The following "Question" was asked by an attendee at the 2005 Shepherds' Conference (a ministry of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California), and was "Answered" by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from "General Session #10 John MacArthur - Q&A."  A copy of the CD, cassette tape, or MP3 can be obtained by going to:  www.shepherdsconference.org  ©2005. All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church.

Questioner

Sir, with a church of this size—I come from a church of about 15 families—how do you oversee the strive of your men continually being likeminded?

John MacArthur's Answer

Well, that’s a good question.  Basically, as we were talking about a little bit in the Q & A yesterday, you have to start with first of all a doctrinal foundation.  We all start with a foundation of common conviction about the Word of God, and that gets us pretty far down the path.  There’s a second principle that I felt was absolutely critical in the life of the church, and that is this: if the leadership isn’t united, there’s no hope for the people to be united.  If the leaders don’t believe the same thing, speak the same thing, there’s no way the people will, because the leaders will then create factions.  So, at the very beginning, I determine that every decision made at a leadership level, in this church, needed to be unanimous.  That is to say that we need to come, before we make this decision, to a complete agreement. 

If somebody says, “I don’t see it, I don’t see it, I don’t see it; I don’t agree, I don’t agree, I don’t agree,” we continue to work it through until, at some point, that person convinces all the rest of us or we convince that person or that person decides that “this may be the direction of the Lord and I don’t want to hold that back.”  But, it is absolutely critical, in the life of a church—particularly a large church, but I’m sure, equally, a small church feels the brunt of this—to have unanimity at a leadership level.  Now, that doesn’t mean that if we’re trying to decide to paint a room green, we have to have all of the elders come to the conclusion that green—and the same shade of green—is the right color.  All that kind of stuff gets delegated.  It’s the big issues that we work on.  We have been able, through the years, to present a consensus, a united front, and unanimity on issues. 

Where you have godly, respected, trusted leaders who all agree, there’s really nowhere to attach your dissent.  So, even when, from time to time, there are people who might think something we decide to do is not right or whatever, it never really reaches a critical mass until discontent people can attach it to somebody in leadership, and then they’ve got the stuff to make a real mutiny.  So, I remind our pastors and our leaders all the time that the unity of this church, basically, hangs on your loyalty to this body and to this process.  If you betray this leadership and you become the lightning rod for dissent in the church that people can justify because they have somebody in a high position who agrees with them, now you have potentiated a mutiny.

So you have to understand the high calling and the responsibility, and remind people of Philippians 1:27 (“striving together”) and Philippians 2 (you know, having this kind of unity).  It’s a principle that basically says we all agree on the main doctrinal issues, we develop the ability to agree on ministry matters, and we stay working at it as long as we need to work at it, until we come to that agreement—honoring a person who dissents because maybe he has a point.  We need to bring clarity to him.  We need to make our case better, whatever that might be. 

Any time there’s ever been a mutiny here, any time there’s ever been a faction that ripped itself out of this church—and I can only think of three times that that happened and they were pretty cataclysmic.  One was after I hadn’t been here very long and it involved several of the young men that were on our ministerial staff.  The next time it happened after that, it involved a large group of people—maybe as many as 200 people—who left and just disintegrated and disappeared into other churches (we’ve seemed to attract almost all of them back to our church over subsequent years).  The other one was another incident where a group of people were pulled out of this church.  In every single case, it was because people who were dissenting with the direction of the church found a hearing ear at the elder or staff level.  That kind of betrayal is deadly.  And it’s often bred of jealousy and envy and somebody feels like he’s not getting his due or some kind of irritation because somebody doesn’t feel like he’s being heard or whatever. 

So, the key thing is the heart and spirit and godliness and humility and the willingness to be a part of the elders as one who submits to the direction that becomes obvious to all.  When you get somebody who resists that, you have a problem.  So, you work very hard at that level and, as the years go by…it starts with your doctrine—that’s the first thing you get settled—then it moves to your philosophy of ministry, and once those things are in place, you have less critical decisions to make.  But I think what’s saved us is we don’t vote on anything.  I knew, because of where I grew up, if you have a board that votes on things and you go out (you know, four guys wanted it and two guys didn’t want it, but the four won so we’re doing it), you just potentiated a split in your church.  If it’s six-to-four or if it’s fifteen-to-eight, you just can’t do that, because now you’ve got people in spiritual leadership who feel that the church is going the wrong direction—and there’s no way that’s not going to carry down.    People who lost are going to talk about it. 

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Our websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986