I went for a walk this morning, and pretty much had the town to myself, it seemed. Few people were out and about at 5:30 in the cold, dark, pre-dawn. This was the first time this year I've had to wear a coat while walking and the first time I've been able to see my breath misting the air around me. Winter is fast approaching.

I was thinking, as I walked, about Proverbs 11:1. It is one of my favorite Proverbs, for reasons I'll explain at another time. It says simply, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight." As I thought about it I began to wonder what else Proverbs has to say about "delight." Delight is something I think about often. I find myself increasingly wanting to delight in what delights God. I find myself increasingly want to move from being a dutiful Christian to being a delighting Christian. Yet delight often comes slowly; it often comes only with great difficulty. Duty is simple enough; delight is a battle.

When I got home I searched through Proverbs and found all that it has to say about delight. I haven't quite decided what to do with all of this, so for today I simply list it for you. Here is what God tells us in Proverbs about delight:

Foolish people delight in their folly. "How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?"

Foolish people delight in evil. "…who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil…"

God disciplines us because he delights in us. "…for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights."

The adulteress seduces with false delight. "Come, let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love."

A man is to delight in the wife of his youth and, further, to delight in her beauty and in his desire for her. "…a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love."

God delights in wisdom: "then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man."

God delights in those who conduct business morally. "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight."

God delights in those who live upright lives. "Those of crooked heart are an abomination to the Lord, but those of blameless ways are his delight."

God delights in those who are truthful in word and deed. "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight."

God delights in those who are pure and true. "Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right."

God delights in truth and uprightness. "…but those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, and a good blessing will come upon them."

Discipline makes for delight. "Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart."

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There are a vast number of ministries serving the church today. Though I am familiar with many of them (by name at least) I have often wondered what each of them offer to us, and what we can offer to them. I thought it might be useful to offer a series of interviews with some prominent ministries to ask just this kind of question—who are you?, what do you do?, why do you exist?, and so on. It is useful, I think, even to know the size of the budgets of these organizations and the number of people they employ. You may be surprised at how big (or how small) some of these organizations really are. So over the next few weeks I will be interviewing representatives from many of these ministries. I trust you will find the interviews interesting and hope they will show you how different organizations are seeking to serve the Lord in such different ways.

First up in the series is Grace to You, a ministry that I am sure is familiar to most of us as the teaching ministry of John MacArthur. In this interview Grace to You is represented by Phil Johnson, the original Pyromaniac. Kudos to Phil who (remarkably) typed this whole interview on his iPhone while flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Those thumbs must be throbbing.

How and when did GTY begin?
This year marks the ministry's 40th anniversary. We technically started with a handful of volunteers on John MacArthur's first Sunday as pastor of Grace Community Church. There was a man in the church who coordinated the recording of those earliest sermons on reel-to-reel tape. His plan was to make a few copies to send to missionaries. He would make the copies by daisy-chaining tape recorders together in his living room and duplicating tapes in real time. He was doing this on the first Sunday John began pastoring the church, and that first Sunday's sermon is still in the GTY catalog. It's titled "How to Play Church."

Right away, people began to request copies to send to friends and relatives. The guy who was doing the recordings kept having to recruit volunteers to meet the demand for tapes. That was the genesis of Grace to You (known as the Word of Grace Tape ministry in those days).

John's first Sunday at Grace was in February of 1969. By the end of ‘69 the ministry had outgrown that living room and was moved to the church and placed under the oversight of the elders.

Cassette tapes were fairly new and unknown in 1969, but the need for a more efficient way to duplicate and distribute recordings drove the elders to the new technology. The cassette format made it possible for tapes to be duplicated at high speed and distributed by the thousands.

Tapes were cheap: $1 apiece. And within 5 years the ministry was distributing a million tapes a year. (We get that many downloads in a typical month today.)

In 1978, because of the persistence of one volunteer (named Norm Sper), a daily radio broadcast featuring John MacArthur's teaching began airing in three cities (Baltimore, Tampa, and Tulsa). Known as "Grace to You," the program was 30 minutes long, meaning only half a sermon could air each day. Industry experts insisted the format would not work; sermons should be aired on weekends in an hour-long format. Daily programs needed to be live talk or studio-based teaching, they said. Sermons were too impersonal.

