"Radical" Pastor David Platt Elected International Mission Board President

David Platt, pastor of the 4,500-member Church at Brook Hills, has been elected president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. Platt is the author of bestselling book “Radical” and “Follow Me,” and knowns as one of the most influential proponents of missions for evangelicals. 

The 36-year-old succeeds former president Tom Elliff to the post. Platt will take office immediately, heading the denomination’s largest missionary-sending organization.

Platt said he did not know the election was coming, but has answered the call to serve. 

“This is not something I saw coming. I love pastoring The Church at Brook Hills. I love shepherding this local church on mission for the glory of God among the nations and could picture myself doing that for decades to come. At the same time, God has been doing an unusual work in my heart and life. The only way I can describe it is that He’s been instilling in me a deeper, narrowing, Romans 15 kind of ambition, where [the Apostle] Paul said, ‘I want to see Christ preached where He has not been named.’ … He has given me a deeper desire to spend more of my time and energy and resources in the short life He has given me to seeing Christ preached where He’s not been named. The concept of unreached peoples — of nearly 2 billion people who have never heard the Gospel — is just totally intolerable," Platt said.

Publication date: August 27, 2014