General Session #5
John MacArthur and Phil Johnson
Questions and Answers
Question: You have been in ministry at Grace Church for 43 years. You will have preached verse by verse through every verse in the New Testament. I do not know of anyone else who has done it.
Answer: It is the result of being somewhere for a long time and having everything recorded so that I cannot preach the same thing twice. It has been my desire to go through every verse of the New Testament when I started here. There have been two or three times where I have been so flat on my backside that I almost left.
Question: I don’t know anyone else who can match you for persistence, discipline, and energy. Do you think your ministry will change after you finish the NT?
Answer: It is not at all true that I am leaving when I finish Mark. I am going to take the several months off that the elders are allowing me. The only thing that will now change is the subject. I have preached 23 years combined in the Gospels. That means 23 years of weeks studying Christ. Whoa. Any glimpse of Christ you can give people is potentially transforming. I am thinking about making a sweep through the Christological passages of the OT.
Question: Will there come a time when you retire?
Answer: I tell people around here: If I make sense, leave me alone. The problem will be when I don’t make sense, I won’t believe I don’t make sense. “Age wrinkles the body, quitting wrinkles the soul.” I don’t see retirement as a biblical principle.
Question: What were the most difficult changes you wanted to introduce when you first came 43 years ago to Grace Church.
Answer: I wanted to see Grace mature in its eldership. When I came here I didn’t know a church that had church discipline or elders. I was wanting to find out “how do you do this.” I saw myself as all alone. I really didn’t know anyone who did this. I didn’t have a church model. I didn’t have any pastor friends who understood biblical church and biblical church government. The biggest challenge for me was to exercise patience in getting there. I needed to be very patient in taking a group of men, pour that into them, and develop them (this took 7 years).
Question: If you could go back to 1969, what advice would you give to yourself?
Answer: There are so many things. Patience. Once I get focused on where I want to go, I really want to go there. The biggest issue for me was just to be patient. This is not something generic. Patience means that I have to know where these people are because they are not all in the same place. There is a unique exercise of patience in every relationship. There is a process to move men and women towards Christ and the patience must be exercised individually. It seems to be the number one cause of failure for young men in ministry: they do not have patience with people (we are not necessarily talking about patience with the clock). It is not about being patient for two or three years; it is about being patient with people. It took 7-8 years before my leadership really understood and was on board with the vision. People are the product of others who had spiritual influence in their life.
Question: What is the secret of staying in a place a long time? You said there was two or three times you almost left. Why didn’t you?
Answer: I had a profound attachment to the people in this church. When I say that I should have left, there was a split elder board and the whole group would have been happy if I left. We have had a lot of conflict on the elder board. I went from being greatly appreciated by many of the elders, to the elder board being split over me preaching too long, not being relevant enough, etc. God has settled my heart and soul here. That is why I have stayed. The discipline of study and the progress of people are what I love most about ministry. This church would not lack for sound teaching if I were not here. I am thankful I can say that confidently about Orange Park Bible Church.
MacArthur talked about A.W. Pink and the tragedy of such a brilliant man becoming a bitter recluse. Of all the knowledge A.W. Pink had, he did not understand God’s sanctifying work of suffering. He just absorbed and absorbed suffering until it drove him to bitterness and seclusion.
It was a dozen years before John MacArthur went to speak at a church outside California.
John Macarthur expressed the importance for you preaching in your pulpit as much as possible. You should try to be the one speaking in the pulpit if you can.
What I learned from the Q & A
This Q & A was not extremely helpful. It was very encouraging to hear about Pastor John’s first few decades in ministry, the struggles he has had at Grace Community, the disunity amongst the elders at times, his desire to leave several times, and his great lack of inexperience for the first decade at Grace. I was encouraged to know that John MacArthur was not always what he is today. It was very encouraging for me to see his humility and openness in the interview with Phil Johnson. Pastor John has been perceived by me as arrogant at times, but I had to repent of being judgmental after hearing him speak in an informal setting. Sometimes our confidence in Scripture can come off as arrogance. Just the thought that another pastor is proud or calloused should be a thought that is far from me. These pastors care about the church a lot and I need to give myself to the ministry of the church. The Church is God’s primary means for building His Kingdom, delivering people, and growing people.
There is something very important about staying somewhere and laboring consistently over the Word for decades. If God wills, I would like to never move from Orange Park Bible Church. Ministry that outlasts ministers seems to happen only when men labor long. We have an incredible foundation. May God use me to build on what has been faithfully built by the great teaching of Pastor Rich. May God bless me to be there as long as he was at OPBC. Please God grow me, give me patience, keep me needy, humble me, make me a great expositor, make me a holy man, help me be a disciple-maker, bless us with your Spirit, grow people, help our elders to be unified and loving slaves. Help us to love You by loving your Church above all else.
No comments:
Post a Comment