Jamie talks to David Platt about his recent Acts 13 moment, why international missions, and about what the city of New Orleans means to him.
Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie Dew.
Joe: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And once again we welcome you to the Towel and Basin podcast.
Joe: And today is a little different. Jamie is going to be talking to David Platt.
Jamie: Yeah, he was on campus, preached in chapel for us. Obviously he preached on missions, which we were grateful to hear from him on. So we just sat down with him real quick and talked to him about why missions, and why specifically places like the 10/40 window, and then how to use this city well in our students' preparation.
Joe: It was a good interview. So here is Jamie and David.
Jamie: All right. Well welcome back to the Towel and Basin. This is Jamie Do, the podcast from in NOBTS Leavell College, where we talk about all things Christianity, and related especially to being a servant for Christ, and we cover a lot of different types of topics in this podcast. Today my guest is Dr. David Platt, someone very well known to the Southern Baptist constituency and to the family here at in NOBTS Leavell College. Thanks so much for joining us today.
David: It is so good to be here.
Jamie: Yeah, well we love having you here at chapel. You were super well received and I really appreciate you taking the time, especially as I mentioned, walking over with the students at the end to encourage them, it means the world to us. Tell us real quick about McLean Bible Church and your role there, and how long you've been there and how that's going.
David: So I am lead pastor at McLean Bible Church. It's in Metro Washington, DC, so technically Northern Virginia, but then we have campuses just kind of all around Metro DC. So I've been there two years, and yeah, it's a unique church. I mean, being in that city, we have over a hundred nations represented in the church. So it's just very multiethnic, and so the opportunities to make disciples among the nations right there, and then people who are oftentimes going from that church through all kinds of different jobs, government and otherwise, to different places in the world to make disciples among the nations. It's pretty awesome. So I love pastoring and I love pastoring that church.
Jamie: You mentioned in chapel that recently in recent weeks you've had sort of an Acts 13 moment, where you often spent time praying and fasting and God calling out people. Tell us about that, what that's been like as a church.
David: Yeah, so when I see Acts 13 and the church of Antioch worshiping, fasting, praying, and the spirit sending out Saul and Barnabas, I just think, why would we not ask the Lord to do the same thing? I mean I'm praying all the time, Matthew 9: 37-38, asking the Lord to send out laborers in the harvest field. So for us as a church to ... and I want to do this periodically, once or twice a year, where we just set aside some time and we fast as a church. We fasted one day on a Friday. That night we gathered for ... we do a late night prayer periodically. So we did one from eight to midnight and we just pray for the nations and put our lives on the table and say, "God, who are you leading to go?" We kind of set the stage for that one Sunday and then the next Sunday we said, okay, this Sunday we're going to ask who might the Lord be leading to go, and so the end of that sermon, part of the invitation was asking people to stand if they think the Lord may be leading them to go where the gospel hasn't gone, and so in all of our services, you've got people standing of all ages ,and then we begin a process with them to then discern, okay, when, where, how, is the Lord definitely doing this? Yeah, I just think in any church -
Jamie: It's important to break the rhythms of the habits of worship and do something like that.
David: Yeah, in any church, the ... I'm not saying I know for sure exactly what the spirit of God's going to do, but if you've got a hundred people filled with the spirit of God, I'm guessing with two plus billion people in the world who've never heard the gospel, that he's going to call somebody out. If you do that continually and kind of sow that seed just to see what the spirit of God does.
Jamie: Yeah. I mentioned in chapel when I was introducing you that one of the things that God has done through you over the last decade, decade and a half, two decades, however long your ministry has been.
David: I'm really old, man.
Jamie: By the way, I don't know if you remember ... I remember you preaching at a Crosspoint youth camp years ago and I brought my middle school youth group -
David: Are you serious?
Jamie: I did, yeah.
David: 1998, man.
Jamie: Yeah, and I can remember all of our students saying, "Man, that guy quotes a lot of scripture." They loved it, though. It was fantastic. So it was impressive.
David: Fourth through eighth graders, forest camp.
Jamie: Yeah. So I imagine it's longer than a decade now. So what is it ... I don't know, we won't reflect on how long that's been. But anyway, over the last decades, God has used you in a unique way to really call out the call from Southern Baptist churches and really in Evangelical churches to go to the nations, and so just to throw this question out for you, why? Why international missions? Why do you beat that drum the way that you do?
David: For me, it all goes back to when I was in college and I shared about this in chapel, just being in a breakout session of a college conference, and the leader just opened up God's word and walked from Genesis to Revelation and showed God's passion, zeal for his glory among all the nations, and it just ... it rocked my world. I just thought this changes everything, because if that's what God is passionate about, then that's what I should be passionate about, and not just me. I think we as the church should be passionate about. Now obviously that plays out in different ways in people's lives, and that was kind of the thing. I thought, well, okay, that means if I have a passion for God's glory among the nations, then I should be a missionary, and I've tried on a couple of different occasions and the Lord's just not called me to the one way ticket yet.
