DAVID ROACH: It is a megachurch in the Washington, D.C., area. He presently works as a pastor-teacher at McLean Bible Church. That follows the 2020 budget being about $1.5 million below the 2019 budget, according to a member of McLean Bible Church. At a June 30 meeting, nominees Chuck Hollingsworth, Jim Burris, and Ken Tucker had failed to receive a clear 75 percent majority, the margin required for elder election. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. According to the McLean Bible Church budget for 2021, $291,719 more is slated for Senior Managementmaking that line item in the budget total $1,121,967. The entire Sunday, July 4, 2021, sermon was filled with David Platts performative outrage. I think were going to work through this, he said. This year, the church had an election of three church elders, which would normally be a sleepy affair. Under the "woke" new pastor who succeeded the legendary Lon Solomon, however, it may soon not even rank as the biggest church in McLean. Platt, the author of Radical, is known for his passionate call to evangelism, missions, and Scripture. The church teachings were theologically conservative under its previous leadership, the legendary Lon Solomon. You've read 0 of 5 of todays most popular posts. But he argued that Virginia law does require churches to follow rules outlined in their constitutions. We just want to give believers freedom to disagree on things that aren't essentials. During a sermon on July 4, David Platt very intentionally addressed some of those concerns. Platt knows many McLean members including former church leaders opposed his teachings that appeared to be causing racial divisions by the promotion of Critical Race Theory. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. We're glad you're here! The suburban DC megachurchs recent scuffle over race and politics is symptomatic of a broader evangelical rift. While tens of thousands flocked to campus, school officials met in a storage closet to make decisions that would honor what is happening.. Are the budget cuts and declining attendance a message that Platts Social Justice Theology is unpopular with churchgoers? It quickly became one of the 50 largest churches in the country, with over 12,000 . ''differentattitude.' ''''Now,'friends,'that's'true'of'you'and'me'as'well.''Itdoesn'thave'to' ''be'this'way'for'us.' . And all three nominees got at least 78% on that day and were elected as elders. Platt mishandled the aftermath of the prayer. Brothers and sisters, I think we see all over Scripture that the Bible speaks of both sides of this picture, Platt said. Church members are asked for their opinions on things like what color to paint the womens bathroom, he said; why not ask their opinion on more substantive matters such as CRT or joining the SBC? CBN-backed candidate Mike Stone received 48 percent of the vote in last months SBC presidential election, finishing second to Alabama pastor Ed Litton. McLean Bible, seen as a conservative evangelical congregation that once had more than 16,000 attendees, has long been an important church in the Washington, D.C., area. In the course, Platt fuses Christian teachings with the worldview assumptions of Critical Race Theory. One of the churchs pastors expressed outrage over it. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. He became pastor-teacher at McLean Bible . McLean Bible which is seen as a conservative evangelical congregation and once had more than 16,000 attendees has long been an important church in Washington with four locations near the . James MacDonald founded Harvest Bible Chapel in 1988. Many Christians look at the Bible and then look at the picture of American Christianity around them and think, This doesnt add up. Solomon signed the Dallas Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Allegations that leaders were seeking to join the SBC in violation of the churchs constitution led McLean to suspend all contributions to SBC causes this month. So they scheduled that vote for Sunday, July the 18. ROACH: On June the 30, McLean Bible Church was to have an election to elect three new elders. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Net Worth in 2023: $2 million. The church was rocked by controversy in 2019 when President Donald Trump stopped by the service for prayer. Platt, a bestselling author and speaker, recounted the churchs history in a sermon in the summer of 2019, about a year after he succeeded Solomon as pastor, in whichhe asked: What if our best days as a church are ahead of us, not behind us?. On Friday, a Fairfax County, Virginia, judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by dissident members of McLean Bible Church who sought to overturn the results of an election for church leaders, known as elders. All rights reserved. Copyright 2020, Religion News Service. SBC Elites cite distinguished lawyer and Southern Baptist Matthew Martens; however, Martens has written persuasively, Supporters of a constitutional amendment to ban women pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), New intel points to Covid origin in a lab leak, remember when this was a, NAMB PR VP Mike Ebert emerges as key witness in McRaney v. NAMB What will, David Platt explodes at McLean Bible Church, plays the race card, the man responsible for dividing McLean Bible Church by teaching Critical Race Theory, It couldnt be that David Platts Woke rhetoric has driven about 40% of church members to attend church in other non-Woke evangelical churches in that part of Virginia, Ed Litton Plagiarism Scandal: A Sermongate Timeline, Baptist professor strongly suspects former SBC President J.D. On June 30, 2021, McLean Bible Church (MBC) in Vienna, Virginia, held a members meeting to affirm three new elders via vote.MBC is pastored by former Southern Baptist's International Mission Board (IMB) president and bestselling author David Platt. Lon Solomon is American evangelical Christian pastor and the founder of Lon Solomon Ministries, a non-profit ministry.. In fact, Platt's sloppy moral reasoning was one point of controversy in a letter to leadership from five long-standing members of . So here I am, piecing together a years-long scandal for you. