The Prosperous Lifestyle of America’s Anti-Prosperity Gospel Preacher
By Julie Roys
For decades, John MacArthur has railed on prosperity preachers, likening them to “greed mongerers” who led First Century cults.
Recently, he’s also taken aim at scandal-plagued evangelical leaders, like the late apologist Ravi Zacharias and former Hillsong Pastor Carl Lentz, saying these celebrities were in ministry only for the money. That’s why “liars and frauds and false teachers” are in business, MacArthur said in a recent sermon. “False teachers always do it for the same reason—filthy lucre, money.”
Yet according to financial statements and tax forms obtained by The Roys Report, John MacArthur and his family preside over a religious media and educational empire that has over $130 million in assets and generates more than $70 million a year in tax-free revenue.
MacArthur and his family and related companies have been paid more than $12.8 million from ministry and donor funds. And MacArthur owns three luxury homes worth millions.
In one year alone, MacArthur made more than $402,000 for part-time work at his broadcast ministry, Grace to You (GTY), and another $103,000 from The Master’s University and Seminary (TMUS). This was in addition to MacArthur’s salary from the megachurch he pastors, Grace Community Church, as well as book royalties and speaking fees.
Also, in a scenario very similar to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), the board of GTY has been stacked for decades with MacArthur family members. Like RZIM, GTY also stopped filing IRS 990 tax forms in 2015, which enabled the ministry to keep executive salaries secret.
Grace Community Church (GCC) refuses to release its financial statements in violation of a core standard of the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability (ECFA) of which Grace was a member.
When I contacted the ECFA about GCC, Compliance Team Lead Jake Lapp replied that the ECFA requires its members to provide a copy of their current financial statements upon written request. He added, “We have been in communication with the church regarding this requirement and expect you will hear a response soon.”
That was 10 months ago.
To date, I have not heard back from GCC, even after emailing the church again to request financial statements. However, I recently learned that GCC resigned from the ECFA less than two weeks after Lapp contacted the church about complying with ECFA standards.*
I also reached out to Grace Church elder and GTY executive director, Phil Johnson, inquiring about some of these matters. Johnson responded that some of the information I requested is “a matter of public record. A real journalist would know that.” (The composition of GTY’s board is publicly available; the answers to my other questions were not.)
Johnson further stated that his email, dated March 23, 2020, would be “the last correspondence you will receive from me. Nor will anyone who speaks for our ministry ever answer questions for you regarding any story you intend to write.”
MacArthur’s Millions in Homes
MacArthur first came under fire for his money in 2014, when several bloggers published MacArthur’s salaries, calling them “reprehensible” and noting that MacArthur “earns more than the president of the United States.”
In response, Phil Johnson posted a statement at the Sharper Iron website, defending his boss’ salary (see “MacArthur’s Salary” below).
Johnson also argued that “(MacArthur’s) lifestyle, not his income, is what biblically-minded people should look at if they want to evaluate his character.”
He added that MacArthur “has lived in the same house for the past 35+ years” and owns only one car.
“(N)o one who actually sees how John lives has ever accused him of self-indulgence or even thought in their wildest dreams to describe him as a lover of money,” Johnson stated.
While it is true that MacArthur has lived in his home in Santa Clarita, California, since the 1980s, the property is worth 1.5 million, which is more than twice the median value of homes in the area.
The five-bedroom, four-bath house sits on more than two acres and includes a tennis court and a swimming pool. The home also is not John MacArthur’s only residence.
Since 1996, MacArthur has also owned a $700,000 villa about an hour west of Santa Clarita, according to a document The Roys Report obtained from the Ventura County Tax Assessor’s office.
The three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home is located next to a world class private club with a championship golf course, tennis courts, pool, and fine dining. The home also is just 11 miles from the beach.
MacArthur’s third and largest home—a seven-bedroom, 7.5-bathroom ranch on five acres in Colorado Springs—was built in 2007, according to El Paso County records.
The property was given to Circle M Ranch—a limited liability limited partnership (LLLP) owned by John and Patricia MacArthur—by David Wismer Sr.
Wismer is a longtime member of TMUS’ Board of Directors and has also served as TMUS Board secretary.
I spoke with Wismer and he told me that in 2007, MacArthur approached him, expressing that he wanted to build a home in Colorado Springs. Wismer said he owns a 2,600-acre ranch in Colorado Springs and was happy to give five acres to MacArthur as a gift.
Wismer said MacArthur then built a home (valued around $800,000) on the Colorado property using his own funds.
