this. He has no microphone tonight. Do you get that? No microphone.
You know how much he wants a mic right now, right? This is killing him. He just wants to clean up what I'm doing.
If you'd said it this way, it'd be a little better. You did great. I did okay? All right, good, good, good. Let me pray for Lon.
Let's all pray together. We had been used to the protection of our shepherds, of the elders, and so we thought that was good enough.
There was stuff going on behind the scenes that the elders didn't know about. Lon Solomon stated in late 2016 that he had no intentions of ever leaving
McLean Bible Church. David Platt was inserted in September of 2017, and by 2018,
Lon Solomon, a Jewish follower of Christ, was gone from MBC, never to set foot in the church ever again.
This wasn't an amicable separation by any stretch, and the whole takeover by the Southern Baptist Convention and David Platt was full of lies and corruption.
Dale Sutherland worked behind the scenes with the SBC leadership and the
IMB to move toward selecting David Platt as the new senior pastor at MBC.
When Lon left, very abruptly, Dale Sutherland took over, pushing David Platt here big time.
I started in asking David some questions, and Larry and Dale said, Craig, stop.
That's not what we're here for. We're just here to have a nice conversation with David. And I thought, what?
I want to know, David, where's your heart? Where do you stand on this? What are you going to do when you get up to McLean?
If you get up to McLean, what are you going to do? And I could not ask those questions. Well, why don't you tell me what this is?
I don't know. Have you seen this before? Not that I remember, but does that mean I never saw some document before years ago?
Of course I could if I don't. The third page, do you see that? Oh, yeah, sign it. I was going to say, isn't that your signature?
Sure is. So having said all that, what is this that we're looking at? It's a partnership form between the
Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, the SBC of VA, and McLean Bible Church.
I saw this with his signature on it for the application. The other thing I noticed on this application was the date the elder vote for partnership, 3 -23 -16.
We never voted on it. If this would have ever came up, all of us elders, I think, would have questioned this.
But see, we never knew about this. We never knew about this. This is discovery document 2517.
David Platt writes to Dale Sutherland, We obviously need to sit down soon and come up with a comprehensive plan for this moving forward.
In the meantime, I'd say to tell Brian that McLean will, as he mentioned, send its contributions to SBC Ministries through SBCV.
Who are the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia? Uh, sorry.
I don't understand that. I'm not a lawyer. And if it would be possible, it'd be great if we could send a check from McLean to SBCV right now with no designation of how to use it, i .e.
simply to the cooperative program. What was the cooperative program? I don't know.
Is there money anywhere in the budget that we could use to give a decent amount right now, i .e. before October 3rd?
Maybe we even use some of the money that was designated for my honorariums. Let me know an amount that might be possible.
Thanks, man. David. Why is he directing the flow of money before he's even voted in?
You can see that things were put in motion. The elders were not aware of any of this.
This money that David was asking for. Dale Sutherland is advising
David Platt in an email titled Dinner with Lon. Advice. Sorry to bug you with another email.
I was thinking about your dinner with Lon and thought I might prepare you a little. Lon will be very interested in all you have to say.
Don't get drawn into making a choice for him right now. He will hope to get you to say that you're open to doing the job he is leaving.
However, he will want you to do nothing else. My thought is to tell him just where you are. You are open to wherever the
Lord leads. Remember, he doesn't understand the IMB or the SBC so he doesn't know the impact of the decision.
The way I read that is Dale had to be careful how he needed to word that. Don't let
Lon know what we're actually doing. Right? I mean, that's clear and simple. Later down in that email, he also tells him to clarify our relationship with the
SBC as a partner church to the congregation. In parenthesis, not even the elders understand the real impact of the partnership we already have as an
SBC church. They definitely did not become a Southern Baptist church. Join is not the word we would use.
Not even the elders understand the real impact of the partnership as an SBC church. Do you see that?
Yes, sir. Who are you describing as an SBC church? Us. Yeah, McLean at that point.
We did not understand it, and we never did I don't think, what the SBC saw as compared to how we see us.
Lon and I and everybody, we saw us as a partner like we were a partnership with lots of other ministries.
