Official denies John MacArthur makes more than $500K a year from Grace to You

If you read Julie Roys’ report, she does not allege that MacArthur earned that much from GTY, either, but rather that his total compensation can exceed half a million dollars annually. I’ve got to wonder whether Johnson is tacitly admitting Roys is correct by concentrating only on the GTY income. If Johnson is in effect shouting “Squirrel” to divert attention…..he’s also admitting that there is something objectionable about the arrangement.

And my question, if there is indeed quite a bit of money flowing into MarArthur’s accounts, and out to take care of his three homes, why he bothers? I’m sure that for far less, he could enjoy AirB&Bs that are even nicer than the homes he owns—perhaps even for free as a gift from his prosperous supporters. Nothing against MacArthur being prosperous and enjoying life, but going through all this to obscure one’s real income is strange to me.

Just publish exactly what the man makes. I can see no reason for hiding the information. That would clear everything up. If it seems excessive to some, explain why you think it is not. Then let it go.

MacArthur pastors a church, runs a media ministry, is a college president, a seminary president, and writes books. If you did all those things for 50 years as well as MacArthur has you would own a nice home and some investments too, maybe even some real estate.

What part of this is scamming people to send in their checks to receive a blessing? What part is “God will bless you” if you believe? That is the prosperity gospel?

MacArthur doesn’t preach against being “rich.”

[Mark_Smith]

MacArthur pastors a church, runs a media ministry, is a college president, a seminary president, and writes books. If you did all those things for 50 years as well as MacArthur has you would own a nice home and some investments too, maybe even some real estate.

What part of this is scamming people to send in their checks to receive a blessing? What part is “God will bless you” if you believe? That is the prosperity gospel?

MacArthur doesn’t preach against being “rich.”

I think the multiple positions some men hold are often more problematic than impressive. It certainly led to serious problems at TMU and TMS. That said, John MacArthur is certainly not a prosperity preacher, and I believe he is personally generous.

But on the general topic, I do not believe a pastor should live in manner far above the people in his congregation. He shouldn’t want to. His stress isn’t any greater than the people he serves. His needs are not more pressing.

I point back to Piper’s wise counsel here:

“With the successful sales of Desiring God starting in 1987, I saw that there could be substantial income from writing and speaking. I resolved that I should not keep this money for myself but channel it to ministry. I never doubted that the Lord would provide us with a salary that would be sufficient for our family. So I saw no reason to keep the money that came in from the books and speaking. These royalties and honorariums were being earned while I was pastor of Bethlehem, and so it seemed the church should benefit from them, not me privately.

At first, I thought I could do this simply by channeling the royalties to the church, but realized soon that this had tax implications. Since these royalties were technically in my control as the copyright holder, giving all of them to the church made me liable for income taxes. So we created a foundation. The Desiring God Foundation now owns all the copyrights of my books and intellectual property, and receives and distributes all the income. I have no access to the money at all. I do sit on the board of the foundation with my wife and five others. This board safeguards the aims of the foundation, and makes the decisions to which ministries the income should be given. It is a thrilling ministry.

In addition, we made the decision that all honoraria would go to the ministries we represent, not ourselves. That was usually the church while I was pastor, and now is Desiring God. While I was a pastor at Bethlehem, I never received an income from Desiring God. So for the last 25 years or so, we have lived on one stream of income. That is still the case, as I am now paid by Desiring God. I have never been in any serious need. None of this has felt like a sacrifice. I know myself incredibly rich by the standards of the world. Beyond all doubt, it is more blessed to give than to receive and keep.”

[Mark_Smith]

MacArthur pastors a church, runs a media ministry, is a college president, a seminary president, and writes books. If you did all those things for 50 years as well as MacArthur has you would own a nice home and some investments too, maybe even some real estate.

What part of this is scamming people to send in their checks to receive a blessing? What part is “God will bless you” if you believe? That is the prosperity gospel?

MacArthur doesn’t preach against being “rich.”

My take is that when he’s wearing multiple hats, it gets harder to track what hours he’s putting in and what compensation he’s getting for them. I also have no objection to MacArthur prospering, but when you apparently need a trained CPA or auditor to suss out what the compensation really is, and his real estate holdings, the ugly fact of the matter is that his well-known opposition to the prosperity “gospel” becomes less credible. It is also worth noting that when you need a trained auditor (perhaps with subpoena power) to suss these things out, you’ve got serious reason to doubt the transparency of corporate governance. And that’s a huge deal.

many times to The Master’s Seminary, and Grace To You, as well as buying most of his books. I couldn’t care less how much money he makes. The more the better IMHO.

As for these “investigations” they are gotcha type stuff. Nunya bidness… Go look into something important rather than following after someone you just don’t like.

I really don’t care how much MacArthur makes. He’s not my pastor although I have great respect for his faithfulness. I don’t contribute to the ministry. I have some of his books from which he might have received royalties. The more the better. And for people whose ministry is to dig up dirt on other believers—not much of a ministry.