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". They organized a new election for elders in mid-June 2022, using secret ballots. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. It sits in what can only be described as one of America's Elite areas. Some of you may remember him as the guy Jerry Falwell Jr. told to "grow a pair." Platt is now in the middle of a controversy over "wokeness" at the church. Platt and other leaders, they say, have abused their power by violating the churchs constitution. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. When I first came to faith in Christ in 1971, as a Jewish college student, I never imagined that the Lord would lead me to pastor a church. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Because of the mass exodus McLean cut spending. David Platt, the President of our International Mission Board, recently became the preaching pastor at the Mclean Bible Church, a megachurch in the DC area. Former President Trump even attended a service there once. Some say it is now a running joke that McLean refugees are showing up in other area churches looking for the truth and the Gospel instead of racial identity politics. People came here this night that were recruited by this group to vote that night who had moved away to other states, Platt alleged. According to course documents provided to the Capstone Report, Injustice like we see in Scripture is evident in and around us today. However, Platts course provides no proof of this assertion but launches into the typical CRT-inspired list of supposed American wrongs including things like discrimination, persecution, prejudicial creation and execution of laws, crises of excessive crime and incarceration, corruption in leaders, suppression of the marginalized, and oppression of the poor.. Assume this is true for a moment, wouldnt that make someone pause and ask what is going on here? So wherever possible, we want to work together to move forward together on mission even with our different perspectives.. So those are some of the manifestations that show this is a larger discussion among evangelicals. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin). The letter warned, Thabiti Anyabwile, despite promoting progressive talking points at the expense of Christian truth, dividing the body of Christ across racial lines, and promoting the political agenda of Black Liberation Theology, has been used to train the MBC staff and played a prominent role within MBC church life.. But at the same time, he wants to say that there is not one voting requirement for being a follower of Jesus Christ. Much of that growth had happened under former pastor Lon Solomon, a Jewish convert known for his Bible preaching, zeal for evangelism and passion for serving children with special needs. Early life. College Park Church in Indianapolis was accused in a blog post this spring of caving to ever-increasing social justice infiltration. Dallas pastor Matt Chandler and former SBC president J. D. Greear both have been accused of being woke, and the SBCs emerging Conservative Baptist Network (CBN) has charged some convention leaders with advocating critical race theory and downplaying the Bibles sufficiency. McLean Bible Church faces a lawsuit over a recent vote for elders from members unhappy with pastor David Platt, who succeeded long-time former pastor Lon Solomon. It does not store any personal data. The churchs constitution describes it as an independent church that shall not, and cannot, be affiliated with any denomination. But in 2016, under Solomon, the church began to give money to SBC church planting programs and it has donated about $100,000 a year as a cooperating church. Is it to be humble? Why is David Platt undermining elections? The latest controversy revolves around who was eligible to participate in a June 30 vote on elders and has resulted in a lawsuit. By clicking Accept All, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. This letter urged Platt and the current elders to reject the Woke path. The total was either just above or just below 75 percent, depending on whether provisional ballots were counted, so a second vote was held July 18, at which all three nominees received at least 78 percent of the vote. After new elder nominees failed to be elected for the first time in the churchs history, Platt told the congregation in a sermon in early July that a small group of people inside and outside this church coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church.. They gave out some provisional ballots. Any church member on McLeans inactive list was given a provisional ballot. It couldnt be that David Platts Woke rhetoric has driven about 40% of church members to attend church in other non-Woke evangelical churches in that part of Virginia! We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Get all latest content delivered to your email a few times a month. All active members were allowed to vote. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. The flashpoint in the last year included a special course on Social Justice called The Gospel, The Church, Justice and Race. Platts silent embrace of the radical Black Lives Matter movement and the promotion of Kelsey along with Social Justice Bible studies including Platts own book legitimizing Christians who vote for Pro-Abortion Democrats, conservatives are leaving the church for new homes. The truth is that in June Mike Kelsey, his newly appointed Lead Pastor for Preaching and Culture, posted a picture on Facebook of himself at a BLM rally in DC, holding a BLM sign. Dr. James White dissected David Platts errors in a podcast examining that T4G sermon. A series of controversies and the country's growing political polarization have caused a rift at McLean Bible Church, where former International Mission Board president and author David Platt is pastor. [ This article is also