David Platt is My IMB President, Too

The International Mission Board is reporting that Dr. David Platt is the new president of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. I had opposed his election. He now has my support. Here's why:

1. According to our system, I had my say. The trustees had the opportunity to give full consideration to the questions that I raised. I trust that they did so. I do not regret having raised these concerns, but I respect our system of polity. I freely acknowledge that the trustees had access to more information than I had. More of them favored his election than opposed it.

2. The very critique that I made of Platt requires that I support him now. This is the way that our system is supposed to work. You engage yourself in the process. You advocate vigorously for your point of view. Together we Southern Baptists come to a decision. Unless the decision is so bad that we cannot follow Christ and abide by it, we coalesce around the decision that we've made and we move forward for the sake of our Great Commission task.

   From the bottom of my heart I urge any of you who have talked about cutting your CP support if Platt were elected not to do anything so reactionary and foolish as that. If you were to reduce your support of the CP in reaction to this decision, in my mind you'd be putting yourself into the exact same category as the critique that I made of Platt. Please don't do that.

   Instead, do what I said that Platt hadn't done. Get involved in our polity. In good faith, help us to make decisions and appoint people even better than we have done so in the past. Don't disengage; do the hard work of consensus building and peacemaking for the cause of the Kingdom.

3. I'm committed to making my initial post about David Platt a self-unfulfilling prophecy. If I still worry that the man most responsible for rallying us all to support the Cooperative Program is not someone all that committed to or passionate about the Cooperative Program, then guess what that means: I just have to do more myself to promote the Cooperative Program in order to make up for it.

   Southern Seminary exists today because four men agreed among themselves that "the seminary may die, but we will die first." If just four hundred Southern Baptist pastors were to make the same commitment regarding the Cooperative Program, I don't think any power on earth could stop us.

   I neither storm off from this election in protest nor throw up my hands in hopelessness. Rather, I simply acknowledge that a task lies before us and I put my hand to the plow. I hope you all will join me.

   If Cooperative Program support was not considered important in this season of Southern Baptist decision-making, together let us make certain that it will be in the seasons to come.

The Cooperative Program Is More than a Money Trail

The Cooperative Program is a way of polity. In other words, it is a ethos of cooperative work among Southern Baptists that just happens to work best with a certain financial pathway.

It is Cooperative Planning. The Cooperative Program ideal means that none of us get precisely the budget we might plan all by ourselves. Rather, we join forces with sister churches who are around us and plan a consensus strategy and a consensus budget for the work we are going to do with one another.

This kind of vision is difficult for some of our Southern Baptist churches to embrace. I think one reason is because it demands a high level of respect for sister churches, and sometimes we tend to get so wrapped up in our own little silos that we lose sight of intercongregational fellowship and partnership in the gospel. This is made more difficult when Southern Baptist bodies grow very diverse doctrinally, methodologically, doxologically, and otherwise. We can work together through a great deal of diversity, but there has to be some unifying basis around which we gather and work. Our confession of faith is probably the best provision for that need.

Working in this way requires that our mutual respect for sister churches should facilitate a quest for a common plan. We have to be ready to submit our personal visions, plans, and objectives to the communal negotiations of the family of churches and work toward some consensus plan that lies within the realm of the possible outcomes.

To disagree with the budget of one's state convention and then summarily pull out of the Cooperative Program without having at least attempted to step up to the mike and influence the common plan toward some superior alternative is to betray this communal, cooperative planning mindset. It is a go-it-alone approach that views missions not as our common business but as our individual pursuits.

It is Cooperative Fundraising. The entities that benefit from the Cooperative Program have historically agreed to forego direct solicitation of the churches for anything other than the Cooperative Program. There have been, of course, exceptions (like the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering), but the general agreement is that Southern Baptist entities cooperate with one another in raising money toward the common good through the Cooperative Program.

Five years ago I tried to describe the lay of the land before we had the Cooperative Program in a post entitled "The Year 25 BCP." When our entities were counting on direct funding from individual churches rather than upon the common stream of the Cooperative Program, increasing amounts of money were lost to the professional fundraisers.

Cooperative fundraising benefits us all because the moneychangers all take their cuts and we therefore benefit from the relative lack of them in our system. Right now those churches who just give large sums of money directly to the IMB are getting illegitimate benefits. They know about the IMB because of CP-funded promotional work, but they give around that stream. When the Cooperative Program dies, the funding for the fundraising will have to come out of those funds being raised. As the competitive environment becomes more threatening, entities will lose higher and higher percentages of their received gifts to cover fundraising overhead.

It is Cooperative Giving. We had one transitional year when our church delved into a little bit of direct giving to entities. We were, at that time, still in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. When the BGCT capped the amount of CP dollars that could go to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, making sure that our church's CP dollars could not flow through to SWBTS, we started to give some amount of money directly to SWBTS in order to offset that spiteful act.