John Macarthur himself was skeptical of the format and wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the prospects of radio at first. But Norm and a staff of enthusiastic recruits worked tirelessly to get the broadcast on the air, and it was immediately successful.

I was living in the Tampa Bay area when "Grace to You" debuted in the autumn of ‘78, and I was a devoted listener from day one.

I came to work for the ministry in 1983, and in 1985 we formally merged the Word of Grace tape ministry with "Grace to You" radio. The resulting organization became a standalone, nonprofit parachurch ministry under an independent board, and we soon adopted "Grace to You" as the name of the consolidated ministry.

Why does GTY exist? What are its chief goals and key emphases?
Our purpose statement speaks to that very point:

As believers committed to God and walking in obedience to Him, we affirm the purpose of Grace to You, which is to teach biblical truth with clarity, taking advantage of various means of mass communications to expand the sphere of John MacArthur's teaching ministry.

We use mass communications media to expose John's teaching to as wide an audience as possible "for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12-13).

One of our principal tasks is to protect believers from being "tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming" (v. 14). We accept the God-given responsibility of "speaking the truth in love" (v. 15) and strive for the growth of the church and glory of the Lord, rather than the praise and honor of men.

Our role is not to supplant the local church's ministry, but to support it by providing additional resources for those hungering for the truth of God's Word. Media ministries can never substitute for involvement in a biblical church, group Bible study, or interaction with a teacher. Yet we sense the need for more in-depth resources, evidenced by the many Christians and Christian leaders worldwide who depend on our ministry to supplement their own study.

Our desire is that God be glorified through Grace to You's resources. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of this ministry, and we desire to perform our work as unto Him, to reflect Him to all those we encounter, and to operate not in our own strength but through His power (Philippians 4:13).

How can GTY serve the readers of this web site?
We aim to supplement, not supplant, the ministries of local churches by providing resources for in-depth Bible teaching. Our most important ministries have pastors and church leaders in view. We also have a vital ministry to lay people who (for various reasons) aren't finding adequate spiritual nourishment from the weekly teaching in whatever church they attend.

Who are the key leaders within the ministry?
John MacArthur, of course, and our board of directors. We also have a 6-man management team who oversee our staff on a day-to-day basis, I lead them, and Don Green (managing director) handles most of the hands-on administration. All our staff, starting with the management team, are supremely gifted. The second-newest guy on the management team has been there more than 10 years, so it's a very stable ministry.

How many employees does GTY have?
Around 50 full time plus 175 volunteers who donate time and energy every week.

What is GTY's annual budget? How is the ministry financed and how do you ensure financial integrity?
Our annual budget today is about $17.9 million. GTY is funded about 85 percent by donations from our listeners; 15 percent by sales of materials. We manage costs and expenditures carefully. We have been members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountavility (ECFA) since it's inception. We follow standard accounting and reporting procedures, and we are audited annually by a large, independent accounting firm.

How do you expect GTY will be different in ten years? Twenty years?
I expect we'll have some younger staff members and lots of new media. But we want to be faithful to our purpose statement, and to our doctrinal position. Both of those have remained unchanged for 40+ years.

J. Vernon McGee's ministry is the model for our future plans. We intend to keep broadcasting John MacArthur's timeless Bible teaching as long as people will listen—hopefully my successors will still be doing that even long after we're all gone.

How does GTY work with other Christian ministries?
We obviously maintain an ongoing, informal partnership with our sister ministries, The Master's College & Seminary and Grace Community Church. That's a fairly close relationship, even though we are not organizationally connected in any way. It's based on common ministry goals and strengthened by the fact that we affirm the same doctrinal statement.

We also enjoy friendly relations with a host of other ministries, such as T4G, ACE, Ligonier, Desiring God, etc. Our involvement with these other ministries ranges from conferences in which we are joint participants to staff relationships in which we often compare notes, share ideas, discuss common goals, and seek solutions to common problems.

Speaking personally, what are some of the things you've learned from John MacArthur while working closely with him in this ministry?
I've learned to appreciate the importance of diligent study, courage in the face of opposition to the truth, and various helps for better discernment. Also, I was pretty much an Arminian until I heard John MacArthur's teaching on Ephesians 1-2, and that series convinced me that God is sovereign in election.