David: I'm still wondering if that's going to happen at some point, but I just see it all over God's word. I mean his goal in history is to make his glory known and enjoyed among all the nations. So I just want that to be what my life is about and I want to help do what that brother did for me in that college conference, to open up the word and I want to do this as a pastor. I want to show this, not just for a mission sermon once in a while, week after week to show that God's created us for his glory, that this is really, really good for us, and it's not just for us, it's for all people and all peoples everywhere. So I want to show that as a pastor, and then whether it's through writing or a traveling preacher somewhere, I want to ... I just think about how pivotal that was for somebody just open the Bible and show that to me on that day. I pray the Lord might use his word in that way through my mouth.
Jamie: Now again, picking up on something that you just mentioned in chapel, specifically though, when you think about doing God's work, being on mission, reaching the lost, in chapel you just talked about how it's important to think through strategically the where of that, because especially for our students, not just here at NOBTS Leavell college, but really at all of our schools, it's easy to come in to seminary with the dream of getting the job in your own culture, perhaps even your own community and being very comfortable there. Even though there's difficulties in ministry and there's hardships in ministry, still the comforts that are afforded to us in say Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, versus in Afghanistan. Why there? Why go Afghanistan? Why go India and Nepal versus a Mississippi or Alabama?
David: And I think this is the thrust of the great commission. This is the thrust of the New Testament, that the church must always keep pressing on where the gospel's not yet gone, and so there will always be needs wherever we are in the world, but when we look at places where the gospel has gone, by God's grace, we must be working to keep getting the gospel where it hasn't gone. So that's why Afghanistan, that's why Nepal, because there are over 2 billion people in the world, thousands upon thousands of people, groups who have little to no knowledge of the gospel, and Jesus has told us, make disciples among all of them.
David: So obviously I can't, you can't do that individually, but as a church, we are ... the thrust of scripture is to work to see the gospel go where hasn't gone, and that's what's so dangerous, as we were talking about in chapel, because we do a lot of missions work that's actually in places where the gospel has gone. So it's not that, again, there's not needs there, but we've got to open our eyes to there are so many people who have little to no knowledge of the gospel, and we have been given a God given responsibility to get the gospel to them, to work together to do that, and this is for all of us, and there's so many different ways this plays out in all of our lives, but this is for all of us to own together.
Jamie: So on that note, as our students come to a school like New Orleans or any one of the other schools, but especially I think of ours here for, my students here as they're preparing for gospel ministry at a school like this, in a city like this, with all that we have culturally, all that we have, the international influences and such. You studied here. What would you say to my students in terms of maximizing their preparation while they're here so that it's not just an academic experience? How do you use this city to prepare?
David: Absolutely. I would say ... I just love the question because I learned so much in these classrooms on this campus, so much that I'm so thankful for. This city was also a massive classroom for me. I learned so much in the city just doing ministry in the French Quarter, doing ministry as part of a local church here. I mean I don't want to say it was as much ... I don't even know how to compare them, but I learned so much in the city of New Orleans. So I would say here or wherever God has somebody, but specifically here, and I'm always saying ... I'm always encouraging people, and this is what I try to do in my own life, make disciples wherever you live and then make disciples wherever God leads, and do it with a focus among the nations in both. So I just think ... so for ... yeah, it would be tragic. I think that's the right word for a student to come to seminary or to come to New Orleans and learn all these truths of the gospel in a classroom and be in the city that is in such need of the gospel and not be on the streets making that gospel known.
David: And this is where all these truths in the classroom just come to life, and we're stretched and we're challenged, and the opportunity to do that literally among the nations that God by his sovereign grace is bringing here. There's a port here where he is bringing unreached people, groups here. You don't even have to get on a plane to go. It's right here, and so to maximize that, to steward this city, and I saw it. I saw some people around me who were in school and just didn't engage the city, and I'm not saying I did that perfectly by any means, but I wanted to. I tried, and the Lord taught me so much through that, and I hope he used my life for his glory here in this unique time of preparation. So to make disciples among the nations in New Orleans, and then I'm always encouraging, especially if there's possibly ... school's a unique time, but with a fall break, a spring break, a summer break, a Christmas break, look for opportunities to go to the nations during that time and steward those kind of opportunities that are uniquely there right now, in a way that hopefully will set up a pattern in your life, and maybe God will use that at some point to lead you to take a one way ticket.
Jamie: Amen. Well thanks for speaking to us today and may God continue to add his grace and blessing to your life in ministry with us.
David: Thanks. Pure joy.
Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again.
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Jamie: And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.