James MacDonald fired as Harvest Bible Chapel pastor

https://youtu.be/5ukvHuwFzBA

James will be pastoring another church within 3 years. Probably one he plants himself. Similar to this church.

Sadly, I suspect you’re right, T. Howard.

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt. I know very little about James MacDonald.

But you’ve gotta love his quote. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a classic.

“CT [Christianity Today] is Anglican, pseudo-dignity, high church, symphony-adoring, pipe organ-protecting, musty, mild smell of urine, blue-haired Methodist-loving, mainline-dying, women preacher-championing, emerging church-adoring, almost good with all gays and closet Palestine-promoting Christianity, so of course they attacked me,” the voice allegedly belonging to MacDonald said on one of the clips. -James MacDonald

https://religionnews.com/2019/02/13/james-macdonald-fired-as-pastor-har…

David R. Brumbelow

What about the quote where he plots to plant child pornography on CT’s CEO Harold Smith’s computer?

He has been revealed to be a vulgar, arrogant, and vindictive man. So, no, I don’t love the quote you posted, David.

….that threatens to bring down not only Harvest Bible Chapel (it’s already destroyed Harvest Bible Fellowship), but will also have some serious repercussions on MacDonald’s other employer, Moody Bible Institute/Broadcasting/publishing. It’s a lesson for us as we consider warning signs that a leader is being led astray by his desires; if we do not take some action (not necessarily a firing, perhaps just an observation or warning) when someone’s behavior is mildly objectionable, we are extremely likely to find the behavior getting far worse.

In this case, Mancow says he’s got hundreds of hours of audio featuring MacDonald at his “best”. Word to the wise; if you’re being abusive, there are a lot of people who will collect evidence before they show up as an empty chair, and in certain cases, they will make it public in a nasty way. One cannot intimidate people forever; eventually they figure out a way to get back at you.

(picture from a former employer; hourly workers who had had their fill figured out that making certain products required them in a certain position, and they would schedule their absences to cause maximum disruption in production…..they knew they would be fired only after ten absences, and they did to cause maximum pain….I saw several people do this)

David, just learned that in 2014, Harvest applied for membership in the SBC, despite being officially continuationist and despite MacDonald’s description of congregational church polity as being of the devil—HBC is officially presbyterian in polity, but with MacDonald’s former 50% vote on the elder board, it was effectively Episcopal in polity, with MacDonald as their Pope. So sadly, this mess also may well impact the SBC.

(no joy in mentioning this, brothers, but apparently the disaster goes further)

His broadcast was already off the Moody stations. They have published some of his books, but I don’t believe he has ever been an employee.

MacDonald has spoken at the SBC Pastors’ Conference at least four times since 2012. During his 2015 appearance, MacDonald announced Harvest would begin cooperating with the SBC. According to the SBC Executive Committee, Harvest contributed to the Cooperative Program Allocation Budget in 2015. The EC has no record of contributions by Harvest since that time.

Harvest does not cooperate with the Illinois Baptist State Association.

http://www.bpnews.net/52408/james-macdonald-fired-after-inappropriate-c…

David R. Brumbelow

Nord, it’s true that he’s been off Moody for a few months, but Moody also publishes 11 of his books, and I’d be surprised if he wasn’t a chapel speaker from time to time. The trouble with this is that it means that there were, or are, a number of people at Moody who almost certainly saw some of his behaviors, but did not act on them. For my part, I remember reading one of MacDonald’s books (“Authentic”, I believe) and scratching my head wondering whether Moody actually employed any editors who were allowed to address some big issues in his writing.

It’s definitely not the existential issue facing HBC, but it’s there.

Regarding SBC, it’s good to know they’re not “a member in good standing”, but the same thing applies to them as applies to Moody. It strikes me as very odd that they gave him a podium after his intemperate statements regarding congregational polity.

Bert,

I understand your concerns, I just think the word employer is incorrect. I would not call John MacArthur an employee of Moody although he too has books published by them and has been a speaker there. I’m not defending anyone involved, I just thought using that term was potentially confusing. Blessings.

Bet the creditors owning the tens of millions of dollars of debt are nervous.

Just re-read David’s comment, and for his (others’) edification, I’ve got to suggest a quick run over to The Elephant’s Debt would be in order. More or less, about a decade ago, it came out that MacDonald was doing high stakes poker with Jerry Jenkins (Moody trustee, too), had purchased Peter Fitzgerald’s $2.2 million home, had expelled elders because they’d dared to ask to see the line item budget before voting on it, had run up something like $70 million in debt, bragged about haranguing a steel contractor who was building a new church building in his book Vertical Church, and had left a trail of broken relationships really born of the same kind of tactics that Mancow revealed on Tuesday. There are also some very troubling financial irregularities that led one trustee, a man who married into the Van Kampen mutual funds family, to bail—keep in mind that guy had seen bad news a thousand times before. He most likely left because it might involve the authorities.

Add to that that when I reviewed his book Authentic, what I found was a string of bad exegesis that (again) should have attracted the attention of those tasked with reviewing the book. My favorite was when MacDonald, clearly 50-100 lbs over his ideal weight, was saying that fasting had helped him overcome his addiction to food. Um, James, seen a mirror lately?

In short, this has been a long time coming, and it’s one where any of many ministry partners (Mark Driscoll, Mark Dever, SBC, Moody, etc..) should have pulled him aside to say “you know, James, I’m seeing some very troubling signs that things are not well in your world.”

(for what it’s worth, agreed fully with Nord that “employed” is not the right term, but at the same time, when a group publishes someone’s book, gives him the pulpit at their conferences, gives him his own radio show, and the like, there is some form of accountability to that writer/speaker/preacher born of that partnership….)

Bert, how are you defining “ministry partner” when you throw Mark Dever’s name in the mix?

John, I’m referring to the video you provided. Obviously there would be various levels of accountability for partnership based on the closeness, duration, and known issues with a particular ministry at that time. In the case of the video, it’s 2014, when things were starting to blow up for MacDonald with debt, Elephant Room 2, double-paying the pastor of HBF’s Romanian affiliate, bullying, crashing the “Strange Fire” conference……

It’s about the same time I separated from a church because the leadership was dead set on using a lot of MacDonald’s material, actually. Dunno what else Dever did and did not do regarding these guys, but it would be interesting to hear him out regarding that episode.