* How to Study the Bible (Chicago: Moody, 2009), p. 76.
of the time. 'It was an hour and fifteen minutes. Well, that's the end of that church. They'll never invite you back.' She was wrong. Grace Community Church was soon to invite him to come and preach to them all the time.
When settled in his own church, John MacArthur's father would be one of the first visitors to his pulpit. From him he had learned lessons that he would seek to practise in all the years that were to follow: My Dad used to tell me that a preacher ought to be ready to preach, pray, and die at a moment's notice. He made a great commitment in my life and had given me many things to pass on. His father had given him things to pass on. And what I have I have passed on. You have to take it, develop it, learn it, and pass it on to somebody else. This is a relay race, and we are all involved.°
5. Father and son, mid 1960s.
* How to Study the Bible (Chicago: Moody, 2009), p. 76.
The Early Ministry at Grace Community Church race Community Church, Sun Valley, called John MacArthur in January 1969; he accepted and on February 9, 1969, began work in the congregation where he has remained ever since.
Sun Valley is another district of the San Fernando Valley some ten miles to the west of John's old family home at Glendale, and approaching twenty miles north-west of downtown Los
Angeles.! The church had been formed in 1956 by Christians from several denominations who were dissatisfied with what they had found in the Hollywood area. With more open space, at lower prices, still available in Sun Valley, the large block of land obtained was more valuable than could have been recognized at the time. From the beginning to 1968 there had been two pastors, Don Householder and Richard Elvee; the first a Methodist and the second a Baptist. There was no denominational affiliation and the church's motto was the familiar words, ! On account of subsequent changes in boundaries, the present address of the church is Sun Valley, but because the property is located on the dividing line of two suburbs, it has sometimes been associated with Panorama City.
'In essentials unity; in non-essentials charity. Within a fiveyear period both men had died of heart attacks on the church premises—perhaps a consideration that now entered into the call of a man of twenty-nine years.
'When I came to Grace Church, I didn't know much,'
MacArthur was to say. But Charles Feinberg, and still more, his father, had given him strong foundation principles—the absolute authority of Scripture, the necessity of a true understanding of the gospel, and the danger of a false assurance of salvation. These notes were all prominent in his first sermon as pastor on February 9. The title was "How to Play Church', and the text, 'Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven . . . Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name. . . And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from Me? (Matt. 7:21-23).
It was a morning of pounding rain and the sermon had to be preached twice, for the church's building on Roscoe Boulevard in Sun Valley would not hold more than 300 and the membership was about 450. So Sunday services were 8.30 and 11 am, with an 'Evening Gospel Hour' at 7 pm. One of the original members of the church was Burton Michaelson, already mentioned, who explains that John MacArthur, and his family, were not entirely new to them. They had listened to Jack MacArthur's radio ministry and witnessed his son on the sports field when the young people of the church had taken on the youth from Calvary Bible Church. The one condition Burton remembered John stipulating when he accepted the call was that he be allowed thirty hours a week for study: 'We didn't understand that, but had confidence in him.'
The Early Ministry at Grace Community Church
The staff at Grace Community Church consisted of a secretary, a youth leader (also Sunday School superintendent), and Mrs
Elvee, the widow of the previous pastor. The last named was clearly a major help. She 'mothered and protected him', as well as alerting him to items that needed his attention.
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 1n 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.'
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 programs to get everyone
2 Published in Truth Endures: Landmark Sermons by John MacArthur (Los Angeles: Grace to You, 2009). conforming into a slot.' He learned that life is more important than organization, 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 * In nearly thirty years of ministry at Grace Community Church I have learned that if the spiritual attitudes of the people are right—as a result of careful, long-term, biblical teaching—the church's organizational structure, form, and style become far less important.' Pillars of Christian Character (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), p. 8.
The Master's Plan, pp. 31-2. give more largely to the work. 'Programs' for evangelism were _Minnecessary as Christians made it their everyday business to live ( lives pleasing to God. It was proved that 'A congregation that é evangelizes 365 days a year is better than a church which has a week of "revival" meetings once a year.'
The church should emphasize 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 programs, 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 evangelize, or if someone was needed to teach a class. Everyone made himself available.°
Those who organized themselves to meet for prayer were at the heart of this activity.
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
5 The Master's Plan, pp. 60, 109.
Ibid:, p40. activity to bring more people to faith in Christ than any service, program, 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 recognized 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 Nine Hundred 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 thirty-two-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, 'eight hundred to nine hundred 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 Center' at the church on Monday and Tuesday evenings, where other men were the speakers. And five hundred attended the Wednesday Prayer Meeting in the new church auditorium which had opened that same year.
It might seem from Sanders' 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 recognized how everything began with the pastor's own devotion to Scripture: " Ashamed of the Gospel, pp. 184-5.
