Anne, I might have to post about this separately, because there’s just way too much that a trash video like this brings up. As the son of an Evangelist, who at the age of two was evacuated out of Kabul during the Russian invasion because my mom and dad loved being with the afghan people, who spent the 80’s in a trailer setting up a blue and white circus tent all over the US, who watched his dad preach in the northern mountains of the Philippines and in town squares all over Luzon, but who finally saw his dad lay down the microphone so he could hold orphans, to hear a sanctimonious rant from a man who is enjoying a “sanctified vacation,” just truly, how do you put it, “boils my onion.” We see all this performative and scolding nonsense everywhere and whether liberal or conservative I’ve just started calling it all “praying loudly.” I will not go into the self serving structure of short term missions, or how these self aggrandized notions of jumping in a plane and simply telling people about Jesus when you have not committed yourself to a community are just the kind of the kind of delusions a child might have, but this all this does make me think of my father and how he loved preaching the Gospel, and how he found meaning in it, but never once did he scold his children and guilt them into joining his calling, and never once did he scold people for not being evangelists. He might have scolded them for other things but never that.
"the self serving structure of short term missions", indeed.
More like Carribean Youth Group Resort Weekends, from the stories I've heard. It seems to be more about the feelings of the "missionaries" than about giving any real. lasting help.
It’s tricky. And I’ve softened quite a bit on this. At my Christian College, I wrote an editorial piece castigating our college’s short term mission for which I received ample buckets of hate mail. I had listened to 3 years of wealthy students giving their testimonials of how much the trip meant to them, etc., and decided an MK perspective might be timely. But again. If folks want to raise money to have a sanctified vacation, that’s mostly fine. But one should not pretend for a single second that they’re actually doing anything that has lasting impact on the communities they visit. I’ll stop now before I get too overheated.
I grew up with this hymn…”100 million souls a day are passing one by one away, they are passing to their doom.” I mostly just trembled in the pew and planned on being a missionary so it wouldn’t be on me. And then God changed the plans. I guess now it’s on me. Unless, just possibly, there is a savior who bore all of this.
I went to the Urbana '81 missions conference. There was a special session at the end, for those of us losers who had not committed to foreign missions. ("What If I Don't Go To The Mission Field" or some such thing.) The gist of it, as I recall, was: "Your life is not over. You can still be of some small use in the United States. PLUS, you can work a job and donate to support people doing the real work."
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. I don’t think his numbers are correct, but I’m probably wrong.
Also, aren’t we about 10-ish years away from the gospel (not the whole Bible, but parts of it) bring either translated in every language and / or reaching every people group?
Which, when I think about it, is astounding. The amount of people who’ve poured their lives and resources into translating the Gospel and going and spending themselves…I think it’s just thrilling.
There is so many good things happening. God is so good to work in us and through us. Thank you for reminding me it’s not up to us anyways. We’re all “unworthy servants.”
Heaping burdens on normal people has always been David Platt's schtick. He seems to think that if everyone was just like him the entire world would be saved. Wasn't that the whole point of his book? (The name of which escapes me - I know it's not Unhinged or Uninhibited, but I think it's Un-something...)
Well, there’s one called “Radical,” and that’s the name that always stuck in my mind because “radical” always seemed to be the word used in the evangelical youth group culture to describe, well, a faith of “doing more.”
I grew up in a very good church which taught the gospel and Christian doctrine clearly. However, the youth group did not always meet the same high standard as the rest of the church. But the problem wasn’t just our youth group, it was all the conferences and youth camps, and the general culture of evangelical youth groups that filters in regardless of how good or bad any particular youth group’s leadership is. The message that’s in the water in that culture is exactly that: “heaping burdens on normal people,” specifically, normal teenagers, to live a “radical” faith and be “world changers.” And honestly, Platt seems *better* than a lot of what’s out there, because of his singular focus on sharing the gospel. Many of the books and conferences put the focus on social issues and imply that teenagers should be doing more to solve poverty, etc.
I definitely had personal issues with understanding grace in my early teen years, and while this youth group messaging didn’t cause those, it certainly didn’t help. For a while, I thought I had to be a missionary to poverty-stricken places in Africa in order to be a good Christian. (Ironically, I’m a missionary now, just not in Africa, and most certainly not out of a sense of guilt.) I would always phrase this as “needing to be a radical Christian.”
The thing is, “radical” isn’t really a bad word to describe serious Christian faith. The problem is when people start thinking that “serious Christian faith” equals “go out and do something BIG.” Christian kids and teens need youth pastors who will teach them that yes, you need to be a serious Christian, but that serious Christianity means the Lordship of Christ in your life. It means a fight against sin, and that’s not just simplistic moralism. It’s showing love to difficult people close to you. It’s learning to die to yourself.
Ah, yes, Radical was the one I was thinking of. You’re right that youth groups seem to be prone to this sort of hype, as if it isn’t hard enough just to be faithful.
