The Prosperous Lifestyle of America’s Anti-Prosperity Gospel Preacher

Back in my 20s, I attended an IFB church with a “big name” IFB pastor. I remember he caught grief from certain people in the community when he bought a brand new Dodge Intrepid to replace his old Dodge Intrepid. He was accused of living a lavish lifestyle and bilking people out of their tithes so that he could buy this new car for himself.

Little did people know that although the church attendance was between 600-800 people on an average Sunday, his salary from the church was $50,000, and he lived in a 3-bedroom ranch that he purchased when he and his wife were married.

Some people will absolutely assume the worst motives in others based on a surface understanding of the situation.

I think a couple of things need to be put in perspective. First, $500K (and that is really only a guess by the author of the article) is really not a ton of money for the LA area. In fact, it is only worth about half that in most other parts of the country. Second, he is working in a lot of different areas, which creates compensation issues in some cases. You can’t work for a company and be considered an employee and you can’t be an employee without getting compensation that is commensurate for the effort you are putting into the employment and reflective of others in a similiar position. Lastly, I would be suspect in seeing these large numbers without more detail around them. This includes benefits and other things. Most people don’t really realize that they can receive upwards of $40K in benefits around vacation, insurance and 401K matchings, with it being more money as you get paid more. Lastly, we don’t know how much of this is recordable income and what comes to him personally. There just isn’t enough detail, too much vagueness in the numbers, and some guestimation to be able to accuse someone in this situation. I think it is petty.

I recall that the Baylyblog (as was) called attention to all this some years back. They also wrote about RC Sproul over the same sorts of things. Sproul also had a role in the “fortunes” of Don Kistler’s Soli Deo Gloria publications fate. Whatever our opinions of this stuff, God has His opinion. No one gets past Him.

When I came to the States many years ago I couldn’t believe the amount of nepotism in the ministries over here. It just seems to be accepted by most evangelicals and fundamentalists.

Paul, perhaps you ought to talk a bit more about the pervasive nepotism—I’d go further perhaps and say “self-dealing”, isn’t that the term with non-profits?—and perhaps make it article length here. Unless that would cause too many problems and evoke the title of album #3 from Run-DMC.

[Paul Henebury]

When I came to the States many years ago I couldn’t believe the amount of nepotism in the ministries over here. It just seems to be accepted by most evangelicals and fundamentalists.

I do not care for the tone of Julie Roys’ article either, though I appreciate some of her past work very much. I think it is unnecessarily spiteful.

That said, I do not think pastors should live in a style far exceeding that of the average church member. I think in times past, very, very few minsters of the Gospel would display such wealth (unless, perhaps, they were born to it) because it would be unseemly. What message does it send?

I think Piper’s perspective (and example) on this issue is spot on. The care he takes to apply Scripture to himself and to realize the pitfalls of fame and great wealth should be a model for godly men in ministry.

The impossibility of drawing a line between night and day doesn’t mean you can’t know it’s midnight. If someone is starving, they’re poor and need urgent help. If some pastor has ten-times more than the average folks in his church, he is communicating that material things are too important to him. It is a stumbling block.

The Bible commends fasting and feasting—not because food is evil or because no one is starving. It’s because it is evil to be enslaved to good things, and it is good to savor God in his gifts.

I told my children, when the behavior is questionable don’t just ask, “What’s wrong with it?” Ask, will it help me make Christ look great? That was Paul’s passion (Philippians 1:20).

Accumulating money, and buying vastly more than you need, does not make Christ look great. It looks like things are great. There is a reason why Paul said, “We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8).

Here is a link to the interview…

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/piper-on-pastors-pay/

The complication with MacArthur, and to some extent Piper but not as much, is he is not just a preaching pastor. He is a university and seminary president. He runs a major international radio ministry. And he has a 40 year consistent publishing ministry. I had two shelves of books with his name on them, plus another of commentaries!

A man who does all of that is going to make money…

So stop comparing him to a pastor of a 500 member church. He is way more than that.

[TylerR]

To be fair, if I could afford to pay a guy to take my sermon notes and convert them into prose, I could have written quite a few commentaries, myself … !

LOL! The problem is no one would publish them because you haven’t built up any name recognition outside of your church or SI. JMac is so well known that he can make demands of his publishers. I remember something either he or Phil said about a publisher wanting JMac to change the title of one of his books. JMac basically responded that if the publisher didn’t like the title, he’d publish his book elsewhere. The title was published unchanged.

Not regarding MacArthur, but given that MacArthur used his market power to override the editors, that explains something I saw out of James MacDonald. I was reading MacDonald’s book “Authentic”, and there were so many basic errors in it, I had to wonder whether Moody still believed in having editors who actually had power to say “no” to certain things in the books they published.

Looks like at least for MacArthur, the answer to that is “no”. I think there’s a huge danger when we ignore our need for counsel, and if MacArthur indeed told his editors to pound sand, then we’ve got a hint as to his character regarding ministry decisions as well.

if MacArthur indeed told his editors to pound sand, then we’ve got a hint as to his character regarding ministry decisions as well.

Seriously? A author should not have the most significant influence in the title of his book? I think Phil Johnson is his primary editor, but an author’s work should reflect the author (not anyone else). And if an author objects to an edit, shouldn’t he should be entitled to withhold permission to publish? The bigger an author is, the more sway he is going to have.

Yeah, but three homes?

The only address on the letters is the Grace to You address. Her street address is blocked (though it is revealed more by her posting of it than his).