I quickly discovered that a lot of perks and benefits come from direct giving. We had never been recognized before, but suddenly the same level of contribution, given directly to the institution, qualified us for the President's Club. I got invited to soirees. Our church's name was printed on fancy programs.

But as soon we were able to do so, we returned to a thoroughly Cooperative-Program-focused giving strategy. Our church didn't get the same level of recognition, but we weren't in it for the recognition to begin with. We just wanted to be found faithful to do our part in giving to support our common Great Commission work. We give not only as an obligation to our Lord in fulfilling the Great Commission, but also as an obligation to our sister churches, that we should not leave others on the hook for more than their fair share of the burden of what we have planned together.

It is Cooperative Work. The Cooperative Program is built around the idea that it takes a multi-homed approach to accomplish the work of the Great Commission. It's wonderful that we have an International Mission Board. Now, who's going to train the missionaries? We're going to need seminaries for that, and they're going to have to produce students who aren't up to their eyeballs in educational debt. By the way, where will the seminaries find those students? They're going to be the students who surrendered to missions at Falls Creek and at other Baptist encampments maintained mostly by state conventions and operated either by them or by folks like our friends at Lifeway. How did they get there? They fell under the influence of pastors or youth pastors or other people at a local Southern Baptist church, which was probably planted once upon a time by a state convention and whose leadership probably attended a seminary. That local church, by the way, will provide the funding for every link in the chain.

The Cooperative Program is simply what you get when you fully realize that none of these parts will thrive without the others. We work cooperatively because we cannot succeed otherwise.

Conclusion

Do you see why I think it is so important that the leaders casting the vision for our convention should be proven supporters of the Cooperative Program? It is more than just a question of accounting. It is more than just dumpster-diving through ACP records to ferret out who gave what when.

Promoting leaders who have a passion for a Cooperative-Program-centered vision for our future means promoting leaders who buy into a whole philosophy of cooperation. It will affect the way that they raise funds. It will affect the way that they view their relationships with one another and with the state conventions and local associations and churches. It will affect the way that they envision the interface between the cogs of their work and all else that happens in Southern Baptist life.

Having this CP-vision is therefore among the most important qualifications for a person who would serve in a role like the IMB Presidency. At least I think so. Whatever bold vision a man might have for the future of the IMB, the power to achieve it will be found only—mark my words—only in his ability to bring Southern Baptist mules (a deliberately chosen metaphor!) together and yoke them into the same harnesses and get them coordinated in the traces. The only approach that has ever accomplished this objective well has been the approach that we call the Cooperative Program.

The best bet for a leader who will successfully accomplish that approach is the man who has already demonstrated an appreciation for it. May the Lord give us that man.

Why David Platt Should Not Be the Next IMB President

I hope you'll recall that I have, in general, tried to be a voice of reasoned, calm moderation in the midst of previous administrative transitions in the SBC. When so many of my friends were vocally opposed to the election of Dr. Jason Allen at MWBTS, for example, I wrote this to ask them to take a deep breath and calm down (and I've got to say, I'm pretty pleased with his performance so far). Those of you who know me well have come to conclude, I hope, that I am not unreasonably reactionary.

Nevertheless, having received confirmation from multiple independent sources across the country that David Platt is the IMB Search Committee's choice to receive the presidency of the International Mission Board, I cannot help but express my opinion that the trustees must not elect him to serve in this position. I offer the following reasons, pretty much in descending order of their importance to me.

First, his election is a disastrous blow to the Cooperative Program. His church makes no Annual Church Profile report, and the strongest endorsement of the Cooperative Program he was able to make when asked was, "I'm still wrestling through how [the Cooperative Program] looks in the context of [the church I pastor]." Wrestling. In other words, he affirmed the Cooperative Program with his words even though he didn't lead his church to support the Cooperative Program financially. It isn't because they are so embarrassed about how high their CP support is that Brook Hills is refusing to complete Annual Church Profiles. The Southern Baptist Convention is full of pastors, missionaries, and laypeople who don't have to wrestle with it at all. We know how the CP looks in our churches. We give money through it and change the world for the gospel.

I've got to say, generally I'm the guy who is uncomfortable with all of us picking on each other about our varying levels of CP support. Churches are autonomous. They make their own decisions. Especially I find it distasteful for denominational employees to dare to criticize churches for what they give or don't give. We ought to be thankful for every dollar.

But the calculus of all of that changes a little, I think, when you're asking to be considered for the position of heading up the agency that receives over half of the national CP allocation. At that point, I think it becomes relevant whether you've been a CP visionary who has given actual leadership to strengthen the CP or whether you're somebody who didn't consider strengthening the CP to be worthy of your time and effort. The latter category reflects a group of people who are too lacking in vision and leadership to be promoted to such a position as the helm of the IMB.

