Simon Cox Blog: David Platt to Be a Teaching Pastor—Is it a Bridge Too Far for IMB President?

Thursday, 14 September 2017

David Platt to Be a Teaching Pastor—Is it a Bridge Too Far for IMB President?

International Mission Board president to become McLean Bible teaching pastor.

Harry Ironside, the pastor of Moody Church, was also the president of the African Inland Mission. People at Moody Church tell me that he rode the train in and out of Chicago, spending most of his time focused on the Africa Inland Mission, speaking all week.

Actually, Charles Blanchard was the pastor of Moody Church as well, while serving as the president of Wheaton College. (You can see the list of pastors here, and I will be covered under that category “no regular pastor” when they update this page!)

But can it be done today? Is that a bridge too far?

Well, I think it depends on how you pastor.

This week, it was announced that David Platt will soon be voted on to be the new teaching pastor at McLean Bible Church. Not everyone is excited about it, and I understand why. McLean is new to the SBC. Platt is reorganizing the board. The organization is going through tremendous change right now. And there are more concerns, I’m sure. After all, when you put three Baptists in a room, you get 14 concerns!

And, of course, SBC entity heads usually don’t do such a thing.

But, I’ll let his trustees worry about those things. For me, conceptually, I’m not too concerned about the bridge between organization leader and teaching pastor, for a few reasons, and maybe I am in a unique position to share some insights as to why.

Here’s some reasons I think that it is possible to walk across this bridge.

First, some people, they have to preach; they can’t last without preaching.

Some leaders, when they leave the pastorate for a non-pastoral leadership role, almost feel an emptiness when they are not preaching.

I get this. I went to Thom Rainer a few years into my tenure at LifeWay and told him of that very ...