David Platt Documentary: Part 2

SBC Affiliation and the First Denials

It's clear that I'm asking, is McLean Bible Church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, right?

It's clear? Yes. Okay.

Yes or no?

No.

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. I would like to present those to you and the congregation if we could.

The response to that was strange. First, you know, walking them out with security and then being very DC in how they responded. Very carefully worded statements. Just kind of that real political dodge.

Once the motion was presented, the evidence was attached to it. It was done constitutionally. The congregation has rights and that was one of them. But the fact that there was no response. We heard nothing.

Nothing from the church. And it was from then on that the covering up, you just saw it so amped up. The church leadership position became more defensive.

A few days later, the head of church security, Lucius Thompson, emailed his security staff that there was a mental health crisis sweeping the nation and they had seen the effects of that at the congregational meeting on March 31st.

To this day, neither David Platt nor the church leadership has apologized for this remark. Following this meeting, David Platt had to scramble because his lies had finally been exposed with undeniable evidence.

The evidence itself came from the Southern Baptist Convention and its executive committee. He urgently began to contact Ashley Clayton from the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee who had confirmed to me that McLean Bible Church was indeed a Southern Baptist Convention church.

Is the Southern Baptist Convention, Mr. Clayton, a denomination?

It is not. Jeremiah called. What he was saying was, hey, I'm just checking to see have we completed our process of joining the SBC denomination. That word was used several times from him. I didn't challenge that.

If it had been the pastor, if it had been, in different circumstances, I should have and I would have corrected to say, just so you know, you're not becoming an SBC church. I say this all the time. I just don't always say it.

I don't correct lay people when they bring up things like that. It just didn't seem to be that important to me.

After this phone call, you recall that that came first. Then he followed up with an email.

Is that right?

Yes, I did.

In our database of record, the data field affiliation status shows McLean Bible Church as affiliated at all three levels of affiliation slash cooperation, national convention, state convention, and local association.

Do you remember writing that to Mr. Clayton?

I do.

You just mentioned a moment ago, you did not, since he was a lay person as you understood it, give him the other explanation that you would normally give in other circumstances.

That's correct.

To his second question, his second question is, secondly, is the Southern Baptist Convention a denomination? You've already told us today that it is not. Your response to Mr. Burke is that to your second question, the churches of the SBC would comprise a denomination.

Is that inconsistent with what you've told us today in any way?

This statement is inconsistent with what I have said and what is actually the truth about this, about how that plays out. In my estimation, this was not a good response, not my best response.

Is it an accurate response?

We are not a denomination. The term denomination is almost more structural. It's something that I know we are not.

Okay, I'll end it there then.

If I can leave it with that, yeah.

The Email Draft and the Congregation's Discovery

Platt told him to write an email to Larry Cooper, who was at that time the Chairman of the Board of Elders. David Platt was outlining what he wanted the email to say.

Dear Ashley Clayton, as a follow-up to our communication earlier this week, it would be helpful if you could send a letter to our elders and copy me clarifying the following, that you, on behalf of the SBC Executive Committee, recognize that McLean Bible Church is an independent, non-denominational church and we are not affiliated denominationally with the SBC.

That you unintentionally miscommunicated to one of our members concerning the above reality in a recent email, but that we were not becoming a Southern Baptist Church or joining a denomination, and that your understanding of the partnership today is unchanged.

The MBC is included in the SBC Church database purely for the sake of accounting purposes. Obviously, you can feel free to communicate anything else in terms of the fruit of our partnership together in missions.

Thank you, Brother David.

Ashley Clayton did as he was told, and MBC leadership then presented this email to the congregation, pretending as if it was from the SBC, when in reality, David Platt was telling the SBC what to say.

The congregation then started to become aware that David Platt was a liar and a deceiver, and that the elder board in existence at that time was also lying. The church constitution gives one avenue by which the members of the church can replace corrupt leadership, and that is through a vote of no confidence during the annual elder election.

So during a church business meeting on Wednesday evening, June 30th, 2021, that's exactly what happened. For those of you who have kept up with your emails, you've heard about a coordinated effort to get people to this meeting in order to vote against three wonderful, Christ-honoring, biblically qualified brothers as elders in the church.

A group of members in our church family has interviewed and unanimously, joyfully affirmed each of them. And our elders have done the same. And ever since these men were announced to our church family, there has not been one concern expressed by any member of this church.

They were very forceful that those people be voted on.

David was making those decisions. David was, he was very vocal, well, fairly vocal about it in the elders meetings of the people he wanted. We put an elder in charge to bring candidates forward, okay?

