David Platt - Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

Response to Radical

In his compelling new book, Radical, David Platt delivers a powerful picture of the church in America today that, on key points, stands in sharp contrast to what the Bible shows us about the person and purpose of Jesus Christ. David challenges Christians to wake up, trade in false values rooted in the American dream, and embrace the notion that each of us is blessed by God for a global purposeto make Christs glory known to all the nations! This is a must-read for every believer!

W ESS S TAFFORD , president and CEO , Compassion Intl.

We have moved into a generation of young leaders who have a passion to surrender the American dream if necessary in order to embrace fully, compassionately, and wholeheartedly a bigger dreamthe Great Commission. I have never been challenged by an author more than I have by David Platt. Read Radical, be blessed, and be changed.

J OHNNY H UNT , president, Southern Baptist Convention, and pastor, First Baptist Church of Woodstock

Radical will cause you to bounce on a spectrum between two words: ouch and amen. Tough truths do that. They challenge us to examine our lives and then choose the lasting over the temporary. Read Radical if youre ready to live differently.

G REGG M ATTE , senior pastor, First Baptist Church of Houston

David Platts book will leave anyone who sincerely engages with his challenge dissatisfiedand faced with a decision: What will authentic faith look like in my life? This book has the potential to revitalize churches today to practice a radical, biblical lifestyle that can transform society and reach a lost world.

J ERRY R ANKIN , president, International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention

The church of the Lord Jesus has been seduced by a skilled seductress: the American dream. David Platt exposes this enemy of authentic Christianity and provides a way of escape through a radical faith that leads to a radical obedience. I am not the same after reading it. I trust that will also be true for you.

D ANIEL L. A KIN , president, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

It is almost impossible to keep the idols of our own culture from influencing us, whether we want it to happen or not. This is certainly true when it comes to the so-called American dream. We need our eyes opened! We need to be called out! In this challenging and thoughtful book, David Platt shows us the way to live for Someone and something bigger.

D ARRIN P ATRICK , founding pastor, The Journey, St. Louis

Sometimes people will commend a book by saying, You wont want to put it down. I cant say that about this book. Youll want to put it down, many times. If youre like me, as you read David Platts Radical, youll find yourself uncomfortably targeted by the Holy Spirit. Youll see just how acclimated you are to the American dream. But youll find here another Way, one you know to be true, because youve heard it before in the words of the Lord Jesus, perhaps most forcefully in the simple call Follow me.

R USSELL D. M OORE , dean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Through solid examination of the Scriptures and compelling testimonies from believers enduring persecution, my friend David Platt pulls back the curtain on subtle dangers weakening the church in our Western culture. Radical is the urgent call we need to care more about the spiritually lost and physically impoverished people of the world.

E D S TETZER , president, LifeWay Research

To Heather,
my beautiful bride and best friend

S OMEONE W ORTH L OSING E VERYTHING F OR

W HAT RADICAL ABANDONMENT TO J ESUS REALLY MEANS

The youngest megachurch pastor in history.

While I would dispute that claim, it was nonetheless the label given to me when I went to pastor a large, thriving church in the Deep Souththe Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama. From the first day I was immersed in strategies for making the church bigger and better. Authors I respect greatly would make statements such as, Decide how big you want your church to be, and go for it, whether thats five, ten, or twenty thousand members. Soon my name was near the top of the list of pastors of the fastest-growing U.S. churches. There I was living out the American church dream.

But I found myself becoming uneasy. For one thing, my model in ministry is a guy who spent the majority of his ministry time with twelve men. A guy who, when he left this earth, had only about 120 people who were actually sticking around and doing what he told them to do. More like a minichurch, really. Jesus Christthe youngest minichurch pastor in history.

So how was I to reconcile the fact that I was now pastoring thousands of people with the fact that my greatest example in ministry was known for turning away thousands of people? Whenever the crowd got big, hed say something such as, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Not exactly the sharpest church-growth tactic. I can almost picture the looks on the disciples faces. No, not the drink-my-blood speech! Well never get on the list of the fastest-growing movements if you keep asking them to eat you.

By the end of that speech, all the crowds had left, and only twelve men remained. Jesus apparently wasnt interested in marketing himself to the masses. His invitations to potential followers were clearly more costly than the crowds were ready to accept, and he seemed to be okay with that. He focused instead on the few who believed him when he said radical things. And through their radical obedience to him, he turned the course of history in a new direction.

Soon I realized I was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings. I was now confronted with a startling reality: Jesus actually spurned the things that my church culture said were most important. So what was I to do? I found myself faced with two big questions.

The first was simple. Was I going to believe Jesus? Was I going to embrace Jesus even though he said radical things that drove the crowds away?

The second question was more challenging. Was I going to obey Jesus? My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to him. In other words, my biggest fear is that I will do exactly what most people did when they encountered Jesus in the first century.

Thats why Ive written this book. I am on a journey. But I am convinced it is not just a journey for pastors. I am convinced these questions are critical for the larger community of faith in our country today. I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe. And I am convinced we have a choice.

You and I can choose to continue with business as usual in the Christian life and in the church as a whole, enjoying success based on the standards defined by the culture around us. Or we can take an honest look at the Jesus of the Bible and dare to ask what the consequences might be if we really believed him and really obeyed him.