The question here is, again, not how much MacArthur earns. It’s whether his real earnings are obscured by distributing his income between GCC, GTY, TMC, book royalties, and other enterprises, and (again) whether GCC, GTY, TMC, and such have sound controls in place to prevent embezzlement, graft, and the like.

If you don’t have adequate controls in place, you start to develop a culture where serious sins and crimes flourish. For example, Liberty University with Falwell’s self-immolation and RZIM’s failure to see and police the sins of Ravi Zacharias. Or, closer to LA, TMC’s accreditation probation and allegations of a badly botched Title IX investigation.

Like it or not, this kind of thing does damage the reputation of the Church and appeal of Christ—as it was said in Scripture, “God’s name is blasphemed because of you”.

[Bert Perry]

The question here is, again, not how much MacArthur earns. It’s whether his real earnings are obscured by distributing his income between GCC, GTY, TMC, book royalties, and other enterprises, and (again) whether GCC, GTY, TMC, and such have sound controls in place to prevent embezzlement, graft, and the like.

If you don’t have adequate controls in place, you start to develop a culture where serious sins and crimes flourish. For example, Liberty University with Falwell’s self-immolation and RZIM’s failure to see and police the sins of Ravi Zacharias. Or, closer to LA, TMC’s accreditation probation and allegations of a badly botched Title IX investigation.

Like it or not, this kind of thing does damage the reputation of the Church and appeal of Christ—as it was said in Scripture, “God’s name is blasphemed because of you”.

I guess I don’t understand the interest in following what Liberty, TMC, RZIM, etc. do or how people have time to follow all the real or supposed scandals. Exposing real or imaginary problems doesn’t create change if one’s not a change agent. Christ will take care of his reputation and his church. In most of these cases it’s to know just to know.

So again, I not only don’t care how much Mac earns nor even how he earns it. He rises or falls before his own Master and if his church/ministry doesn’t hold him accountable not much is accomplished by outsider investigations.

Not really sure how Romans 2:24 fits here.

GCC- as a church does not have to reveal salaries. In fact, MOST CHURCHES do not disclose pastor salaries.

GTY- does release salary info. That is what Julie Roys reported. For GTY she picked the one year MacArthur reported $402,000 because he was given an expensive historic bible. If you want the other years, pay for a Guidestar subscription and you too Bert can know the amount.

TMS/TMU- Once again, they report MacArthur’s salary each year. Roys reported his max as $103,000 per year. Not an unreasonable amount by the way.

Books- this is private business and I doubt you’ll find this amount. It is private.

There is nothing hidden or nefarious here.

Our church has always disclosed salaries in the budget, approved annually by the congregation, and in the year-end financial report, disbursed to every church member. I have always thought it inappropriate to withhold this information from those who pay the bills. Yes, there is always the likelihood that someone will criticize salaries as being too high, but in my experience, it has more often gone the other way. I have declined salary increases several times over the years because I thought mine was getting too high. Our deacons, who recommend salaries to the congregation, have usually wanted to go with larger annual raises than I thought prudent. I finally stopped declining, realizing that I was, in effect, interfering with a responsibility given to the deacons, and was not really my call to make. Over the years, my salary has gone from very small, in the early years, to what I now consider to be very generous. However, others do not seem to believe it is overly generous. I am convinced that full disclosure is always the right way to go.

I remember hearing a well-known pastor of a large church report that a lady, who was a member of his church, asked him how much the church paid him, since his church did not disclose this information. He told her, since he believed she had a right to know, but expecting she would be shocked at the generous amount. Her reply, “I don’t think that’s high enough.” It’s impossible to know what people are thinking, but its always better to render full financial information. Our church is convinced that people give more generously when they know that every penny will be fully reported in detail.

Regarding our church’s staff salaries, I agree in some ways with both Mark and Greg. At our church, we have a congregational government, and anything in the budget is available to any church member, and that includes staff salaries. The members can request a copy of the budget, or they can attend the quarterly and annual member’s meetings and see the info with every other member.

However, we do NOT make any of this information public outside the membership. That wouldn’t stop a member from sharing the budget with those outside the church, but we consider our church’s budget to be information for our church — not for those outside of it. We wouldn’t respond to questions from an outside organization about our finances, except to those institutions of government that are entitled to it, like the IRS or our state DoR.

Dave, I fully agree with your post.

Dave Ramsey is reportedly selling his house for $15 million. He calls himself Christian. He models his ideas and business as Christian. Thousands of churches run his program in their churches. Is this ok? Or is it merely pastors who can’t make any money?

….but it appears that Ramsey and his wife are selling their current home to build another, which I assume will be of similar size or perhaps bigger. I don’t think it’s wrong to be prosperous, but at a certain point, there is a question of whether one has enough at some point, whether the hassle of a ginormous home is worth it, and at what point the legitimate enjoyment of God’s good gifts becomes covetousness and being stingy with God.

There is also the question of “wouldn’t you want to enjoy things you’ve worked hard to create for a while?” I don’t begrudge Ramsey his money, but there’s a drive to “have” on his part that I don’t understand totally.