And that's a process under the constitution. And David said, no, I don't want that person. Here's who I want. I'd rather have this person. And so David realized that he's got to kind of find a way to manipulate this process.

And then I wanted to raise these concerns at congregational meetings. And then the first one I came to, June 30th, 2021, it opens with threat from the director of security, Lucious Thompson. If any person disrupts or shouts out at any point during the meeting, whoever is speaking on stage at that point will immediately back away from the microphone.

While our security team immediately comes to escort that person out. If anyone who disrupts or shouts out during the meeting and refuses to leave with our first response team, then security and possibly law enforcement will be asked to hurry.

If anyone here is representing any sort of media, we kindly ask that you would leave the meeting at this point. We were threatened from the pulpit.

I felt very trapped. There was no role for the congregation as a congregation. Not a congregational church.

This seems very strange and then very controlled. And then the lead elder told us we couldn't take out phones. He questioned people who were there. We couldn't have any visuals.

Sir, I noticed you're photographing this on your cell phone. Is there a reason for that? We ask that you not do that, please.

I don't know how else to explain it. Our relationships with ministries of the SBC are the same as when that relationship started in 2016, before I became pastor here.

We have a process in place for the counting, observed and overseen by a third party, for the sake of integrity, so there will be no question about the outcome of the vote. Now, on to the vote.

The vote was taken. And after about an hour or more, lots of singing and music, the chairman of the elders came on the stage and said, we're tabling this meeting. It's not going to continue. And we'll let you know what's going on.

So stay tuned.

The report I have for you right now is that we have a closed election. And we're going to have to process the provisional ballots, which in many cases is going to be ascertaining whether the ballot was appropriately passed or not by a qualified person.

So we cannot call the results tonight.

They said that we're going to have to put this, all the votes in a lockbox. And we're going to come back. And I go like, is this a presidential, you know, to have a lockbox for elders? And I go like, something's wrong.

We will be getting back to you as soon as we do the processing that we need to do. We'll be getting back to you with the results through an all-church email.

So that was a little bit of a red flag. Just tell us what happened. That's not a big problem. You know, did you get 75 of the vote or did you not? Enough people scrapped up enough votes to say, no, we're just not going to rubber stamp everything that you're doing.

And he used his power, his platform, his influence to shape his own narrative of what occurred.

Elder nomination for new elders. It was defeated. But then the way the church responded was just horrible.

July 4th, 2021, David went up into the pulpit and said, We have explained and have in writing from the SBC, we're not a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. Put it out there in a way he had never before done.

Lying to everyone's faces.

David Platt spoke July 4th. And so a red flag to me was we normally call up our service members. We have them each stand during the song, each branch stand. We didn't do that. And he spent a good majority of the sermon in anger towards people who voted against the elders.

You see him panic. And in the panic, he has to take the pulpit and bully and humiliate the sheep.

A small group of people inside and outside this church coordinated a divisive effort. To persuade others to vote these men down using disinformation.

For David Platt to take up gospel sharing airtime to talk about a group of people, including me and my husband and other people, long term Christians who had been walking faithfully with the Lord for 40 more years.

These were the people that he was slandering.

David Platt lambasted those who had stood up against these three elders.

Anywhere between 70 to 78 percent of those who voted, depending on which ballots would be accepted from active members of NBC and which ones would be rejected from people who are not active members of NBC.

Which means that the final outcome of this elder election would be either just above or just below the required 75 percent line.

David knew what the ramifications were. If the elders didn't make it, the whole elder board would get dissolved. And under the church constitution, they would come up with a new elder board and could fire David if they wanted to.

Yeah, that was definitely in play.

As a result of us winning that election.

It was announced that there would be another vote. The constitution requires that you put three additional, three new elders, not the same three. And they were putting the same three elders up again. Five of us made a very difficult decision to bring suit on the basis that the constitution under which the laws of Virginia regulate churches and every other organization.

You must abide by your own rules. And if you don't abide by your own rules, then we want to know about it. We asked for an injunction from the court to slow things down, to prohibit this vote from taking place on that upcoming Sunday.

Unfortunately, the courts did not get it on the docket to hear it. So we didn't have weeks. We had days, which wasn't a complete surprise. So the vote went forward. There'd be a couple of changes this time.

There would not be secret ballots, which was another large red flag.

They gave us a ballot with our name stickers on them. I knew that a lot of people who currently did ministry, they could lose the room for their ministry that was met at. And so I just couldn't believe it.

I took a picture of it.

