At age 89, Chuck Swindoll isn’t retiring, but his church is calling a new senior pastor — who will preach some of the time.
Swindoll was one of the first big names in the modern era of radio preachers and megachurch pastors. In the 1980s, while senior pastor at Fullerton Evangelical Free Church in Southern California, Swindoll became a household name alongside the likes of Christian radio superstars like James Dobson, Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.
Having grown a church that drew up to 6,000 people a week in California, Swindoll returned to his home state of Texas in 1994 to become president of Dallas Theological Seminary, a nondenominational school known for its dispensationalist theology. Over the past 30 years, DTS has become a chief educator of Bible church pastors and nondenominational pastors.
Stonebriar Community Church
Then in 1998, Swindoll announced he was starting a new church — in Frisco, Texas, which at the time was so far to the north of Dallas that no one knew about it. Today, Frisco is a booming suburb that is home to an IKEA store and a Texas Rangers minor league team, the Frisco RoughRiders.
Stonebriar Community Church immediately took off and grew from hundreds to thousands of weekly worshipers.
In 2006, Christianity Today named Swindoll one of the top 25 most influential preachers of the past 50 years. Swindoll’s daily radio program, “Insight for Living,” is heard on 2,000 radio stations nationwide and broadcast via internet around the world. He is the author of 70 books.
Not many pastoral transitions at U.S. megachurches have gone well. The phenomenon has been studied widely because of the difficulty of transferring congregational loyalty from a beloved pastor who often was the founding pastor of the church.
Chuck Swindoll and Jonathan Murphy
That very language will be used at Stonebriar, where Swindoll next month will take the title founding pastor and Jonathan Murphy will become senior pastor. Murphy currently serves as department chair and professor of pastoral ministries at DTS, which is located 29 miles south of the church’s campus.
Murphy was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, raised in the Canary Islands and educated in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Texas.
A “special announcement” from the church April 10 said: “Pastor Chuck will continue to preach God’s word at the pulpit on Sundays, while Jonathan will shepherd our day-to-day ministries and fill in at the pulpit when requested. Pastor Chuck will continue to serve as mentor and advisor to Jonathan, and at the appropriate time in the future, Jonathan will then assume primary pulpit duties.”
As a nondenominational church, Stonebriar is governed by a group of nine male elders — including Swindoll — who reported in the announcement that this transition plan has been in the works for two years. Murphy also will become an elder.
An FAQ section on the church website gives further insight on the transition plan: “As founding pastor, Pastor Chuck will serve as the primary pulpit minister according to his desires and abilities to fulfill the role to meet his high standards. He has the latitude to ask the senior pastor to fill in at the pulpit as needed, including during Pastor Chuck’s annual summer break, which this year will take place from July 14 through Sept. 8. As senior pastor, Jonathan will have full responsibility for all of Stonebriar’s ministries and operations, and he will provide pulpit ministry as requested by the founding pastor. Jonathan will be present and available on campus throughout the week to minister to the staff and congregation.”
Swindoll was born Oct. 18, 1934, in El Campo, Texas. After service in the U.S. Marine Corps, he enrolled at Dallas Theological Seminary and was ordained to Christian ministry in 1963. His first pastorate was at Grace Bible Church in Dallas.