Summer 2009 | Volume 67, No. 4

Mac Brunson

by Benjamin Hawkins

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Acccording to D. McCall “Mac” Brunson, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., the 30 or 40 minutes that a preacher spends in the pulpit each Sunday has an eternal impact.

“C.H. Spurgeon says that, in every message, heaven and hell hang in the balance for someone,” Brunson says. “Every time we walk into the study, open God’s Word, or climb into the pulpit, we must keep this fact in mind.”

At the age of 12, Brunson came to know Christ during a Gideon Camp retreat, after a camp counselor personalized John 3:16 to help him understand what Christ had done for him: “For God so loved Mac Brunson that He gave His only begotten Son.” Brunson submitted to God’s call on his life during the Thanksgiving weekend of his freshman year of college.

Brunson completed his associate’s degree at North Greenville College and his bachelor’s at Furman University. He then attended Southwestern Seminary, earning his Master of Divinity degree in 1985 and his Doctor of Ministry degree in 1991.

“Whenever my parents or I heard someone from Southwestern, I knew there was a difference,” Brunson says. “Jesse Northcutt had recovered expository preaching and was teaching it there at that time. I wanted to be able to preach like that.”

Southwestern’s Doctor of Ministry degree, Brunson says, “added a dimension to my life, my ministry, and my personal study that is hard to describe. I would encourage every pastor to continue his education in the D.Min. program, if for no other reason than his own personal growth. The blessings will splash over to his congregation.”

In 1999, Brunson accepted a call to serve as pastor at the First Baptist Church of Dallas, which is renowned for the preaching of George W. Truett and W.A. Criswell. At the time, he thought he bore the responsibility of protecting “what that pulpit stood for: the Word of God and strong exposition.” Seven years later, the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville called Brunson to succeed Jerry Vines as their pastor.

Brunson was a featured speaker during Southwestern’s Expository Preaching Workshop in 2006. Seminary president Paige Patterson has called him a model of “pulpit prowess,” noting his “scintillating proclamation of the text of Holy Scripture.”

“Preaching is the paramount responsibility of the pastor,” Brunson says. “No matter what else he does during the course of a week, he must preach. … The best of your time, energy, and creativity should be given to the pulpit ministry.”

From the pulpit, “you can do more … to minister to the widest range of needs, while calling the lost to Jesus, than you can possibly do in a week’s worth of administration, visitation, or counseling,” he adds.

Indeed, Brunson says, a moment behind the pulpit can make “the difference between heaven and hell for all of eternity.”

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