During the past four years, McLean Bible Church (MBC) has faced multiple lawsuits and what elders called a “coordinated and stated strategy to deride and ‘oust’ [Pastor] David Platt” and other leaders. Following the dismissal of the final active lawsuit last December, the multisite church near Washington, D.C., released a lengthy report about its “significant challenges” plus its plans to move forward.
In an introduction, elders said the report contained details that leaders chose not to share with church members until all lawsuits had been dismissed. With that now true, the elders said they are sharing the report for three reasons: To reveal “the destructive effect of even a small group of people…who choose not to follow biblical instructions regarding conflict resolution.” To maintain “biblical faithfulness and pastoral transparency regarding church discipline.” And to offer “closure for those of you who have been harmed by these challenges.”
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Wade Burnett, MBC’s executive pastor as well as a lawyer and consultant, presented the report earlier this year. “Jesus is good and does good, even when things are hard,” he wrote. “I want us to be encouraged, and I also want all of us to be able to come together even more in the future as we continue to pursue biblical health and restoration.”
McLean Bible Church Faced Years of Turmoil
ChurchLeaders has reportedly extensively on the unrest and legal back-and-forth at McLean Bible Church. It began with a contested elder election in 2021 and included a whisper campaign by a few disgruntled members, accusations of wokeness, and allegations that Pastor David Platt was affiliating the church with the SBC. One rumor was that MBC was planning to sell its main campus to Muslims so they could build a mosque on the site.
Platt became teaching pastor at MBC after stepping down as president of the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He had accused the IMB of playing “political games” with the Great Commission.
According to its report, McLean Bible Church has faced a difficult past four years:
Eleven plaintiffs have filed three lawsuits, multiple amended complaints to those lawsuits (each of which required separate responsive pleadings), multiple additional requests for injunctions to stop church business and/or church votes, and three separate appeals over the course of multiple years after decisions were rendered in favor of the church. All told, these legal filings have required over 2,790 hours of outside legal counsel to date, and they have cost MBC deeply with immense time and resources diverted away from…our mission as a church family.
These and other actions “have brought harm to the reputation of Christ and to MBC,” the report stated. And although media outlets often reported on the allegations, “there has never been equal coverage of the actual outcomes of these various lawsuits.”
The outcomes, the report noted, is that “each and every one of the lawsuits filed against MBC has either been outright rejected, dismissed by the courts, and/or withdrawn by the plaintiffs themselves.”
MBC elders noted that after extensive investigation, they determined that Lead Pastors Mike Kelsey and David Platt “have both exemplified what it means to be above reproach [and] the accusations against them are completely untrue.”
McLean Bible Church Says It Endured ‘Lawfare’
The initial lawsuit against MBC involved the 2021 disputed elder election, an alleged disinformation campaign, improper access of a church database, accusations of ballot stuffing, “liberal theology and cultural Marxism,” and more.
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