MacArthur: The Man and His Ministry

by
John MacArthur
All Rights Reserved

If you enjoy listening to Christian radio or cassette tape studies, you are probably acquainted with John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church of the Valley in Panorama City, California. In the following interview John shares a little about himself, his background, his philosophy of ministry, and how the tape and radio ministries began.

Question: What kind of educational background do you have?

John: I was raised in the southern California area, so I attended schools there. My first two years of college were spent at Bob Jones University, and then I completed my college education at Los Angeles Pacific College--now defunct. From there I proceeded to Talbot Theological Seminary to complete my seminary training.

Question: Have you always wanted to be a preacher?

John: I am a fifth-generation preacher. Because my father and grandfather were preachers and pastors, I grew up with a pastor's heart and a pastor's mentality. I saw how my father and grandfather functioned, and I understood what it was to be a pastor. From the time I was very small--five or six years old--I would stand on a soapbox in the backyard and preach to my sisters or anybody in the neighborhood who would listen--and get angry when they didn't respond. I guess I just assumed that I'd be a pastor like my father and grandfather.

But as I became involved in athletics during my college days and found fulfillment in that, I thought that perhaps I'd be a professional athlete. I did have some opportunities to play professionally, both in football and baseball, but by then I had affirmed in my own heart that God wanted me in the ministry. So I chose seminary over an athletic career.

Question: Could you explain how you came to know Christ as your Savior?

John: I really can't remember a time when I didn't believe, and I never had a time when I rebelled. There was nothing in Christianity that I could see that was objectionable, and I accepted openly everything about Christ.

But the incident I recall as having a pivotal effect on me occurred when I was traveling with my father to a revival meeting in the Midwest. My father was staying in a home in the town and preaching every night. And I got acquainted with a boy in the neighborhood--we were about seven at the time. He had plans for us one afternoon, and we went down and vandalized the local school--overturned desks and the sandbox, poured out inkwells and did some bad things. Later that evening a man came to our house to ask if I had been involved; somebody had seen me in the area. And my father assured him that I would never do a thing like that.

I remember being devastated at having betrayed my father's trust. That night at the meeting I went forward. I felt like I had to tell my father--and the Lord--what I had done. That incident crystallized for me a moment of commitment to Christ even when I was very young.

Question: After that incident did you ever come to a crisis point in your relationship with God?

John: Yes, when I went away to college, I was willing in my heart to do what God wanted me to do, but there were some areas of my life that were not in submission to Christ. And the Lord knew that there needed to be some further refining in my life. After my freshman year of college, I was driving across the country with five other young people, and we were involved in a serious accident. I wound up in a hospital and was in bed for three months. And during that time I made a total commitment of my life to Christ. I was 18 years old at the time. I said, "Lord, I can see now that my life is really in Your hands, and You have absolute control of not only my eternal destiny, but also my time here in this world."

Question: Did you know then that you were headed for the ministry?

John: After that I changed schools to pursue an athletic career, and during that time I reconsidered a childhood dream of being a professional athlete. But it all came down to an incident during my last year of college football. Someone asked me to go and share Christ with a girl who had been shot in the neck by her boyfriend. She was lying in a hospital with a severed spinal cord. I went and introduced her to Christ, and she was wonderfully saved. And I told myself then, "You know, this is what really matters." So at that point my priority was clearly defined.

Question: Have you been able to realize some of those athletic dreams and desires even in the ministry?

John: I have Bible studies with several of the professional sports teams in Los Angeles, with the baseball teams and with the Rams. So the Lord has seen fit to use all that background.

Question: Talk a little about the history of Grace Church and your association with it.

John: When I left seminary I worked in a church with my dad, and I taught at Los Angeles Baptist College, which is now The Master's College. At the same time I traveled a lot and preached at youth conferences and special meetings. I knew that I needed experience in preaching if I was going to be effective in a church ministry. Then I joined the staff of Talbot Theological Seminary and spent two and a half years preaching all over the country--an average of 35-40 times a month.