available in With many active members participating in services online, especially those, like Frazer, who are not vaccinated, there is no way to tell who is attending. Subscribers receive full access to the archives. Attendance at the church was steady for most of the early period of the COVID pandemic; however, following the racism class and David Platts book on the voting, attendance began a precipitous decline. INSKEEP: Is that part of what seemed to get him in trouble with at least a portion of the congregation? The heart of the complaint really comes down to truth, transparency, and a free, open, and uncoerced process, plaintiffs attorney Rick Boyer told RNS. espaol. Putting it off is only going to make it worse. Platts teaching in his McLean Bible Church Course The Gospel, The Church, Justice and Race (GCJR) highlights a Hegelian-inspired dialectical synthesis between Christianity and Woke Social Justice. Nope. Also, Sadly, within evangelicalism, and the MBC pulpit, we see the following principle at work: the presence of preaching/teaching based on the wrong assumptions, resulting in wrong conclusions, thereby leading to the wrong solutions. David Platt, who has been aligning himself and his church closer and closer to the Revoice "gay Christianity" movement over the last year or so, has been making headlines as he continues to partner . Bart Barber, a Texas Baptist pastor who is writing a book on congregational forms of church governance, said that church voting is aimed at finding consensus about what God wants the congregation to do. INSKEEP: David Roach is pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Ala., and also writes for Christianity Today. Many former elders have left McLean Bible Church since David Platts takeover of the church. Video screengrab via MBC. Attendance is down about 40-percent year-over-year. No. At Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, the successor to influential pastor John Piper resigned over the summer after ongoing internal conflicts in the church and a school Piper founded. Pastor David Platt of McLean Bible Church said many of those within his congregation were 'hurt' with his decision to pray for President Donald Trump on stage during Sunday's service. McClean Bible Church Pastor David Platt addresses his congregation on July 4, 2021. When qualified elders do not oversee the hiring of pastoral staff, we endanger the flock to the possibility of those who bring wrong assumptions/beliefs on critical issues to our congregation and pulpit, the five leaders warned. Join us to see why God's family is no ordinary family. The dispute at McLean centered around a failed June 30, 2021, election. (RNS) A yearlong legal battle over a contested election at a prominent Washington, D.C.-area church appears to be over for now. #302 Falls Church, VA 22042 866-788-7770 Hannaford advises pastors not to make changes too quickly and recommends cooperation from both sides, allowing believers to differ on secondary doctrinal and ethical issues. Facebook; Twitter; visit the YouTube Channel. Because of the nature of a lawsuit, unfortunately, we cannot provide any further comment at this time, the elders said in a statement. Ministry partnerships: If you represent an organization which would like to partner with MBC, please fill out the International Partnerships Form or the Local Partnerships Form. Lon Solomon was born and raised in a Jewish home in Portsmouth, Virginia.. Solomon earned a B.S. The stated purpose of the church is "that people far from God will be raised to life in Christ . Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. : Democrats. Platt begged church members who support the Woke regime to adjust vacation plans to be at the special meeting. Financial needs: If you would like to request help with . A drop of 39%. Platt was forced to defend himself in 2019, when then-President Donald Trump showed up on a Sunday morning at McLean Bible with little notice and asked Platt to pray for him. The key problem here is a lack of transparency. Frank gives an insightful answer to this question and analyzes the recent controversy that started when members of a gym said a special workout in support of "Pride Week" was canceled by gym owners that led to an executive at CrossFit was fired for a tweet on his personal account. That speaks volumes about the problems in the McLean leadership team and specifically David Platt. Steven Furtick is the lead pastor of Elevation Church, based near Charlotte, North Carolina. They have several campuses. When you dont follow the rules and it has an effect on a consequential vote, you have now created a huge distraction from your mission, Merkle said. Platt and other leaders, they say, have abused their. While the church is slashing spending on a variety of things including missions, discipleship, outreach, and church plants, one area of increased spending in 2021 is in the Senior Management salaries. It was an exercise in eisegesis (p. 121). In response, Platt has claimed that the church is trying to fight off a hostile takeover and that Satan is trying to divide the church. Saddleback Church doubles down on support for female pastors, Mormonisms slow shift away from demonizing working mothers, Faith leaders urge Biden to sign executive order for reparations study by Juneteenth, For many congregations, wiping out medical debt has become a popular calling, Woke Wars infiltrate Christian colleges, prof under fire for racial justice unit, Southern Baptists oust Rick Warrens Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor, Professor Joeckel on why his contract, teachings on racial justice are under review, Copyright 2020, Religion News Service. From 1980-2017, I had the honor of serving as the Senior Pastor of McLean Bible Church (MBC) in McLean, VA., in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. The social justice controversy has erupted in church business meetings at McLean Bible Church and has gained national attention. It is no secret that David Platt promotes Social Justice causes.