MacArthur’s Salary
From 2005—2015, MacArthur made about $3.4 million in compensation from GTY and TMUS, for an average of about $320,000/year.
On top of that, MacArthur also took a salary from Grace Community Church that was “well within the upper-medium range” for California church employees, according to Johnson’s 2014 statement.
This puts MacArthur’s annual combined salary at an estimated half-million dollars most years. And in 2012, when he was paid an especially high salary and benefits from GTY, MacArthur’s salary likely pushed three-quarters of a million dollars.
In Johnson’s 2014 statement, he explained that MacArthur’s “salary and benefits” topped $400,000 in the fiscal year ending in 2012 because the GTY Board gave MacArthur a “rare 1st-edition KJB” that year. The Bible, Johnson said, was a “one-time gift capping 40 years of faithful ministry.”
In addition, Johnson stated that “Grace to You paid John MacArthur zero salary or benefits for the first 30+ years of our ministry’s existence.”
However, this statement does not match the facts.
According to a GTY 990 from 2002—the earliest 990 The Roys Reportwas able to obtain—MacArthur made $88,336 that year. This was just 16 years after GTY was founded, not 30.
According ECFA, GTY was founded in 1986. (The GTY website says GTY became a nonprofit in the early 1980s.)
It’s possible that Johnson was dating GTY’s beginning to the first year MacArthur was pastor of Grace Community Church (1969). That’s when a volunteer reportedly began recording MacArthur’s messages and giving them to members of the congregation who were too ill to attend. But the ministry didn’t even have a name back then and likely didn’t require any extra hours of MacArthur.
I reached out to Johnson to explain the apparent contradiction, but he did not respond.
Also, in his 2014 statement, Johnson stated that sometime after 2000, the GTY board “made a deliberate decision to pay (MacArthur) a full salary rather than a diminished wage that was arbitrarily curtailed based on the fact that he has other income.”
While it’s true that MacArthur received a huge increase in his GTY salary in 2003 (72%), MacArthur never worked full-time hours at GTY. MacArthur’s GTY hours varied each year from 10 to 30 hours per week, according to the organization’s own 990s.
Yet the hours MacArthur claimed to work each year seem to bear little relation to the salary he received. For example, in 2007, MacArthur claimed to work 20 hours per week at GTY and received $174,191. In 2008, he reportedly worked 10 hours per week and received nearly as much—$177,083.
Similarly, MacArthur’s hours at TMUS varied from 10 hours to 40 hours per week from 2005—2015 and didn’t necessarily correspond to the amount he was paid.
MacArthur logged a tremendous number of hours for GTY and TMUS, especially considering that he also worked as pastor of GCC. In one year, 2012, MacArthur reportedly worked a combined 60 hours a week at GTY and TMUS. This was in addition to the time he spent pastoring GCC, a church with an average attendance of more than 8,000 people.
Below is a chart compiled by The Roys Report, showing both the hours MacArthur claimed and the salaries he received for the years analyzed.
(Though it is not documented below, Phil Johnson received between $160,000 and $238,927 per year between 2005—2015 for his role at GTY. He also received a no-interest loan of $50,000 from the ministry for the purchase of a home, which was fully forgiven over a five-year period.)
This article originated here — read the rest of the article there.
Thanks for reading this article! If you enjoy the spiritually enriching articles on Spirit Life Magazine, please sign up to receive new articles via email immediately when they are posted simply by entering your email address in the "Articles Via Email" widget located on this page toward the top of the right-sidebar. Just below that widget is another widget—"Newsletter Sign-up"—you can use to subscribe to our newsletter we send out periodically to inform you of all our new articles and occasionally other information as well. Please know that we do not bombard your inbox with emails, and we hate SPAM just as much as you do, thus we will never sell/share your contact info with anyone else—rest assured it's safe with us! We hope you will subscribe to both lists because it's by far the easiest, fastest, and surest way to notify you of new posts. Thank you!
Spirit Life Magazine does not necessarily agree with the totality of the opinions, beliefs or philosophies of the authors of articles posted on the website, nor does the posting of articles represent an endorsement of authors other than our own authors/editors. Spirit Life Magazine is a publication of Real Truth Publications.
If you enjoyed this or any of the articles on Spirit Life Magazine, please click on the PayPal® Donate Button below to make a donation to help us with the costs of maintaining this online magazine. A PayPal® account is not required to use the PayPal® gateway, you can pay with debit/credit card or an e-Check from your bank. It's fast and secure! Thank you!
We depend on the gracious and generous donations of our readers. Won't you help? No amount too small or large! Donations to SLM Inc are tax-deductible. 
