Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

The most prominent characters in Radical, apart from Platt himself, are majority-world Christians. (“Majority-world,” in this context, designates those countries that are not historically part of Western civilization, many of which remain economically underdeveloped in comparison to the USA’s standard of living). These figures loom large in Platt’s many anecdotes, which relate interactions from Platt’s travels to places like Indonesia, Sudan, and other African and Asian countries (some of which go unidentified because of the dangers involved in living as Christians there). These characters do not tend to recur throughout the book—each one simply serves as the center of their own anecdote.

Platt holds up majority-world Christians as inspiring examples of biblical virtues which American Christians, by contrast, often struggle to attain. His anecdotes illustrate their commitment to living out their faith, even if it costs them their own lives. They have a radical trust in God’s provision even though living in impoverished circumstances. They are also possessed by a hunger for the teaching of Scripture that exceeds what is typically seen in American Christianity, and have a reckless courage for sharing their faith even in the most dangerous conditions.

The Church at Brook Hills formed Platt’s professional and social context when he wrote Radical. It appears regularly throughout the book, both as an institution and in anecdotes about interactions with individual church members. Brook Hills was a relatively young church during Platt’s pastorate, founded in 1990 with a group of 40 members who met on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. It grew quickly under the leadership of its pastor, Rick Ousley, and by 1993 had secured a new location where it constructed the facilities that would see its rise to megachurch status. By the time David Platt came on as pastor in 2006, Brook Hills was a congregation of between 4000 and 5000 members.

Both Brook Hills and David Platt were well-known in Southern Baptist circles, and the personal advocacy of Platt’s mentor, Jim Shaddix, assisted in the pastoral search that brought Platt on board. Platt’s tenure as head pastor was marked by sustained high levels of membership and a significant commitment to the ideals of both personal discipleship and support of the global Christian church. Platt was enabled and encouraged to make regular trips to other countries to help teach, encourage, and observe Christians who lived in conditions of active persecution. Platt took the lessons from these trips and incorporated them into the congregational life of Brook Hills, as for instance by instituting “Secret Church,” a periodic gathering modeled on the practices of persecuted Christians, wherein church members would gather quietly in simple, basic conditions, and spend hours together in Bible study. Many of Platt’s anecdotes about American reactions to the teachings of his Radical-inspired program of discipleship come from feedback he encountered from the Brook Hills congregation.