David Platt simply has not given leadership with regard to the CP—neither to contribute to it effectively nor to fix whatever he thinks is broken that might prevent him from having confidence in the CP. I'm not saying that he could not; I'm simply observing that he has not. If he wants to go about doing so between now and whenever the next guy at the IMB retires, I'd be happy to consider him among the other qualified candidates at that time.

Look, friends, the Cooperative Program is not dead yet, and it will only die if you and I sit by and watch it die. If those setting the vision for the future of the SBC are a collection of people who really don't care very much about the Cooperative Program, then it certainly will die. I think that would be a shame. I'd be ashamed of myself if I stood by and watched it happen without having said anything. That's what brings me to my keyboard tonight.

Second, His election will be a needlessly polarizing event. And our trustees ought to ask themselves whether that's good for the IMB, good for the SBC, or good for the cause of the gospel. Think of all of the constituencies in the SBC who are going to be offended and polarized by his election:

1. Pro-Cooperative-Program Southern Baptists are not going to like it.
2. Anti-Calvinists are not going to like it (and this time there are not going to be non-Calvinist voices like mine speaking to mitigate them)
3. Anyone who uses "The Sinner's Prayer" is likely to have some concerns.

Perhaps you don't sympathize with ANY of those points of view. But that's not really the question, is it? The question is whether it makes a brighter future for the IMB to put a stick into the eye of every Southern Baptist who does fall into one or more of those categories.

Some of you will be offended by what I am writing tonight. I beg of you to ask yourself this question: If you and I have sometimes agreed… If you've ever in the past respected anything else that I have written or felt that I was at all a reasonable interlocutor when we disagreed… If ever you've felt that you and I were partners in the work of the Great Commission or could be partners in the work of the Great Commission… If any or all of that has ever been true for you, then do you think it is a wise choice for the IMB to elect a president who would bring you and me to an impasse like this?

Why, at this moment, in this way, should we polarize the Southern Baptist Convention over this?

The clear answer to me is that we shouldn't. There are other good choices. I pray that the IMB will make one of them.

Third, I fear that, even after his election were over, if it were to occur, he would prove to be a polarizing personality. His statements about "The Sinner's Prayer" are a good example. Ask yourself, how much worse would that controversy have been if the sitting president of the IMB were to make statements like that? And if the president of the IMB made statements like that, wouldn't more than his book sales suffer from it? Should the International Mission Board be jeopardized in that way?

But I think that being "Radical" necessarily involves being someone willing to charge off into controversy from time to time. The question is not whether the world needs people like that. The question is not even whether the Southern Baptist Convention needs people like that. The question is whether Southern Baptists need people like that…at the helm of the International Mission Board.

For my part, I think that personality type and aptitude fit very well the role of a seminary professor. I think it fits very well the role of a pastor and author. I'll even say that I'm entirely comfortable with the idea of David Platt as a successor to Al Mohler or Danny Akin (especially if he shows a little more leadership with regard to the Cooperative Program in the future). I just think it is a mistake we cannot afford right now for us to make him the IMB President. The right guy for the wrong job.

And I cannot make this point strongly enough (I mean that: I won't be able to make it strongly enough for most of you to hear it and believe it). I like David Platt. He's a good preacher. He's a good author. He has said a few things that we need to hear. I support him. I want him to succeed. I support David Platt, and I support the IMB. I just don't support David Platt at the IMB.

Those facts won't keep me from losing friends over this post. And with a heavy heart I realize that if David Platt were to author a post like this about me, I would certainly take it personally and would be offended. It would cast a pall over any friendship or partnership we might try to have afterwards. I realize that the personal stakes involved in a post like this one are high.

But I value the tens of thousands of dollars that my church annually gives through the Cooperative Program. I value the UUPG work that my church is doing through the International Mission Board, to which tens of thousands more dollars are going and to which I personally have given a lot of time, prayer, effort, and discomfort. I value the lives of young people and not-so-young people who are close to me who are serving through the IMB or are planning to serve there. I value the Great Commission. I value the cause of the gospel. I value these things too much to be able to remain silent at this point when I believe so much of this is on the line. We are to be servants of one another. To borrow a phrase from Thomas More, I desire to be David Platt's good servant, but God's first.

I believe in our trustee system. Our trustees have not voted yet. I beg of you not to do so until you have given these questions full and careful consideration. That's your job. You owe that to the rest of us. There are better choices out there. Please be careful to get this one right.

The IMB President's salary comes from the Cooperative Program. Whoever draws that salary ought to have been supportive of the Cooperative Program. For me, it's no more complicated than that. We need not an IMB President who wrestles with the Cooperative Program, but one who has embraced it.