What are some of the ways GTY has seen evidence of God's hand of blessing?
The long-term, steady growth of the ministry has been remarkable. No matter what crisis or financial collapse threatens the national economy, it seems God always supplies our needs. The only significant downturn our ministry has ever experienced was owing to bad decisions involving subtle compromises in our development philosophy. We have seen God supply our needs again and again, in miraculous ways, and as long as we have kept our focus on doing ministry rather than getting diverted by fundraising campaigns, every need we have is always abundantly supplied.

How can the readers of this web site serve and support GTY?
Pray for us, partner with us, and use the resources we provide to help spread God's Word in an increasingly ungodly culture.

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I've never been mistaken for Brad Pitt. Not once. Neither has anybody ever stopped me on the street only to look disappointed, apologize and say, "I'm sorry, I thought you were Johnny Depp." It just never happens. There's a reason for this. Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp are remarkably handsome guys (says I in a totally heterosexual way). While we all know that, at least to some extent, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is no doubt that, at least culturally, there is some standard of what makes a person beautiful or exceptionally handsome. Depp and Pitt fit the mold quite well. I, like most others, decidedly do not. Some concerned therapist may write me concerned that I do not have healthy body image or some other pyscho-mumbo-jumbo, but I'll assure him that I'm doing just fine, thank you. I know who I am and I know what I'm not. And I'm no Brad Pitt.

What is remarkable to me is that Aileen, who (thankfully) seems to have no irrational and deep-rooted crushes on movie stars, can still be perfectly content with me, with my not-so-chiseled-chin and my I-know-they're-under-there-somewhere-abs. This is, in my books, a good thing. Her love is blind in all the right ways and I'm the grateful beneficiary.

A couple of days ago I was driving around Los Angeles (in a hybrid car, mind you—how CA-cliché is that?) with a couple of friends (neither of whom look like Pitt or Depp) and we began to discuss celebrity culture within the church and the tough task of any but the absolute best preachers. I don't think we can rationally deny that there is some serious celebrity culture in the church today, and even (or perhaps especially) within this New Calvinism. Whether this has always been the case, I do not know. But I consider it undeniable that, for good and/or for ill, it is a powerful force today. And those who face the tough task of forever "competing" with the brilliance of these celebrity preachers are the ordinary pastors who serve at churches just like yours.

Christians today have access (via the Internet, of course) to vast libraries of the best sermons by the best preachers—the Pitts and Depps of the preaching world. Of course in place of square chins and rippling abs are amazing abilities to communicate lucidly, to illustrate lavishly, to speak passionately, to exposit brilliantly. These are men who, by any objective measure, stand head and shoulders above the crowd just as Depp and Pitt do above me. They are men who are extraordinarily gifted by God and who have been faithful to use their gifts for his glory. I certainly do not wish to speak ill of these men who are such a gift to the church.

But where my wife remains content with her husband, I see so many Christians who struggle to be content with their pastors. And why is this? Because all week long, these people are drinking from another cistern, to borrow a phrase from Proverbs (5:15). They are doing the equivalent of a wife who spends her week plastering her home with posters of movie stars and staring at them greedily. How can her husband hope to compete with those ridiculously good-looking guys? And many Christians today listen to their pastor on Sunday and then listen to fourteen sermons by fourteen pastors before the next Sunday comes around. And, more often than not, their own pastors' sermon pales in comparison. Little wonder that we see increased cases where small-time pastors find themselves simply copying the top dogs, plagiarizing the brilliance of other men. Haven't we almost driven them to this?

The fact is, God has put us in churches with less-than-perfect and often less-than-brilliant pastors. The fact that there are extraordinary preachers tells us that there must be vast numbers of perfectly ordinary pastors. This means that most of us have been blessed by God with a very ordinary kind of pastor, just as most of our wives have been blessed by very ordinary-looking husbands. These men, these ordinary pastors, are the ones to whom we owe our loyalty. They are the ones to whom Paul refers when he tells the church at Thessalonica "to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work." These are the men God has given to serve you and to labor as pastors before you. It is through these men that God means to specially bless you in that unique body called the local church.