You can easily come to the conclusion that there's some intent to intimidate since a lot of church staff is a couple hundred. They're voting. So it was weird.

There was a rushed vote. We had no means to reach out to the congregation. David Platt and the elders were sending out all these emails, encouraging the congregation to vote one way.

And we've asked for anyone to contact us with any concerns about these men. No one has expressed any concerns about any of them to us. To be clear, these are not yes men or men with any agenda other than to follow Jesus as leaders in this church.

Any suggestion otherwise means you do not know these men.

They brought forth the same elders and took hundreds of people off the list. Some of our friends, their names disappeared.

I went into the church lobby and went up and asked them if I could get a ballot to vote. The girl got on the phone with somebody, couldn't hear what she was saying. She comes back and says, oh, I'm sorry, we don't have you on our membership rolls.

You're not a member. I said, excuse me. I've been a member since 1961. Well, I'm sorry, we don't have you on the rolls. I can't give you a ballot. I never received any notification that I had been dropped from the membership.

This was like a very ordinary task that we would do every single congregational meeting. You just line up in front of the kiosk and they check you in. You take all your information and they give you a name tag.

And the person behind the counter said to us, well, somehow your account's been made inactive. In my head I'm thinking, I am an active leader. I've been like solid in this church for years, decades, and why am I suddenly inactive?

There was no explanation. They sent us to go over to another lady. I distinctly remember her whispering to a person next to her in a way that we weren't really supposed to hear, but my husband and I still heard it.

Oh yeah, they were made inactive on such and such date, which was about a week before. It was a very clear, premeditated decision that the church had made to make a certain number of people inactive. Without their knowledge, without their consent, and so because of that we weren't allowed to vote.

My voice has just been taken away. I have no voice. I have no meaning to this church. I have no input to this church. They do not value me. And it just kind of reminded me of all the things that had been said in those leadership meetings where your small group is problematic and it's no longer fitting within the model and basically saying that you're not useful, what you're doing is not important.

I can't begin to tell you how hurtful that is. After years and years of service, from 2008 until 2021.

What happened to all these members? How were they purged?

This happened to tons of people.

And I wondered why they're challenging so many others who had been likewise members.

These were very solid men of God.

And so they did on a Sunday morning between services.

Even then they were trying to basically squash the ability for people to ask questions because they had it up on the stage. They started with worship. All of a sudden we were having worship at the congregational meeting and it was basically done in a way so that nobody could possibly be in a situation where they could ask questions.

And what just spooked me was walking to the sanctuary. At every door into the sanctuary was a county police officer in our church. We were having a church meeting. And it was stunning.

There were police in the sanctuary. Nobody better stand up or make a motion or talk or do anything. And it was just about that bland. It was just about that simple.

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 describe the collection 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. The results will be announced via e-news as soon as possible, possibly tomorrow afternoon.

At the final election for the elders, I was sitting at Prince William Campus. I hear, point of order. Larry, point of order. This is a difficult thing for me to do.

Just a minute, sir. Just a minute.

I have a point of order. And then the video feed was immediately cut off.

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.

I couldn't believe that this was a congregational meeting and point of order. And then the meeting was over and the ballots were all collected.

I'm going to have you step out. We're not going to proceed until you're done.

Let him speak!

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.

You, my friend, are on camera.

I have a mask on. I don't care.

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 you all to just take a step up for a second. And we're going to push you guys out. Stop touching me.

What are you guys doing?

I told him to not record. Get out of here.

He's recording something for no reason. It's a business meeting.

Get out of my way.

It's always been an integral part of the meeting to allow members to voice their thoughts and opinions on matters of relevance. What they were doing was systematically preventing us from speaking.

People are leaving. 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.

Can we just talk outside? I have to say.

Then listen.

Okay, but can we do it in a

How many people would like to hear what I've got to say?

Yes, yes.

We anticipated this.

We're following our normal protocols here.

We will reconvene at the time this is resolved. We will reconvene at the time this is resolved.

I'm going to have to ask you if you guys could just clear this area out.

Give him the mic.

Why are people opposed? I've been a teacher in this church for 15 years.

What 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.

So the church has decided that it wants to have an open ballot. You're right to vote secretly after 60 years at the Plains Bible Church. Look at your ballot. It has your name on it. This is unfair.

I'm going to ask you guys to take a step back.

Hit the pause button. Let's have a legitimate meeting.

He eventually was put out of the meeting. And it was those sorts of tactics that were appalling.

So we're going to proceed. And if you've already cast your ballot, I know somebody passed it in already, please continue to do that. Pass it in to the right.