We didn't really see it as a denomination. He was getting all this pressure from the SBC saying these guys aren't
SBC enough because we never went to any SBC things. We didn't do anything with them. So the discussion was are they becoming a
SBC? No, not by any stretch of the imagination are they doing that.
Do you know whether or not McLean Bible Church ever sent a messenger to the SBC? The answer is
I don't know for certain. The McLean Bible Church located at 8925 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, Virginia 22182 has elected
David Platt, a messenger to the SBC. This appointment is made on the basis of and in agreement with the convention's constitutional requirement.
This church is entitled to seven messengers. Our church elected two messengers. In this one specific email to Heather Platt, it's also stated the same way to David, McLean Bible Church has elected
Heather Platt, a messenger to the Southern Baptist Convention. We are members of the SBC. Again, it's um it sounds difficult to explain, and it is.
There was no vetting of David, none whatsoever, really. It was rush, rush, rush, push, push, push, get him in there.
I was the lone gentleman who said no. I was the lone elder who said no. And Larry had to work me over good.
And Larry's good at working you over. He really is. And he said, Craig, I know you don't want to do this, but you've got to do it.
We got a chance to get a celebrity pastor in here, I gave in.
I admit, I was wrong. I was wrong. I apologize.
But I went along with the board. And then the congregation overwhelmingly voted yes for David.
And he was in. There's a humble side to David, but David knew how to use that celebrity humbleness of his to his advantage, and he did.
He could get what he wanted because he was David Platt. The staff who wasn't with him, he got rid of or made it so uncomfortable that a lot of the good staff left.
When you have all these proxies in place, and that's what they did, they got rid of the old guard. Everybody, gone.
And put in his new guard. David Platt's proxies are running everything now in the church. The pastoral staff,
Nate Reed, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Todd Peters, Southwest Baptist University, Britton Taylor, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Eric Saunders, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mike Kelsey, the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Joe Carter, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and David Platt, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Every single pastor on staff is a graduate of a Southern Baptist Seminary, except for Wade Burnett.
Wade is basically just a low -budget street attorney that David brought on. He has no theological training, but he is from Nashville, which is where the
SBC is headquartered. I was just starting my doctoral work, and I had written a couple of emails to his executive assistant, saying, can
I come in and talk to David? I just want to know what would I expect in this doctoral program? Can I just talk?
Nope. He doesn't have time for you. I sent it two or three times. I said, really? I mean, you know,
I am a doctoral student. I'm one of his, you know, congregation. I've given countless hours to personal security details and everything else.
I just like 20 minutes with him to know what, you know, what should I expect during doing, you know, the dissertation, and can
I run some things past you with apologetics? Nope. Wouldn't give me the time of day.
And I really said, okay, well, maybe the guy's busy, etc., and I didn't really give it any thought at the time.
I was disappointed. During the dissertation, it's a doctor of educational ministry, and so the educational portion requires a lot of quantitative survey work and then actually teaching and writing formats.
I asked Dale and I asked David, hey, can you guys help me out with this?
I need to get surveys from the congregation on what is their apologetics knowledge? Could I come up and take
David's sermons, write an apologetics piece of it, going back to archaeology, science, manuscript evidence, etc.?
Nope. He doesn't have time for you. I'm trying to further myself in the
Lord, further myself for the congregation, and you're not even, you guys can't even talk to me for five minutes?
That's very, very curious to me. And I don't think they wanted, especially someone with my background, in that inner circle to know anything.
It seemed to me then that he was very, very far removed. So I started asking him some questions.
I said, you know, does David do any pastoring? Does he have office calls? No. He's here just to teach.
There is no counseling. There is no pastoral care, shall we say. So, fast forward, a job came open for director of training and education.
I said, oh, cool. Applied twice. Nope. We're looking at other resumes.
Okay. Who did they end up hiring? A guy who had given him a substantial amount of money to the church, had made friends with David Platt at one of the campuses, had never taught a class before in his life, and one day we saw him walking around talking to all the ministries, snooping around looking for money.
And he came to us and he was looking for money. He said, how much money do you guys have? I go, well, why do you need to know that?
And this was the start of the destruction of all the ministries. David Platt said, we got David Young coming in.
I said, give me a job description. They couldn't come up with a job description. You can't come up with a job description?
