Meeting John MacArthur

How I Got Drawn into the Lordship Debate—part 6
by Phil Johnson

uring the late '70s and early '80s, Moody Press was beginning to publish quite a lot of John MacArthur's material. By 1981, they had already published Kingdom Living and Jesus' Pattern for Prayer. The Family book and film series were already in the works.

In the summer of 1981, Jerry Jenkins (who was VP of Publishing at Moody Press in those days) phoned me unexpectedly. He said he wanted to fly me to Chicago to meet with John MacArthur and about 6 other free-lance editors. Moody was planning a ten-year project to publish a complete set of New Testament commentaries. (Today that ten-year project is now in its 25th year and is just beginning to near completion.)

Of course, I leapt at the opportunity to have a part in the commentary project. Meeting John MacArthur personally was an equally exciting prospect. I said yes immediately.

The original plan for the commentary series was to assign multiple editors to the task so several volumes could be worked on concurrently. The meeting would be a round-table discussion to explore the feasibility of the timetable and map out a plan for coordinating the different editors' efforts so that the commentaries would be as uniform as possible.

(Incidentally, the multiple-editors strategy turned out to be unworkable, because the series can progress no faster than John MacArthur himself can read and revise drafts. About two volumes per year proved to be the upper limit, so for the first decade or so only one editor was needed to edit the commentaries. That was Dave Douglass, my main mentor as a book editor. And he did a great job establishing the format and style of the whole series. He was the lone editor helping John MacArthur on the first fifteen volumes or so. To this day, I have never actually edited any of the commentaries. I've proofread a chapter here and there, but two men—Garry Knussman and Dave Enos—do the hands-on editorial work on them nowadays. My spare time is consumed editing other books for John besides the commentaries.)

Anyway, when some friends at Moody heard I was interested in the commentary project, they urged me to consider an alternative opportunity as well: Moody Press had an opening for an acquisitions editor. Several aspects of that job appealed to me. On the negative side, it meant leaving pastoral ministry. But on the positive side, it was an excellent opportunity to have significant influence in Moody Press's publishing decisions. And I was already very excited about what they were publishing—starting with the MacArthur New Testament Commentaries. So I agreed to interview for that position while I was in Chicago for the editors' round-table.

That editors' meeting was where I met John MacArthur for the first time. In the meeting, we talked about the commentaries, the proposed format, editorial schedules, potential problems, and other things related specifically to the commentaries. I don't think I had anything profound to add to the discussion, and I remember very little about the actual meeting.

I do recall that after the meeting was over, while the small group was standing around socializing, I ambled over to John and quietly suggested he ought to think about doing a book on the lordship of Christ and its relevance to the gospel call.

To my surprise, he brightened immediately and told me he already had plans for such a book. He said he even had an idea for a title: The Gospel According to Jesus.

I told him I thought the title could use some work, but he definitely ought to do the book. He had somehow heard that I was interviewing for the acquisitions-editor position, so he graciously said that if I came to work for Moody Press, he would look to Moody Press as a possible publisher, since I was the first editor who had expressed an interest in it.

I told him I would hold him to that promise. I also made a mental note to try to think of a better title for the book.

To abbreviate the story, I did go back to work for Moody Press, and my first official act as acquisitions editor was to ink the contract for a book by John MacArthur with the working title The Gospel According to Jesus.

During that second tour of duty at Moody Press, I got to know and appreciate MacArthur better. I spent several months of that first year editing The Ultimate Priority, the first MacArthur book I actually helped see from conception to completion. It was one of the most enjoyable editorial projects I had ever been involved in. John MacArthur was a pleasure to work with. And it struck me early on that he and I were like-minded on almost every important doctrinal and biblical issue.

He must have sensed that as well, because in 1983, he asked me to join the staff of Grace to You. He wanted someone with editorial skills to work more closely with him in his writing ministry.

It was not a difficult decision. If you had asked me to describe my idea of the perfect job for me, that would have been it. So in four weeks' time, Darlene and I packed up, made the move to Southern California, and joined Grace Church, where we have made our home for more than 23 wonderful years.

But when I left Moody Press, The Gospel According to Jesus was still just a working title on an open contract that didn't even have a deadline yet.

I figured the best part about working at Grace to You is that it would guarantee me the opportunity to help put that book together. The circumstances under which the book finally did come to fruition make one of the most exciting chapters of this whole tale.

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