The Early Ministry at Grace Community Church a7 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.'
Within this context, the life of Grace Church began to develop characteristics too often missing in evangelical churches. For one thing, emphasis was laid on the family unit, with no special attention given to youth. No sanction was given to the idea that the youth should be harnessed to 'set the pace for the rest of the church'. Such a procedure, MacArthur believed, injures the younger generation by displacing the lead that should be given by older Christians, including their own parents.
The early church found its energy in its mature saints. Today the church is deriving its energy from young people. We need the energy that young people have, but we also need the power that older believers have developed from long, obedient lives.*
This absence of emphasis on youth was far from inhibiting their attendance. Sanders noted 'a great number of young
8 The Master's Plan, p. 34. people' at the regular services of the church, and taking notes on the hour-long sermons.
No less out of step with much contemporary church practice has been the commitment to church discipline at Sun Valley.
This was not the case at first, but a change here also came about through the pulpit ministry. When MacArthur was preaching on 1 Corinthians in the 1970s, the exposition of chapter 5 made the motive for church discipline, and its importance, clear to all.
Out of that chapter came the truth that the evangelistic witness of a church cannot be authenticated without the godliness of her members; therefore sin in the membership must be taken very seriously. "Church discipline is the key to the purity of the church, which in turn will enable us to reach the world.' This was a principle some were ready to challenge: When church discipline was first applied at Grace Church, a couple of pastors said to me, 'It wont work. The church will be wrecked. You can't have everyone looking out for other people's sins.' I said, "The Bible says we are supposed to be accountable to one another. Let's just do it and see what God does."
MacArthur had an absence of church discipline in mind when he observed of his father's work, 'I saw things that worked for my father and things that hurt his ministry.' Certainly the absence of church discipline was very widespread at this period.
Phil Johnson has written: 'Grace Church became one of the first significant fellowships in this country to emphasize a biblical pattern of consistent discipline as a crucial aspect of church life.' One purpose of discipline is the restoration of offenders, and at times the church has seen that hope fulfilled.
" Ibid., p. 48. See also Appendix 4, 'Elements of Church Discipline'.
The Early Ministry at Grace Commumty Church 39
There have also been occasions when prompt action prevented the need for formal action. One such case followed when MacArthur was informed by a distraught member that her husband had just left her to go to live with another woman.
Her pastor obtained the other woman's name, looked up her phone number, and rang the house. It happened that the missing husband answered the phone himself. What followed is best in MacArthur's own words: / I said, 'This is John from Grace Church. 'm calling in the name of Christ for you to move out of that woman's place before you sin against God, your wife, and your church.'
He was shocked and said he would go right back to his wife. The next Sunday he came to me, embraced me, and said, "Thank you! I didn't want to be there. I was tempted, and I thought no one would care about that.' He wasn't alienated by my rebuke. Rather he was brought back to the fellowship and obedience. God is honoured by church discipline even when the outcome may not be remedial. Grace Church has to be one of the few congregations where an individual's sin (where there has been no repentance) is addressed publicly according to the New Testament direction, 'Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear' (1 Tim. 5:20). I was present on one occasion when MacArthur spoke from the pulpit about a church member who had deserted his wife and refused all admonition. With tenderness and solemnity, John announced that the individual had been put out of the church; simultaneously he called upon the members to remember the need of the man and his family in prayer.
There have been cases of churches making all kinds of differences and disagreements matters for discipline while overlooking the duty of 'forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven yow (Eph. 4:32). The use of discipline to address small offences is a contradiction of the gospel, and MacArthur's balanced teaching on the subject of forgiveness is a no less valuable part of his ministry.'° whe
When once asked by a reporter, 'Have you always been driven by a desire to build a large church?' MacArthur replied that he had no such desire: 'I said Jesus Christ said He would build His church.' Servants of Christ do no more than fulfil what Christ has given them to do: If one desires to be faithful to Christ and His Word, there is no technique or system that will guarantee a large church. The church is a supernatural work. I must ascribe our church's numerical and spiritual growth to the will of our sovereign God. We are content to focus on aggressive biblical ministry and leave it to the Lord to add to His church (Acts 2:47). Our task is to be faithful."
It was from this standpoint that MacArthur would later assess the growth of Grace Church in the 1970s. But if Sanders reported him correctly, John's understanding of the growth they saw was not the same in 1972. In the article referred to above, he wrote: MacArthur believes that any pastor who places a similar emphasis on an in-depth yet practical preaching of the '° See The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), also chapter 10 in Truth Matters (Nashville: Nelson, 2004). He rightly Opposes the teaching that in all cases forgiveness may be withheld where there is no acknowledgement of wrong-doing.
" See 'T Will Build My Church', chapter 9 in Ashamed of the Gospel.