David Platt is not just a three-time New York Times bestselling author, he is the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board and current pastor of McLean Bible Church in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.
He knows something about trials and tribulations, but his new book focuses instead on joy.
“Every book I’ve written is the overflow of conviction in my own heart,” he said.
Being a pastor in Metro D.C. is a never-ending lesson because of “the joys and challenges of trying to shepherd a church with a hundred-plus nations represented, in this city, amidst political tensions, amidst racial tensions and trying to promote the supremacy of Jesus above it all and shepherd the church to be the bride we’re created to be,” he explained. “This book is just the overflow of those joys and challenges in my own life, conviction in my own life, things I’m learning along the way that God is sanctifying me, and at the same time encouraging me through his word.”
Platt also has faced a highly publicized church schism, including a lawsuit brought against him by a group of former church members regarding his leadership style and handling of issues related to culture and race.
“I talk with so many Christians who over recent years have been disillusioned by the church or discouraged or divided in the church.”
“I talk with so many Christians who over recent years have been disillusioned by the church or discouraged or divided in the church, and people just looking around saying, ‘I thought there was more to the church than this. I thought there was more to Jesus than this.’ I really wanted to write a book to say, to shout, ‘There is! There’s so much more to the church and so much more to Jesus. We can experience it.”
The result is Don’t Hold Back, a book his publisher says “encourages followers of Jesus to take necessary risks and find unimaginable reward.”
Platt believes American Christians have gotten really good at following a really bad gospel — one that worships American ideas over biblical truth.
He preaches a choice between an American gospel or the biblical gospel.
David Platt
“In our country, the realities of racial division in the church we want to turn the tide on,” he explained in a recent interview. “Surely, we’re not content with that. I wanted to share some of my own personal journey of how being in, leading and being a part of a multiethnic church with a lot of different brothers and sisters from different backgrounds and different perspectives, and leading alongside people from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives, has been so eye-opening and so helpful for me.
“It’s time for the church to lean into these issues with our Bibles open and to see the beauty of the gospel come to bear on a church that for centuries has been divided according to the color of our skin. It’s way past time for us to turn the tide on that history.”
The modern church is better equipped to tackle this challenge than many believe, he asserts. “We are more equipped than any other people in our culture to think about these issues. With our Bibles open, we have the Spirit of God inside of us. One of the challenges is that we don’t have discernment between primary issues, secondary, and, so as a result, it makes these conversations a lot harder.”
Despite living through intense division in his own congregation, the pastor believes common ground is possible. As evidence, he points to a group within his church that meets together regularly, people who are opposites of one another on many issues.
“We’re going to have different thoughts on issues, but we can have conversations about it with our Bibles open, with listening ears, along with understanding as the body of Christ,” he explained. “I think about a group in our church that just went through a multi-week journey where they were diving into all these different kinds of issues together, and people sharing passionate disagreements with each other, with tears, borne out of a lot of personal experience and even hurt, but they were listening to each other. They were encouraging each other. They were helping each other understand different perspectives. And they’re walking away, loving each other, caring for each other, arms around each other.
“This is the beauty of what we can do as the body of Christ,” he said. “The problem is, over recent years, we’ve shown our muscles aren’t strong and need to be strengthened by the Spirit of God.”
He summarized: “We have such an opportunity to show a different way in the world that the Spirit of God leads us to do and the love of God leads us to do. I don’t want to hold back from that. I don’t want to be like the world and just isolate ourselves from each other. I’m a work in progress. We all are. My goal in this book was to hit the prominent issues that I’ve walked through. And we as a church have walked through and that I see around us that we need to address.”