Grace Community Church Elders Talk Successor To John MacArthur

MIKE RICCARDI

In terms of the pulpit, immediately, I know that that’s a question, and what’s going to happen in the pulpit is what the elders and Pastor John himself had decided was going to happen for a long time, and that is for the next little while there’s going to be a rotation of pastors preaching as we had been doing before, you know, before this year, although I think that we might have men take chunks a little bit more than a month at a time.

So, just immediately, Nathan Buznitz is going to continue the Gospel of Mark when we return to church in August. And I think you’re up next week. That’s awesome. You’re doing Matthew 11, is that right?

PHIL JOHNSON

That’s right.

MIKE RICCARDI

So, come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. So, Phil will lead us next Sunday. But then think starting in August, Nathan will continue the Book of Mark and for, you know, I imagine a couple of months and then next we’ll see who takes it, but it will be work shared among the pastoral staff. throughout that time, the elders will continue to pray for who might become the next sort of senior pastor.

PHIL JOHNSON

And don’t be surprised or dismayed if it takes two years before we actually have another permanent pastor. Grace Church is blessed with a large group of men who are here right now who are capable of filling the pulpit. And they’ll do that while the elders survey the landscape and see who might be available. People ask me all the time. People have been asking me for years who will be the pastor of Grace Church after John. And no one knows the answer to that. My suspicion is it will be someone who was trained here and probably not someone who’s here now, but someone who was sent out and pastored a church somewhere and had an effective ministry there and they’ll call him back. That’s just my guess. I don’t have any inside knowledge to what the next step will be because no one knows.

Grace Community Church did not implement a succession plan until after the death of John MacArthur, so we are seeing the plan commence. They have a lot of elders who have already been preaching in MacArthur’s absence, so this isn’t a big change for the current function of GCC.