Pastor John MacArthur took some time during his Shepherds ConferenceQ &A to answer questions about the role of the pastor, centering in on the need to feed the sheep while critiquing those who have an inordinate focus on giving themselves over to the culture.
In particular, he singled out Tim Keller (who MacArthur has criticized before) and Andy Stanley as two culprits who have been guilty of this.
There’s an inordinate affection, strange to say, for the culture. There’s a driving desire that’s twisted to reach the culture. You can go back to Tim Keller’s mandates for urban renewal or Andy Stanley welcoming all the homosexuals because he wants to reach them. But pastoral ministry is not about changing the culture. And if you define it theologically, your church will never have anyone who’s a genuine member who’s not part of the remnant.
…I think ministry has been woefully lacking to the souls of the people of God. And so they have struggled and they have been wounded. They have been without biblical teaching, without solid doctrine, without nourishing truth, while everybody is worried about what the world thinks and making sure we identify with the world and its style and its music and all of that when feeding the flock of God is how we discharge our ministry and how the Lord builds his Church.
MacArthur previously took a few shots at Andy Stanley for his preemptive decision during the summer of 2020 to close his church until 2021. This action by Stanley prompted MacArthur to comment that Stanley didn’t know what a church was.
Large churches are shutting down until they say January. I don’t have any way to understand that, other than they don’t know what a church is and they don’t shepherd their people. But that’s sad. And you have a lot of people in Christianity who seem to be significant leaders who arent giving any strength and courage to the church, they’re not standing up and rising up and calling on Christians to be the church in the world.”
Stanley would respond to MacArthur’s critique in an interview with David Nasser, reiterating his conviction that “The Lord does not require us to meet” for church service, all the while taking offense at being criticized.
John said some not so nice things about me, not by name, but he’s made some comments about those who have decided not to meet for the rest of the year. He said that we aren’t really a church and we don’t know how or don’t care about shepherding our people, so I’m like ‘wow that’s a lot from someone I’ve never met’. but that’s ok.
Bonus. Stanley is embroiled in an emerging scandal after we broke the story of his church being riddled with pro-LGBTQ and gay-affirming pastors, leaders, curriculums, and conferences.