You know, I used to manage 500, 600, 700 people under me in a corporation.
I had people all around the United States in 13 different offices. I will let you hire that person,
I will give you the money, but give me a job description. I want to know what value that they are going to bring. They couldn't do that.
No matter how long we've been in the church, a little while or a long while, we all lay down our preferences, plans, desires, and we ask,
God, how can we most faithfully and effectively glorify you by making disciples and multiplying churches?
I want to introduce you to Dave Young, who, long story short, was very successful in business, quite frankly, made a lot of money building and consulting businesses, and I have asked
Dave to come alongside me and use his gifts. The brother is brilliant to lead out in how this mission plays out across our church.
The best thing I can say about this brother is that, yes, he's brilliant, he's extremely gifted, but far more important, he loves
Jesus. He walks with God, and I asked him to shoot a quick video introducing himself, and this is what he sent me.
Hey guys, David asked me to send over a video, so I thought I'd say hi on my way over to Penn Station.
Whoa, don't want to get hit by this car. We're seeing some amazing things happening at NBC today, and some peace is falling into place that make me think, man,
NBC's best years of ministry feel like they're in front of us and not behind us, and that is cool to think about.
The initial claim was we need to make some shifts. David Young was put in charge of this by David Platt, and even at the meeting,
David Platt was there and did some of the speaking himself. Most groups are shallow
Bible studies, just social community. These groups are unhealthy. Many pastors are uncomfortable sending new people into an
NBC group. The whole point was Dave Young was saying, let's go from a menu of ministries to this map.
They called it Menu to Map. We don't need this many ministries, this many kinds of ministries. We just need a few good ones that everyone can do.
I'm here to say that I am really looking forward to being
McLean Bible Church with you guys, and I think it's going to be so much fun, and undoubtedly a few bumps along the way.
It's okay to slash all these ministries and stop supporting them. Maybe a U -turn or two, but so good for sure.
So that's Dave Young risking his life to see this mission accomplished at NBC. We looked at each other as small group leaders, and we feel really insignificant.
Are we being told that our ministries are problematic, that they are not healthy, that they are shallow?
We need to change the way we're thinking about church. And David tried in elders' meetings to have us give up our elder control and authority of how the money was spent.
David wanted to say, this is how we're going to spend the money, and you're just going to have to go along with it.
And he couldn't with us basically in charge. At the church constitution, this was a congregationally run church that the congregation has put the elders in charge.
And David wasn't used to that. David came from Birmingham where he was in charge.
He came from the IMB. He was in charge. He was in charge of radical. And so this kind of stymied his management style a little bit.
And so that's why we got the blue document. He didn't really want a lot of accountability.
They switched to a new model where it would be like a discipleship group, except bigger.
Your goal was to have maybe up to 100 people. But it would embody all 12 traits of a church, and that meant that they could do baptisms, that they could do their own services, that they could do communion, all the things.
We want to help current groups grow in these 12 traits, and then we want to start new groups that aim for these 12 traits.
A church within a church. I'm not a pastor. I don't feel like it's my place to be baptizing people, being over like 100 people.
Can you imagine the time commitment it is to be in charge of that many people?
No. The reason why we do church discipleship groups was for the intimacy.
We could meet inside people's homes, and we could love on one another in very specific ways.
If somebody needed help moving from one apartment to another, we could do that. If someone had a really vulnerable prayer request, they could feel comfortable sharing it, and we would keep it just confidential between us eight women.
It was a wonderful, special thing. And yes, we were 100 % biblical.
I don't understand this idea of being shallow at all. In fact, because of the design of these discipleship groups, we could go deeper.
We have these kinds of groups all across the church, and many of them are great, but admittedly, these groups have not necessarily been designed to carry out all these functions of a church.
And oftentimes groups are same gender, or even same ethnicity, but we want to cultivate as much as possible groups that represent intergenerational, multi -ethnic community, what we value as a church.
So I was living overseas at the time that he became the pastor. When I came back, it was a different church.
All the ministries were pretty much shut down. At the beginning, it was all cloaked like, oh, well, we just want to be more efficient in God honoring with our money, and have more money spent on serving the persecuted church, or sending missionaries out, and things like that.