Since that July 18th vote, NBC leadership has never held another in-person congregational meeting.

Legal Battle Over Church Control and Election Fraud Allegations

There's a big legal battle for control of a church with a huge footprint in our area, as you can see right here from this map.

The Virginia Court of Appeals decided this week to allow parts of the lawsuit to move forward for control of McLean Bible Church. This is at the center of a political controversy with allegations of election fraud.

WUSA 9 investigative reporter Nathan Baca walks us through some of those claims.

McLean Bible Church was last in the news when then President Trump visited for a prayer service June 2019.

You know, David felt remorse for praying for Donald Trump. He wrote an apology letter the day afterwards. No, he floated that to the elders and he says, I'm going to send this out to the entire congregation through emails and through a letter.

I'm going to post it up on social media. And I read that and I immediately emailed David back. And so didn't a couple of the other elders, bless their hearts. They said, this is an apology letter, David.

But he didn't take anybody's criticism or anything. And the letter went out. My email lit up like, Craig, this is an apology. I mean, how can you allow this stuff to happen? Well, I don't know how I can allow this stuff to happen.

I'm just an elder.

Now, accusations by some church members of purged voter rolls leading to a stolen election sounds more like the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Five people sued the church.

God, through the Holy Spirit, ought to be able to lead his people to devote their consciences. And we believe it was about 400 members who were illegally purged against the Constitution of the church.

So at that point, pursuing this injunction proceeded over the next couple of years. And we've been in the circuit court and won most of the motions. When the church asked that the case be dismissed on the basis that the issues were moot, the election had been had, the church was happy, and the judge bought the argument, which caused us to make another tough decision to appeal it.

Virginia Court of Appeals decided to let the lawsuit against the church continue. They turned it back to the circuit court and said, you might have gotten some of this right, but there's some of it you didn't get right.

This case needs to proceed, and these plaintiffs need to be given the right to depose and ask questions.

My name is Chap Peterson. I'm an attorney in Fairfax City, Virginia. I'm a Christian. I attend Truro Anglican Church. I've been to McLean Bible Church multiple times. I was retained by a group of members of McLean Bible Church.

This was an unusual case, and I'm a trial attorney. Usually when I file a suit, I'm looking to go to trial. I'm looking to go in front of a jury. I'm looking to prove facts. I'm looking to win money. This case was unique.

It was one of the most unique cases I've ever had because once we got the information, it was a matter of getting it out to the public. There was no point in having a trial or a jury trial in front of seven complete strangers, many of whom were probably not Christians or certainly not McLean Bible members.

And so talking to the clients and saying, we've filed this lawsuit. Now I want to non-suit it, which means withdraw it, but have the right to take this information and go public with it. And that will be the victory in this case.

The law firm stonewalled the court proceedings by filing multiple and repeated technical pleadings using a myriad of arcane legal tactics, which we didn't know about until they were used, such as demures, pleas in bar, motions craving oyer, whatever that is, and other frivolous motions to dismiss, to delay the proceedings, to try to bury the plaintiffs with huge legal expenses instead of just addressing the allegations.

There are two types of churches in the United States. There are hierarchical churches in which the classic example is the Roman Catholic Church, where you have a leader and they direct the congregation what to do.

Then you have non-denominational churches or most Protestant denominations in which the congregation is in charge and the leadership serves at their sufferance pursuant to bylaws or a written constitution.

And in the latter case, in a non-denominational, non-hierarchical church where you have church leadership that's violating the church constitution, courts can get involved and should get involved. Are you familiar with the phrase box budget?

Yes.

What does that mean?

The box budget was the surplus budget at McLean Bible Church.

When David Platt came on board, we had no idea that the Southern Baptist Convention and Radical would have the kind of access that they had. Leadership created this box budget, it's what they call this box budget, and it was created when David came on board.

It was a no man's land for money, a gigantic pot that who knows who was taking what out and when and how much, and it just became so vague.

I mean, again, that was a lot of money being spent, and I've been involved in churches for years. I've also served on the board of colleges and non-profits and all kinds of charities. And every transaction is identified, and to the extent you spend several hundred thousand dollars, much less a million dollars, you're going to need to have a report on how that money was spent, what the purpose was, how it's consistent with the mission of the church or the non-profit, and there was no accountability like that.

I found that very surprising. And you see the question about 2020 Radical and SBC donations. Do you still want these donations to be budgeted in admin for 2020?

Correct.

What does admin mean?

Admin was one section of the budget.

Was there a reason that those donations would have gone to admin?

There wasn't any other good place to put them, and so we put them in admin.

