John MacArthur’s Stand: Heroic or Misguided?

For the past several weeks, nationally famous pastor John MacArthur has held in-person Sunday morning services in his church building in Southern California, defying government orders prohibiting such meetings and despite being threatened with hefty fines. For this, he has been hailed by Christians and other conservatives as a hero. But is he?

As an American, I firmly believe in his right to exercise our First Amendment guarantees of the free expression of religion, to peaceably assemble, and to redress grievances against the government. Often the government, especially in California, has been overly strict, arbitrary and wildly inconsistent in how it applies laws regarding public safety during the coronavirus pandemic. Reopening the church seems a logical stand against this.

But as a Christian, I believe MacArthur’s insistence on meeting together in person inside a church building on Sunday morning accentuates a growing problem in the American church – that the pinnacle of the Christian life has become attending a Sunday morning service in a church building.

The Bible does say we should meet together in person to encourage one another with songs and Bible readings. We know that the apostles and their disciples preached to and taught believers and nonbelievers alike.

However, nowhere in scripture will you find that this gathering must happen in a designated building or that it must happen on a Sunday morning. If anything, scripture implies that our standard should be several small group meetings in homes throughout the week.

MacArthur does correctly cite Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 as reasons to sing and praise God together, and other pastors have cited Hebrews 10:24-25 about continuing to meet together. Again, though, none of those verses mentions when and where we are to gather, instead focusing on the reason we gather.

(On another note, in making his case for why it is important to gather in person without masks, MacArthur references several of the frequent scriptural commands to greet one another with a holy kiss. I’m curious if MacArthur’s church members actually do so.)

Christians would have been better served if he’d showed them that they can still worship even if church buildings remain closed.

While many view MacArthur’s stand as heroic, I wish he would have chosen a different route. Instead, I believe Christians would have been better served if he’d showed them that they can still worship even if church buildings remain closed.

For example, he could have provided instructions of how to gather in small groups in homes or holding neighborhood services in backyards. He could emphasize the need to check up on each other during the week to encourage one another with scripture and songs or creating a community sing-along on Zoom. I’m sure there are many other creative ways to continue to fulfill the biblical admonitions of meeting together without a single church building being open.

If we continue to insist that we must have our church buildings open for Sunday morning services in order to fully function as Christians, we invalidate the experiences of our many brothers and sisters around the world. In China, the government has destroyed many church buildings but Christ followers still continue to meet. In Africa, resources are often too limited to build a church structure, but believers still find places to gather. In some Muslim-dominated countries, Christianity is illegal and even punishable with death, but the believers still meet, sometimes in caves or tunnels much in the same way the early disciples did.

These foreign believers would be puzzled (as would the first believers) by our American lament that churches are closed. Having a designated building to meet in or not having one is immaterial to their worship experience.

In the Bible, pastors and church leaders are never told to preach on Sunday morning.

Someone raised a valid question about a movement of people meeting in smaller groups in homes – are there enough leaders to do so? But that simply brings up another problem caused by the overemphasis on a Sunday-morning, church-building-based Christianity. In the Bible, pastors and church leaders are never told to preach on Sunday morning; instead, they are called to equip the believers on how to live as Christ followers on a daily basis.

And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. (Ephesians 4:11-14, HCSB)

The goal for every Christ follower is to become spiritually mature, full of Christ’s spirit, to work together as a body in unity. God has divinely appointed some leaders to train or equip the saints for this. This has become known as the Five-Fold Ministry or the APEST model (Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds/pastors and Teachers). Other than Jesus, no one person has all five gifts, so ideally a church would have 3-5 people who would exhibit one or more of these gifts to equip the body of believers for daily Christian life.

This equipping of believers for the ministry of Jesus, the ministry all believers are called to, is what MacArthur has been divinely appointed to do. This is work he and other leaders of churches around the country could be doing – should be doing – even if their church doors remain closed.

I am not opposed to Sunday morning services in a designated building, but the gift Jesus gave us through his death and resurrection is so much more than that. It’s a brand new life to be experienced 24/7, full of worship and encouragement and speaking the good news, no matter where we are or who we’re with. A Sunday morning service represents a small fraction of that.

But as long as MacArthur and others continue to make a much bigger deal of the Sunday morning church service than of the equipping of the saints (some pastors have estimated they place 90 percent or more of their efforts on the Sunday morning service), then we will continue to have one-dimensional Christians who stumble through life, feeling lost if the church building has its doors closed. And, unfortunately, this may happen sooner rather than later in our country just as it has around the world.

MacArthur and others should focus on equipping the saints for the mission given to all of us by Jesus and continued through Paul, Peter and the other apostles – to live a fully mature life that ministers to the world through the good news of the Kingdom of God come to earth. Then I might consider MacArthur worthy of a hero’s mantle.