How John MacArthur Changed American Preaching

Much of the commentary about John MacArthur in the wake of his death last week has focused on the controversies about his views on gender and politics or his habit of turning a deaf ear to women who complained about abuse from their husbands or church leaders. But few people have asked the question of what made MacArthur popular to begin with.

MacArthur was not a charismatic preacher in any sense of the word. As a cessationist, he was certainly not a charismatic in the theological sense; he believed that miraculous gifts ceased after the first century. But he also lacked charisma in the colloquial sense of the word. He delivered his sermons in a relatively monotone voice. He was not a storyteller. He didn’t make sensational claims or attempt to make his messages entertaining. Instead, he began each sermon by reading from the Bible, and he then followed that with a bullet-point list of applications from the passage, often extending for up to 50 minutes with hardly any illustrations or breaks from the tightly focused biblical exegesis and exhortation.

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