Even when we give to the spread of the gospel outside of the United States, almost 99 % of that goes to places where the gospel's already gone.
Less than 1 % of our giving is going to places where the gospel hasn't gone.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. We've got to change where our heart is by putting treasure in the spread of the gospel where it hasn't gone.
We could have put a lot of money into international missions, but we didn't. It just didn't go there, under David.
They basically decimated the infrastructure of the church, and started saying things like, well, I'm sorry, but we can't do such and such, or we can't have such and such ministry, because we don't have the staff for it, and we don't have the funding for it.
Dale Sutherland dismissed the team, both the volunteer coordinators in the ministry, and the couple that taught.
Preparing for marriage, I'm an experienced manager in the private sector, I manage projects, and it was easy to see there was organizational chaos.
The church got rid of a ministry called Downtime. It was a ministry where people could call in on weekends and evenings.
All night. Ask questions, if they're going through a crisis, and that's a ministry that I took over at McLean, and there was a webpage on the
McLean website, and I put up three or four sermons from Lon Solomon and David Platt, and I'd handpicked sermons that people could listen to when they're going through a crisis, and the church just took it down.
And they didn't tell him. No phone call, so the calls just stopped coming in.
David Platt did a good job of erasing any evidence that Lon was even a senior pastor for 37 years.
Every sermon of him was wiped off the website with no warning to us as the congregation. This is not Lon Solomon's church anymore.
This is David Platt's church. I went from a place of lots of support, lots of care, this tapering process, to all of a sudden, you know, they got rid of the shepherding coaches, they got rid of the coaching, they got rid of the library that the small group leaders could use to get materials and resources for their small group.
They got rid of the ministries, they got rid of the funding, they got rid of the people. And they were just kind of pushed out and told they weren't needed anymore.
And the fact is, they were needed. There wasn't not a need, for example, for the clothing ministry during COVID.
They were told that was non -essential, and that was shut down. Bible studies weren't meeting there anymore. I don't think they were allowed to meet there anymore.
You're crushed. And we loved that church. We absolutely loved it. We have three boys.
Two of our boys are autistic. And the special needs ministry there was such a huge impact for us.
It was such a huge blessing. The special needs parents were just crushed. The ones who went to the church and had adult children there, and probably little kids, too.
All those families don't have anywhere to go now. Those ministries were closed down because David Young wanted a new paradigm, which
I truly, in a way, I sat there and listened and didn't quite understand. And I would ask in elder meetings,
I said, we've cut all this stuff. What are we doing? How are we ministering to people?
And I couldn't get an answer out of anybody. I really couldn't. Us elders, we told
David Platt he had to fire David Young and get rid of him. And all the elders were in agreement.
David, terminate him. Okay, I will. We'll come to find out a year later.
David Young was never fired. He was still on the books, getting a ton of money. Obviously, Dave Platt kept that from us.
David and David were very close. David Platt was never going to fire David Young.
He wanted to hire a director of diversity. Everything started to change with the worship ministry, where they started discussing how can we attract more diverse people to be on the worship team.
And basically the white people weren't allowed to be on stage. I think it was one white singer per week.
You need to get out the white people, basically, and bring in more people that would be attractive to the type of people that we're looking to bring into the church, which are basically non -white and young.
About half the congregation left, and it didn't surprise me. A lot of the complaints I heard were specifically because of the socialist justice gospel and the advocacy of Black Lives Matter.
We had the infamous dueling pastors. David Platt shows up on stage dressed in all black, and this was when all of the
BLM stuff was going on. Mike Kelsey was dressed in all white. Proceeded to give this very strange sermon, and like, you know,
Ebony and Ivory, which is a nice song, but they went back and forth, and basically, at the end of the sermon, we were all a bunch of inherent racists.
You just don't know it. Often when issues of racial justice are raised by people in the church, the response is just preach the gospel and stop being so divisive.
But that's not true. Being married to someone of another ethnicity has helped them understand people from other ethnicities.
George Whitefield was a prolific proclaimer of the gospel, but he was also instrumental in advocating for slavery in Georgia.
While Africans were being enslaved, he just preached the gospel, and injustice flourished unchallenged.