At the end of that time I was asking God to open a door for me. At that time the pastor of Grace Community Church had just died of a heart attack. And the pastor before him had also died of a heart attack. I think by then they might have been saying, "I don't care if he's good; just get him young!" So after I had preached here one Sunday night, I was approached about candidating, and eventually I came as pastor. The church had 450 to 500 people at the time. It was a strong church in terms of personal relationships and love, and there was good leadership. There was also a wonderful youth program. It was an exciting, energetic and wonderful church even then, although there were not nearly so many people.

Question: What were you committed to, and what did you end up doing in those days?

John: I had said that I wanted at least 30 hours a week to study. I believed that Ephesians 4 says the pastor's job is to perfect the saints, and that comes about through the Word of God. I thought that possibly the other 10 to 15 hours would be used in visitation and so on. But the men said, "We'll take care of the visitation, because James says visitation is pure religion. Everybody does that." But, of course, what you anticipate and what really happens are two different things. I found that my "other 10 or 15" hours turned out to be another 30 in addition to the 30 I already had for study--I never sacrificed that.

Question: What is your philosophy in building a church?

John: When a reporter asked me once if I had a great desire to build the church, I told him, "No. I have absolutely no desire to build the church. That's not my job. Jesus said, 'I will build My church,' and I would rather not compete with Him. I simply want to allow Him to do that through me in a small way in one location."

As I see it, my calling is to know God. I do not study the Bible to get a sermon. Instead I approach the Scriptures this way: I have an insatiable hunger to know what the Bible means so that I will know how I can live to glorify God. My ministry is to spend my whole life finding out what the Bible says. And at the end of the week, when I've discovered the truths that have been there, I get to share them with the rest of the church. That is a ministry that overflows out of the relationship that I have with the Lord, which comes from the study of His Word. That overflows from my life and touches the lives of those in the congregation. And as we grow together, out of that comes the nurturing of leadership.

Question: So then the leadership comes from right within the church itself?

John: That's right. We now have more than 40 people on our pastoral staff, not counting supporting staff and others. Most of them have come from our congregation. A good example would be Norman Sper, who began our radio ministry. Norm comes out of a background of business and television. He said to me one day, "I think your messages would do well on radio." And I responded, "Wonderful. You try it and see what happens." So he began as a volunteer to develop the radio program, and it has grown into a full-time ministry for him. And that has happened many times. What always interested me was that we didn't have to start a ministry for these people. The ministry began first, and they simply stepped in to help it function better. And as the ministry develops and grows, then we move in and say, "God has blessed our ministry. We want you to give your full life to this, so we'll take over your support."

Question: Did you ever envision a church of more than 7000 in attendance on Sunday morning?

John: Well, of course not. And even today I don't comprehend that. I said to somebody the other day, "I keep coming here on Sunday to preach, and all these people show up." And frankly I don't know why. And it isn't something you can reproduce. Men come here from churches all over the world to study and learn from us, and I really don't know what to tell them. We can tell them the basic biblical standards, but we can't guarantee that anyone can produce this somewhere else.

Question: What kinds of things do you see for the future?

John: So many of my longtime goals are now being fulfilled, and it's wonderful to watch the Lord work. I was recently called to be president of The Master's College, in Newhall, California. I'm thrilled with the opportunity, because it will enable me to begin to fulfill a goal I've had all through my ministry: to train young people for the Lord's service.

I'm excited about the future of our video ministry, which has really grown in the past year. Video is such a flexible and effective means of communication, and it's becoming more and more available and easy to use.

Question: In such a vast ministry as "Grace to You," it takes a lot of money to operate. What is your philosophy of raising money?

John: I don't often concern myself with that. Since my Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills and everything there is in the universe, if He's got a project in mind, He can finance it. I was raised in a pastor's family, and my dad taught me the Word. I went away to seminary, and I learned the Word. I don't know anything about running a business. I don't know anything about a financial organization. So I leave that to other people.

But I do believe that there are some biblical standards that need to be applied. Our task is to know that God is in something and then to let people know that He is in it so that they can be a part of it. We don't believe in gimmicks to induce people to give for whatever reasons. But we do believe that we ought to say, "People, do you know what God is doing, and would you like to have a part?"

Question: Could you tell us a little bit about the growth of the tape ministry?

