John MacArthur: servant of the Word and flock

This month sees the publication of a biography of John MacArthur by Iain Murray. The following extract refers to the beginning of the preacher’s ministry at Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California.

There had been blessing and growth in the church under its first pastors. A missionary concern was established, and there was some support for prayer meetings on Sundays and Wednesday evenings; the mid-week meeting also included a Bible study. Yet, as in all churches, the composition of the congregation was mixed, and the early days at Grace Church were not without their difficulties. At the outset there were some who did not like his first Sunday morning sermon on ‘How to Play Church’. ‘As a result of that confrontational sermon several couples left the church, and we discovered that at least one elder was not a Christian.’ That was not what the preacher wanted or intended: ‘When I first arrived at Grace Church, my goal was to keep the people already there from leaving’.

Some things clearly needed changing. MacArthur made a start with proposals for the Sunday School: ‘When I first came to Grace Church, I had a new idea about how to run the Sunday School. I wrote out my idea and presented it to the Education Committee. They unanimously turned it down. They said, “Who are you, kid? We’ve been here longer than you”’.

Proper spiritual attitudes

This incident contributed to a lesson that would guide his whole future ministry. ‘I wasted a lot of energy when I was young trying to create concepts and programmes to get everyone conforming into a slot.’ He learned that life is more important than organisation, and life is the result of inner attitudes. So the first need was for hearts moved by God through Scripture, not for new methods or programs: The goal of a pastor and the leaders of a church should be to generate proper spiritual attitudes in the hearts of the people. They can’t just say, “You need to do this, and you need to do that”. They must generate the spiritual attitudes that will motivate the people to right behaviour . . . If the right kind of spiritual attitudes are present in a church, the structure will take care of itself, because Spirit-controlled people are going to do Spirit-led things.’

This lesson underscored the place of the pulpit. As God uses the Word preached, other things are bound to happen. This lay behind MacArthur’s early commitment to expository preaching. Within a month of his settlement. he took up verse-by-verse teaching from the opening chapters of Romans. Then he moved on to Ephesians 1, where the teaching on the believer’s position in Christ provided a new foundation in the thinking of many. One effect of God-anointed preaching is that a congregation will not remain simply listeners. Wherever there is real benefit from the Word of God, there will be people moved to love and reach out to others. In a healthy church community, Christian activity will be spontaneous. This is what happened at Sun Valley. There came a deepening spirit of zeal, enthusiasm, and sacrifice. One couple even gave up a honeymoon to be able to give more largely to the work. ‘Programmes’ for evangelism were unnecessary as Christians made it their everyday business to live lives pleasing to God. It was proved that ‘a congregation that evangelises 365 days a year is better than a church which has a week of “revival” meetings once a year’.

Ministry for everyone

‘The church should emphasise ministry for every individual believer. Church leadership shouldn’t recruit their members to do something out of legal obligation that they are not really motivated or gifted to do. Rather, the leadership should develop its members along the lines that the Spirit has gifted them. Aggressive, active, ministering people make a successful church.

‘We didn’t have many formal programmes, but everyone was ministering his gifts. People were always calling the church and asking if they could visit someone in the hospital, if the nursery needed more helpers, if someone was needed to clean the restrooms and windows, if help was needed to evangelise, or if someone was needed to teach a class. Everyone made himself available.’ Those who organised themselves to meet for prayer were at the heart of this activity.

What brings people to Christ?

‘Our church has been labelled in some circles as non-evangelistic . . . Do you know what brings most of these people to a saving knowledge of Christ? It is their personal contact with faithful Christians. People in our church witness to their neighbours, co-workers, other parents in Little League, friends at school, people in the markets, their doctors, their attorneys, and everyone they meet. And over the years the Lord has blessed that one-to-one evangelistic activity to bring more people to faith in Christ than any service, programme, or event we have ever sponsored.’ So Grace Community Church did not grow according to some pre-arranged plan; rather, it was as individuals spontaneously recognised opportunities and took them. In that way a tape-recording ministry had its beginnings.

One of the first articles on the church in a national Christian magazine drew special attention to this point under the title, ‘The Church with 900 ministers’. The author was Lowell Sanders, writing in Moody Monthly, June 1972. Sanders, on visiting the church, was struck by the way it was a congregation where ‘the people do the work’. The 32-year-old pastor told him: ‘As the people see needs in particular areas, they come to us with suggestions as to what should be done. And I say to them: “Go to it!” As a result’, Sanders continued, ‘800-900 people are actively engaged in some form of weekday activity that strengthens and enlarges the ministry of Grace Church.’ Numbers of conversions took place through local witness, in such places as a McDonald’s where members held a Bible study. Hunger for instruction led to a Logos Study Centre at the church on Monday and Tuesday evenings, where other men were the speakers. And 500 attended the Wednesday prayer meeting in the new church auditorium which had opened that same year.

It might seem from Sanders’s article that MacArthur played a comparatively small role. He told Sanders: ‘To study and to teach is the beginning, middle, and end of my responsibility’. But the visitor recognised how everything began with the pastor’s own devotion to Scripture. He spends five to six hours a day, four or five days a week, with his Bible and books. Although his office door is always open to parishioners and he has no secretary near at hand to protect him, his people respect his need for uninterrupted study.

In the words of a later observer, Phil Johnson, the distinguishing characteristic of the congregation at Sun Valley became ‘a fervent passion to understand and obey the Word of God’. MacArthur’s hope was that ‘every Christian would be like a battery that joins with other believers and corporately increases the church’s output’. The picture recalls Spurgeon’s words: ‘Great things are done by the Holy Spirit when a whole church is aroused to sacred energy: then there are hundreds of testimonies instead of one, and these strengthen each other’.

This article is an extract from John MacArthur, Servant of the Word and Flock by Iain H. Murray (The Banner of Truth Trust, £14.50, ISBN 978 1 848 711 129), and is used with permission.

John MacArthur: servant of the Word and flock

Proper spiritual attitudes

Ministry for everyone

What brings people to Christ?

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