Let me give you another quick example. Billy's Sunday. So we're fast forwarding now. We have 106 different nations represented in McLean Bible Church.
I would take a bullet for anybody in that church. Anybody. And you're going to turn around and say, I'm inherently racist?
When I'd cover myself up over top of you? Seriously? In about 2020, our pastors attended a march downtown.
It was during the Black Lives Matter protests. It was next to the Black Lives Matter protests. Mike Kelsey's son was carrying a sign that said
Black Lives Matter to God, and I just felt that was totally inappropriate. When I caught him on video, at an interview that was available publicly where he said, it's difficult for me not to torch all white people, particularly white evangelicals and Christians.
And I said, what's going on here? It's difficult for me sometimes not to just torch all white people, because and particularly white evangelicals and Christians.
Another part of the video is really what bothered me more, because I felt that he was kind of twisting around the gospel message and Jesus' death on the cross in order to justify why the
Black Lives Matter slogan, no justice, no peace, is consistent with Christianity. When, in fact, no justice, no peace from Black Lives Matter means we're going to burn everything down until we get what we want.
That is not consistent with Christianity and it certainly has nothing to do with Jesus' death on the cross. I sent that video to some of the elders and I said, this is just too much.
I can't attend this church anymore. I mean, in addition to the fact that I work in law enforcement and I personally take this as an insult to law enforcement that our senior pastor, because he had just been promoted, our senior pastor is basically saying he hates law enforcement, but in addition to that, this is blasphemy to compare
Jesus' death on the cross to Black Lives Matter. There was a clip that has been circulated this week from an interview that I did last year and I was sharing some of my personal journey and I used a phrase in that interview that was unhelpful, even hurtful to people who saw that clip.
I want to apologize for any hurt that caused because the way the clip was cut and edited and circulated was actually done in a way to communicate the exact opposite of what
I was intending to communicate. One of them responded right away and said, I'm so sorry to hear that you would leave the church.
You know, we would hate to see you go because you've been involved in so many ministries. It was a really kind response but no one ever responded in terms of the issue at hand and what
Mike Kelsey was saying and whether that was appropriate and whether he should really be promoted to be the senior teaching pastor.
They could cut stuff, they could defund stuff and they defunded a ton of stuff. We're not funding that anymore.
We're not going to fund this anymore. Well, what are you going to replace it with?
We saw all the rest of the ministries starting to be closed down. Where is all this money going? Did there come a time that McLean Bible Church started writing checks directly to Southern Baptist Network?
Yes. Why did it happen? The board decided to.
The board decided to just write checks to Southern Baptist Convention? They made that determination to write a check to the
Southern Baptist. Close to about two million dollars would have been to Southern Baptist Convention, correct?
Yes. To the best of your knowledge, who was aware of this? Clearly the senior staff knew.
Clearly the elders knew. Elders did not know. In detail because they got all of the details of all of that.
Beyond that, I don't know who would have known. You said the senior staff knew. The senior staff being yourself?
Wade Burnett would have known. David Platt would have known. Then the elders would all have known for sure.
Why do you think they would have known for sure? What's the basis for this? They have a fiduciary responsibility to know where the finances are and what's going on with them.
They got more detailed reports obviously than we could give to the congregation. That's not true.
That's not true. Okay, so the elders would have known in addition to the staff.
Yes. And you said they got a detailed report. More detailed than would go to the...
And they could ask at any time. I can't believe Bill's saying that. That's not true. The SBC and the
IMB headed by David now, once David got in control of McLean, they wanted control of this $36 million annual budget at McLean.
You got a church that's got a $36 million budget, you would very much like to tap into that money. David Platt wrote to Dale Sutherland, hey man, we've already given $100 ,000 to the cooperative program.
That puts us in the top 20 SBCV giving churches. Can we give at least an additional $200 ,000 this year to Lottie Moon Christmas Offering?
That would put us in the top 3 or 4 in SBCV and top 40 in all of SBC. It definitely did not become a
Southern Baptist Church. Even better, if we could give $300 ,000 that would make NBC the top giving church in the
SBCV and top 20 in all of the SBC. Are they becoming a Southern Baptist Church?