I do not mean to say that we ought not listen to podcasts or that we have to pretend that the extraordinary pastors do not exist. We can listen to their sermons and enjoy their great giftedness in teaching the Word of God and in calling us to live in light of it. But through it all we must guard our hearts. You would not want your child to be parented by another mother and father, paying lip service to you but giving his heart to others. You would not want to see that look in your wife's eye, that disappointed, disgruntled look, after she has spent her day staring at posters of movie stars. And you need to guard your heart that you do not inadvertently turn it over to a pastor who is not your own, a pastor who in any measure you care to see, is superior to your own.

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The Bible tells us repeatedly that we will eventually and inevitably begin to resemble the people we spend time with. If we walk with the wise we will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm (Proverbs 13:20). Much of the book of Proverbs deals with this very theme, warning the young and foolish to avoid similarly foolish companions. Such proverbs cannot always be taken too woodenly or literally, yet they do point us to an important truth. If you spend time with a person you will begin to resemble that person. Perhaps you will not resemble the person in appearance (unless you are a teenager) but at least in spirit, in thought, in attitude, you will. Experience shows me that this is true. This is one of the great blessings of the local church, that in the church the foolish are able to spend time with the wise, learning how to be like them.

Again we know this is true with teenagers, isn't it? Many boys will drift toward older, cooler, more popular teens. They will do what they do, play what they play, wear what they wear, speak the words they speak, watch what they watch. In each of these things they give testimony that they want to be like the older boys. Maybe it is not too much to say that they want to be these older boys. Girls are no different. They find heroes and model themselves in that image. With each moment they spend with their heroes they learn to be more like them.

As adults we have probably learned to be a little bit more subtle. We have learned not to be quite so shameless. But still we gravitate toward the people we want to resemble. A man who wants to be rich and powerful will find any excuse to hobnob with powerful men. He will live where they live, drive what they drive. And as he spends time with such people, he will develop their thoughts and will look at the world in the same way they do. A woman who craves popularity will spend time around the women she deems most popular and, in so doing, she will begin to emulate them, hoping that she can capture the same formula that made them so popular.

It is easy to see this as a curse, to focus much on the fool and his folly. And while certainly it is true that the person who spends time with a fool will begin to be a fool himself, the opposite is also true. That we begin to look like the people we spend time with can be a great means of God's grace. Have you ever considered that the people you spend time with are a reflection of the person you want to be?

I thought about this topic and wrote this far and then began to think about the people I love to spend time with and the blessing they are to me. Would this not prove a reflection of who I want to be? And from there I thought of the people I have spent time with in recent weeks and the character qualities, the fruits of the Spirit I would love to see in my life. It just so happens that I've been able to spend quite a bit of time with the men in my local church who have been set apart to serve as elders and pastors.

There is Murray whose love for people and whose genuine interest in them is unsurpassed. I am a person who is naturally shy and I can allow shyness to be an excuse to permit me to be reclusive. Murray's love for people stands as both a challenge and an inspiration. And I mean that; he truly inspires me to grow in my love for others, to extend hospitality, to be a genuinely caring Christian. I love to spend time with Murray because I want to be like Murray.

There is Tom whose patient kindness resonates in my soul. I cannot think of anyone who has so powerful a combination of gentleness of spirit and firmness in the faith. Always ready with a word of encouragement, always eager to steer a conversation to spiritual matters, Tom serves relentlessly with kindness, with patience and with boldness. I want to be like Tom.

There is Julian who, though young the youngest of the bunch, exhibits such spiritual maturity. He is proof that though an elder is not allowed to be a young and immature Christian, a young man can be mature and be well-qualified to serve God as an undershepherd. In Julian I see a relentless desire to read Scripture, to study it, to live it. And through that I see such growth in maturity and godliness.

And there is Paul. From Paul I've learned to love and respect my wife as I've seen the way he loves and respects his wife. From him I've learned to refer to Aileen not only as my wife but as my bride. I love that word; it points to a freshness that looks back to the day that she was first given to me. And from Paul I've learned about the importance of, the skill of, applying the gospel to all of life. He loves the gospel and knows of the importance of living in the joy and freedom of that good news. And I love to spend time with him because I want to be like him, to resemble him in these ways and so many others.

In these men God has given me the opportunity to learn how to love, how to be gently bold, how to grow in maturity, how to treasure my wife and how to hold fast to the gospel. Each one has blessed me immeasurably. What a blessing it is that, by spending time with them, I can eventually be like them. And what a blessing that he who walks with the wise grows wise.

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