John: The tape ministry has been a very exciting thing to me. When I first came, a dear man came to me after my first Sunday and said, "John, we need to have your messages on tape, so the people who miss can get them." And of course I said, "Well, that's wonderful. Why don't you do that?" So he brought a little recorder and started making reel-to-reel tapes--big seven-inch reels.

Then one Sunday a doctor came to me and said, "We could do this on cassettes. Let me buy you a little cassette machine." So he did, and one dear brother took the little cassette machine home and all the reel-to-reel machines, and eventually he had his whole house wired with these little machines, copying from one tape to the next. As time went on it became impossible for him to produce tapes one at a time because the demand grew here in our church. We decided to upgrade our equipment, and the tape ministry began to grow.

Then by word of mouth, people in other states and even other countries were hearing about the tape ministry. It has always depended on the volunteer people who would give of their time to it. We have never actively promoted it until the past few years. Someone said it's not right that we don't let people know that it is at least available.

Question: How many tapes do you distribute?

John: Last year we produced the five-millionth tape. That doesn't include tapes copied and distributed by other tape ministries around the world. I guess it shows how hungry people are to learn the Word of God.

Question: What is the charge for the tapes?

John: We don't charge any more for the tapes than they actually cost us to produce. Individual tapes are $3.00 apiece, and we sell albums for a little more than $2.00 a tape. That's less than a blank cassette of equal quality costs.

That price has made this ministry accessible to anybody. And if someone wants the tapes and can't pay, we have a tape library where a person can have a library card and just check out tapes and then send them back.

Question: One of the outgrowths of this ministry has been the "Grace to You" radio program. Would you give us a little idea of how "Grace to You" got started?

John: It's like so many other things. Norm Sper came to me one time and said, "We ought to be on the radio." And I said, "Well, that's great. Why don't you do that? Why don't you pray about that and pursue that ministry if God has brought you to that?" So we purchased some time on a local radio station. And they just played a tape, that was all. Then a young man whom I had gone to college with got hold of a tape series we had run and decided to play them every night on his radio station in Baltimore, Maryland, as a featured preaching hour. The response was so positive that he told us, "You know, you really need to be on the radio."

But I couldn't give time to make radio programs. I spend so long each week studying for the Sunday messages, and I feel so burdened about that because that's the basis of everything we do. We finally decided that maybe we would take the tapes and edit them for radio, since I had already preached about 700 messages. It would give us maybe 1400 radio programs. And we've slowly expanded from that beginning.

Question: What is your philosophy of appealing for money on the radio?

John: We just rarely do that. I'm a little resistant to the idea of appealing for funds. I see so much of that today that just doesn't honor the Lord. We feel we have a responsibility to let people know what God is doing, and give them the opportunity to participate, but beyond that, I believe it's wrong to hound people to give, or to make money a focus of the ministry. So I'd rather err on the side of saying too little.

Question: How has the Lord provided?

John: Well, we have never faced a crisis so severe that it threatened our ministry. But we don't have any surplus, either. I'm constantly amazed at how the Lord provides through His people. It might be easier to operate if we had greater resources, but then perhaps we wouldn't be as consciously aware of the need to trust God to supply our needs.

Question: Can you recall some of the most interesting letters you have received from the listening audience?

John: I have so many letters with so many wonderful things that it's hard to narrow it down. I've received letters from people who listen in prison, and God has changed their lives. I've received letters from whole families who have been saved through listening to the program. I once received a letter from a girl who had put a gun to her head to kill herself. When she heard the radio program, she set the gun down and received Jesus Christ as her Savior.

Recently I heard from a woman who was listening to "Grace to You" when her husband came home unexpectedly for lunch. He was an unbeliever, and very antagonistic to the gospel. Her initial reaction was to turn the radio off so that he would not become angry, but something kept her from doing that. He began to listen, and was captivated by the word of God. He started listening to "Grace to You" daily, and within two weeks, he came home and told her that he had accepted the Lord as His Savior.

It's incidents like that that keep my enthusiasm for this ministry so high. When I think of all that God is doing around the world, and realize what a significant role radio plays in the spreading of the Word, I can't help but marvel. Truly, the opportunities we have today are greater than any era in the history of Christianity.