No. Not by any stretch of the imagination are they doing that. December 9th,
I remember this was a congregational meeting, we had a lot of people, a lot of people standing up, going to the microphone and saying, you guys need to open up the books, you guys need to stay, do you support
BLM? Do you support Black Lives Matter? Do you support all of these rallies? I'm sitting down front, right in front with all the pastors in front of me and David said, we don't support
BLM, we've never been involved with BLM and I openly guffawed and I think he saw me turn around and I was like, you're just openly lying.
In December of 2020, we discovered that McLean Bible Church was in fact a Southern Baptist Church, despite David Platt having lied about it intentionally to the congregation for years.
This was a serious violation of the church's governing documents, which forbids the church from affiliating with any denomination.
So Abby wakes me up in the middle of the night and she shows me a screenshot on her phone of McLean Bible Church's Dun &
Bradstreet profile, which says that they were doing business as a Baptist church. That was one that was like, okay, you're kind of really onto something.
One thing that bothered me was I think the church's cavalier dealing with the
Constitution. They kind of treated it the way liberal constitutional scholars do, as like kind of a living document where, you know, they don't really have to follow it or it can change over time and they just disregarded
Article 1, Section 2, which is that we will not affiliate with any denomination. It's immutable.
It says in there that this article cannot be changed and founders of the church put it there at the beginning for a reason.
The founders knew that in the state of Virginia at the time, churches were not allowed to incorporate. Churches were required to create themselves as membership associations.
Later, the state of Virginia ruled through court decisions that the Constitution of a church is a solemn contract between the church and its membership.
There was also something else going on at that time in our history. Christian denominations, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Southern Baptist were all going liberal, primarily in terms of their belief in the
Bible as the inspired Word of God. A controversy had erupted in the Southern Baptist Convention when a guy named
Ralph Elliott, who was the chairman of the Old Testament Department at Midwestern Baptist Seminary, authored a book published by Broadman Press entitled
The Message of Genesis. Elliott used an historical, critical method of interpretation to examine the first book of the
Bible, and he argued that it was not literal history. He concluded that the book of Genesis was full of symbolic stories and was not to be taken literally, such as Adam and Eve were not real people, the flood was local, that Abraham did not actually hear the voice of God.
It should come as no surprise that, I'm going to quote this, the church shall not and cannot be affiliated with any denomination.
From David Platt, January 22, 2017. Sorry for the barrage of emails tonight, but one more thing before I forget.
If you want to go ahead in calling me an interim pastor or anything else along those lines, I'm good with that.
I don't think that would cause any concern in my world. That does lead me to one other thing I noticed on the
McLean website. It says a few different places that McLean is non -denominational. I loved your answer to the
SBC question the other day, and I'm not saying the website should say SBC everywhere, but it would probably help me in the short term and definitely in the long term if it wasn't described so explicitly, formally, as non -denominational.
David was worried that he was trying to straddle the line between the Southern Baptist and the new church job.
And so as long as he was with the Southern Baptist, he was getting pressure about, you know, giving and being more engaged with the
Southern Baptist. And so that's what led to this conversation. Just simply even looking at the number of articles that were published through Christianity Today, the
Baptist news, almost celebrating and the pride of having McLean Bible Church be a
Southern Baptist church. We found a video on the SBCV website taking credit for the local outreach that McLean was doing.
And this is what we as Southern Baptists are doing in Virginia kind of thing. So on March 31st, 2021, at the regularly scheduled congregational meeting,
Laura asked David Platt if McLean Bible Church was in fact affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention. He proceeded to lie to her face and lie to the congregation's face at that meeting.
Simple question, yes or no. Is McLean Bible Church affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention? McLean Bible Church cooperates with North American Mission Board in church planning,
International Mission Board in sending missionaries. There are McLean Bible Church staff, some of whom get education at Southern Baptist seminaries, and we have very supportive refugee work.
So based on what you just said, does this mean that the McLean Bible Church is affiliated with the
Southern Baptist convention, yes or no? I really don't want, I feel like I'm not sure exactly what you mean by affiliated.
And here's what I mean by that, and why that's important. If I say... Laura asked
David Platt specifically if the church was affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention, and he never answered the question.