This piece is a direct hit on one of my main pet peeves these days: Christians (and others) telling people what to do, and if they do it, telling them how they're doing it wrong. It's so condescending. It's not trusting the other people to be and think like adults. And, for sure, it has the sense of: "Only I have thought of this! In all of Christian history, only I see the problem here!"
As you say, "It has a delicate hint of, ‘I’m the first person ever to properly read the Bible’ or ‘You’ve never thought of this before because you’re some rube out in the sticks who doesn’t even know what politics is’ or ‘How is that most Christians are doing nothing about this thing that is very important to me.’"
I would change what you wrote just a bit. Instead of "a delicate hint", I would put "an overwhelming stench" ... but otherwise, perfect!
Well. He can’t be that woke if he’s using that kind of rhetoric. Most progressives would generally say that it’s good that those folks haven’t been “colonized” with Christianity.
My first thought after reading this is that David Platt needs to get himself down to Wycliffe and have a sit down with people who actually do have accurate numbers of the unreached people throughout the world.
My second thought is, wasn’t he the president of the IMDB? How must all those faithful missionaries feel after being accused of not doing their job?
It's interesting how this tendency inflicts both the progressives and the conservatives. The progressives want you to feel bad for not doing enough about racism or social justice, and the conservatives want you to feel guilty for not doing enough about the lost or about whatever conservative political cause is current.
Anyone recall Keith Green’s “Asleep in the Light”? ‘Do you see? Do you see? All the people sinking down? Don't you care? Don't you care? Are you gonna let them drown?’
While I would not put Green the song writer in the category of Platt the preacher; the employment of guilt to motivate listeners en masse brings to mind Atlas holding up the heavens rather than a believer serving in a community that encourages each other as they minister to God and each other using a variety of spiritual gifts. That church will support missionaries whether from their own fellowship or some other agency.
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 1 Cor 12:18
Anne, I might have to post about this separately, because there’s just way too much that a trash video like this brings up. As the son of an Evangelist, who at the age of two was evacuated out of Kabul during the Russian invasion because my mom and dad loved being with the afghan people, who spent the 80’s in a trailer setting up a blue and white circus tent all over the US, who watched his dad preach in the northern mountains of the Philippines and in town squares all over Luzon, but who finally saw his dad lay down the microphone so he could hold orphans, to hear a sanctimonious rant from a man who is enjoying a “sanctified vacation,” just truly, how do you put it, “boils my onion.” We see all this performative and scolding nonsense everywhere and whether liberal or conservative I’ve just started calling it all “praying loudly.” I will not go into the self serving structure of short term missions, or how these self aggrandized notions of jumping in a plane and simply telling people about Jesus when you have not committed yourself to a community are just the kind of the kind of delusions a child might have, but this all this does make me think of my father and how he loved preaching the Gospel, and how he found meaning in it, but never once did he scold his children and guilt them into joining his calling, and never once did he scold people for not being evangelists. He might have scolded them for other things but never that.
"the self serving structure of short term missions", indeed.
More like Carribean Youth Group Resort Weekends, from the stories I've heard. It seems to be more about the feelings of the "missionaries" than about giving any real. lasting help.
It’s tricky. And I’ve softened quite a bit on this. At my Christian College, I wrote an editorial piece castigating our college’s short term mission for which I received ample buckets of hate mail. I had listened to 3 years of wealthy students giving their testimonials of how much the trip meant to them, etc., and decided an MK perspective might be timely. But again. If folks want to raise money to have a sanctified vacation, that’s mostly fine. But one should not pretend for a single second that they’re actually doing anything that has lasting impact on the communities they visit. I’ll stop now before I get too overheated.
I grew up with this hymn…”100 million souls a day are passing one by one away, they are passing to their doom.” I mostly just trembled in the pew and planned on being a missionary so it wouldn’t be on me. And then God changed the plans. I guess now it’s on me. Unless, just possibly, there is a savior who bore all of this.
I went to the Urbana '81 missions conference. There was a special session at the end, for those of us losers who had not committed to foreign missions. ("What If I Don't Go To The Mission Field" or some such thing.) The gist of it, as I recall, was: "Your life is not over. You can still be of some small use in the United States. PLUS, you can work a job and donate to support people doing the real work."
I feel like I should edit. I think only 100 thousands souls a day were the words.
Please talk about Halloween still. I am so over it.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. I don’t think his numbers are correct, but I’m probably wrong.
Also, aren’t we about 10-ish years away from the gospel (not the whole Bible, but parts of it) bring either translated in every language and / or reaching every people group?
Which, when I think about it, is astounding. The amount of people who’ve poured their lives and resources into translating the Gospel and going and spending themselves…I think it’s just thrilling.
There is so many good things happening. God is so good to work in us and through us. Thank you for reminding me it’s not up to us anyways. We’re all “unworthy servants.”
Just "thanks."
Heaping burdens on normal people has always been David Platt's schtick. He seems to think that if everyone was just like him the entire world would be saved. Wasn't that the whole point of his book? (The name of which escapes me - I know it's not Unhinged or Uninhibited, but I think it's Un-something...)