If you put them in admin, would that mean they would not actually be itemized in the church budget?

Well, nothing was truly itemized in the church budget, or the budget would have been 40, 50, 60 pages long. So everything was summarized. Everything was summarized.

The budget didn't really have line items for the SBC and for Radical. The church's response has always been, well, we don't want to have granular 100-page budgets for the 1 accounting geeks that care about this stuff.

I don't care about $900 a year for janitorial supplies or something like that. But when you have six and seven-figure expenditures, they should be in their own category.

I mean, even to a non-financial person, it just didn't make any sense. Things like, it'll make it easier for the auditing process. We won't have to spend as much manpower figuring out where every dollar's going.

My name's John Leonard. I work for a firm called Finance and Evaluation Experts, Incorporated. When I look at financials of a business, and I know that this is an organization, this is a church, but I look at it like a business.

I'm always very curious, first and foremost, to see complete and accurate records. And I don't feel as if I've been able to see that yet. It seems like they were trying to obscure what money they were moving around.

It looks like an email you sent to Dale Sutherland on October 4, 2018, about a box budget.

Correct.

I pulled together the box budget explanation and placed the current amount, $1 .5 million, into the box. That would be effectively the surplus at that point?

Yes.

Okay, the document is attached. I'm also attaching the box budget explanation from last year, but that is a little bit more convoluted. Next paragraph. I am not at all comfortable with the language for the donations to SBC and Radical.

So we can work on cleaning that up, up the language there. We only have $1 .5 million in the box currently. I assume we should put at least $4 million in the box. Do you see that?

Yes.

What did you mean by that? You're not comfortable with the language, the donations?

At the time, there was some specific language in there. I don't recall exactly what it was. But I wasn't comfortable with the way it was describing it. But I don't really know what it was. I can't remember that far back.

Okay, and what was being described? The donations to Southern Baptist Convention?

I'm guessing from this, but I'm not supposed to guess.

All right, well, don't guess. What's Radical?

Radical is a separate Christian organization. Separate 501c3.

They paid Radical, founded by David Platt, $650 ,000.

David Platt really didn't want the congregation to know any kind of granular details on how money was spent. People would ask questions like, hey, is that really right that we're spending money on David Platt's personal charity?

So I think that's where there was very little transparency, and they never wanted to put anything in writing.

From David Platt at Radical .net to Bill Steele. Hey, Bill, as we look towards using money via the box budget, I think I remember some of the money going towards SBC stuff.

I'd love to make sure that this giving toward anything related to the SBC goes to, through channels that count in the SBC world. I hate that there's even a game around this sort of thing, but it will be helpful in terms of our partnership with the SBC.

So this just begs the question, David, do you really hate that there's a game around this kind of thing?

Yet when David was leaving IMB, he was quoted as saying, I hate the politics of the SBC, and I don't say that as an outsider. I say that as an insider these last four years. Some of the lowest points in my leadership have been when I found myself participating in them.

Jockeying for position, continual self-promotion, backroom deals, followed by spin in the front room. Strategizing like brothers are your enemy. Feeling like others see you as their enemy. Getting to the point where you wonder if you can trust anyone, even as you start to wonder how trustworthy you've become.

This is a fascinating statement. These characteristics that he's describing, these are not characteristics of a Christian. And he's stating this is who he is, and he doesn't want to be a part of these backroom deals.

But you look at the whole entirety of his time at McLean Bible Church before he came in to the present. It's all backroom deals. It's all corruption. David Platt's entire career is based on lies, deceit, and corruption.

There's nothing else to it.

Do you remember getting a question about how much money has NBC given to SBC or its related organizations directly and indirectly?

Not really, but that doesn't, it's here.

Okay, your response is, given what they're asking for, especially going all the way back to 2017, and it is going to be more explosive when this information gets out potentially. Do you see that?

Yes.

What did you mean by more explosive?

I think it was going to beg more questions.

Here was money coming from the McLean Bible Church to plant Southern Baptist churches.

New City Network, have you heard of that?

I don't think I'm familiar. New City...

New City Network, there's three words, New City Network.

I'm not.

Have you ever heard that phrase before?

I don't think I have.

Hey church family, you may not know that over the last three years, we have had the opportunity, by God's grace, to be a part of planting over 50 churches in the Washington, D .C. area. It's been awesome to see the gospel multiplying.

This is our mission statement, we glorify God by making disciples and multiplying churches. Think and pray and dream. Yes, praise God for 50 churches. We want to see hundreds of churches spreading the gospel among the hundreds of thousands and millions of people in metro D .C.