That was an easy question. Let me ask my question just one last time. Is McLean Bible Church affiliated with the
Southern Baptist convention, yes or no? I'm not sure, I'm honestly not sure how else to answer your question.
It's clear that I'm asking, is McLean Bible Church affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention, right?
It's clear? Yes. Yes or no? So the way the
Southern Baptist convention uses language, it's you work in friendly cooperation with, that's the exact language the
Southern Baptist convention uses. You work in friendly cooperation with other churches. Do we cooperate with other churches in those ways?
Yes. We have since before I met you. Thank you for your time. Sure thing.
I then got up and made a motion for David's removal, per the Constitution, for intentionally lying and deceiving the congregation for years.
Constitution. I would like to present those to you and the congregation if we could. We'll second the motion.
On the Constitution, it's Larry's decision to hold a special meeting for that reason.
And I have evidence to support this. This is not the forum.
Let's hear him out. Let him talk. Where else would you give us anybody an opportunity to speak?
You shut the church down for a year. Other churches are open. There's no other opportunity that you'll ever give anybody.
And I have solid evidence. I ended up reading my evidence I had collected. I've studied the Constitution diligently, and David is in gross violation of the
Constitution, Article 9. And I would like to present that to you for a special meeting for you and the elders to consider.
And I would like to bring it to the attention of the congregation for Matthew 18. For an issue like that,
I would ask you to write it up. I have it written right here. Well, I can give it to you. But I'm not going to do anything with it tonight.
You don't have to. But I would like to read the evidence. Well, you can give me anything you want to give me. I'll take a look at it.
Can we hear it? We want to hear it. We'd like to hear it. There's a submission violation that you will never consider.
You will throw this away. Obviously, that's going to be the case. I would like to read it to the congregation. Read it!
Let him read it. Read it. This is in regards to Article Let's see if the
Constitution is right here. Article 2. Affiliation. Larry, you have stated it. You have studied it, and David has studied it.
Yes, I have confirmation from the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention itself that McLean Bible Church is affiliated at all three levels, the national, the state, and the local association.
I also have confirmation from the State Cooperative Board that we are affiliated. McLean Bible Church is affiliated.
They have confirmed that you have signed the Baptist Faithful Message as a church, affirming the Baptist Faithful Message 2000.
We also have 2018, 2019, and 2020. $375 ,000 has gone through the cooperative program.
If you look at the Dun & Bradstreet profile of McLean Bible Church, the record shows
McLean Bible Church doing business as a Southern Baptist Church. It also identifies McLean Bible Church under its religious organization field as a
Baptist church. The Southern Baptist Convention itself, like everybody knows, has McLean Bible Church as a church.
If you look for it, you'll find McLean Bible. The 2017 Annual Report for the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia on page 72 lists
McLean Bible Church on their church affiliation report. Christianity Today reported on September 14, 2017 by the famous Executive Director of Wheaton College and the
Billy Graham Center and Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College has said, sir, that McLean Bible Church is new to the
Southern Baptist Convention. And this is not exhaustive, but I don't want to take any more time.
And I have substantial evidence for all of this. I have the emails. I can leave them right here if you'd like. Executive Committee email to the
Southern Baptist Convention. I'm going to ask you again. I'm going to ask you one more time. I want you to give me on that.
Because I've heard you read it, and we let everyone hear it. That's fine. I want you to give me on that, and we'll take it under advisement.
I obviously, in hearing what you're saying, don't agree with the promise. The Southern Baptist Convention itself on all levels affirms not only affiliation, but your semantics of cooperation, partnership.
It all means the same thing. If you look at how you actually affiliate, it says you are on the affiliation report.
And how do you partner? How do you affiliate? You fill out the same form, and you contribute. There is no difference. For years, you guys have used these fuzzy words that mean nothing.
You are affiliated with a denomination. That's a gross violation of the Constitution. The motion was seconded.
Then they cut my mic. Turn on his mic!
Why are you silencing him? A few minutes later, I was escorted out of the meeting by church security.
There's nothing going on behind the scenes. There's no attempt to... I know we don't all know each other really well, especially for me being new here, but I just felt the need to share that.