Well, there’s one called “Radical,” and that’s the name that always stuck in my mind because “radical” always seemed to be the word used in the evangelical youth group culture to describe, well, a faith of “doing more.”
I grew up in a very good church which taught the gospel and Christian doctrine clearly. However, the youth group did not always meet the same high standard as the rest of the church. But the problem wasn’t just our youth group, it was all the conferences and youth camps, and the general culture of evangelical youth groups that filters in regardless of how good or bad any particular youth group’s leadership is. The message that’s in the water in that culture is exactly that: “heaping burdens on normal people,” specifically, normal teenagers, to live a “radical” faith and be “world changers.” And honestly, Platt seems *better* than a lot of what’s out there, because of his singular focus on sharing the gospel. Many of the books and conferences put the focus on social issues and imply that teenagers should be doing more to solve poverty, etc.
I definitely had personal issues with understanding grace in my early teen years, and while this youth group messaging didn’t cause those, it certainly didn’t help. For a while, I thought I had to be a missionary to poverty-stricken places in Africa in order to be a good Christian. (Ironically, I’m a missionary now, just not in Africa, and most certainly not out of a sense of guilt.) I would always phrase this as “needing to be a radical Christian.”
The thing is, “radical” isn’t really a bad word to describe serious Christian faith. The problem is when people start thinking that “serious Christian faith” equals “go out and do something BIG.” Christian kids and teens need youth pastors who will teach them that yes, you need to be a serious Christian, but that serious Christianity means the Lordship of Christ in your life. It means a fight against sin, and that’s not just simplistic moralism. It’s showing love to difficult people close to you. It’s learning to die to yourself.
Ah, yes, Radical was the one I was thinking of. You’re right that youth groups seem to be prone to this sort of hype, as if it isn’t hard enough just to be faithful.
Yes—he’s been one of the worst at making Christians feel like a living godly, quiet life isn’t enough.
This piece is a direct hit on one of my main pet peeves these days: Christians (and others) telling people what to do, and if they do it, telling them how they're doing it wrong. It's so condescending. It's not trusting the other people to be and think like adults. And, for sure, it has the sense of: "Only I have thought of this! In all of Christian history, only I see the problem here!"
As you say, "It has a delicate hint of, ‘I’m the first person ever to properly read the Bible’ or ‘You’ve never thought of this before because you’re some rube out in the sticks who doesn’t even know what politics is’ or ‘How is that most Christians are doing nothing about this thing that is very important to me.’"
I would change what you wrote just a bit. Instead of "a delicate hint", I would put "an overwhelming stench" ... but otherwise, perfect!
THANK YOU!
Platt is pretty woke, too. I guess inflicting false guilt is his gig.
He's definitely woke, given what he was teaching at MBC.
Well. He can’t be that woke if he’s using that kind of rhetoric. Most progressives would generally say that it’s good that those folks haven’t been “colonized” with Christianity.
My first thought after reading this is that David Platt needs to get himself down to Wycliffe and have a sit down with people who actually do have accurate numbers of the unreached people throughout the world.
My second thought is, wasn’t he the president of the IMDB? How must all those faithful missionaries feel after being accused of not doing their job?
David Platt has lost his way.
It's interesting how this tendency inflicts both the progressives and the conservatives. The progressives want you to feel bad for not doing enough about racism or social justice, and the conservatives want you to feel guilty for not doing enough about the lost or about whatever conservative political cause is current.
Ah, a celebrity pastor trying to grow his celebrity on the platform of ministry and also saying very silly things. Are we even surprised anymore?
Please do share your thoughts on Halloween decorations. In my town, Halloween is the new Christmas. It’s crazy.
Pastor Platt needs to be unburdened by the burden of what has not been done and take a trip with his son.
(Rhyme is unintentional. Not trying to be clever.)
You are right in your concerns, Anne, but they will soon be overshadowed by deeper concerns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXP0Y8BBBvU
The documentary itself will be released in a few days. Another link that has further details: https://therealdavidplatt.com/
Thanks for the link, Diane!
My favorite part so far is when he's preaching about how "We all have blind spots."
Thanks for the thoughts!
Yes - Brother Platt has always been an energetic speaker and motivator!
And he's not alone in his scolding tendency - others across the Evan. spectrum
default to this too.
It reminds me of the Pharisees et al. nagging and scolding Jesus and the disciples... not
a good tradition to carry on!
Better to see how Jesus goes about challenging the seven local churches in Rev.
Bravo! The sovereign God calls and we serve. We need to be sure we're not trying to do His job for Him.
Anyone recall Keith Green’s “Asleep in the Light”? ‘Do you see? Do you see? All the people sinking down? Don't you care? Don't you care? Are you gonna let them drown?’
While I would not put Green the song writer in the category of Platt the preacher; the employment of guilt to motivate listeners en masse brings to mind Atlas holding up the heavens rather than a believer serving in a community that encourages each other as they minister to God and each other using a variety of spiritual gifts. That church will support missionaries whether from their own fellowship or some other agency.
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 1 Cor 12:18