Ligon Duncan on Grace Community Church

I spent 13 years at the church where Pastor MacArthur preaches week in and week out (www.gracechurch.org). My time at Grace Community Church was great! I learned so much about biblical ministry during my time there. I was able to serve in a variety of capacities during my tenure there as well. The church is not perfect but it is truly exemplory in many different facets. I was interested to hear Ligon Duncan's recent thoughts (see below).


"* A number of you asked to whom I was referring in my last post when I mentioned CHBC and CLC and GCC and BBC as examples of strong Reformed churches with excellent evangelistic track records. Well, CHBC is none other than Capitol Hill Baptist Church - pastored by the finest preacher-theologian-evangelist of our time, Mark Dever. CLC is Covenant Life Church, where Josh Harris is now pastoring, and where C.J. Mahaney so ably served. SGM, or Sovereign Grace Ministries is a good example of a family of churches that are superb at the practice of evangelism and emphatic in embrace of the doctrines of grace. Grace Community Church is GCC - what more need I say?! And BBC is Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, where John Piper serves. These congregations take a back-seat to no one when it comes to church health, zeal for the lost, effective witness, commitment to the great commission and joyful embrace of reformed theology."


Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III, a native of Greenville, South Carolina, was born and reared in the home of an eighth generation Southern Presbyterian Ruling Elder. A 1983 graduate of Furman University, he received an MDiv from Covenant Theological Seminary and studied Systematic Theology at the Free Church of Scotland College under Professor Donald Macleod. He earned the PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1995.
He served on the staff of The Covenant Presbyterian Church of St. Louis from 1984-1987, and supplied pulpits in churches of the Presbyterian Association of England, Church of Scotland, and Free Church of Scotland while in Britain from 1987-1990. In 1990 he was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and joined the faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS), Jackson, Mississippi where he was Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology, and the John R. Richardson Professor of Theology. At RTS he was responsible for teaching courses such as Systematic Theology, Ethics, Apologetics, History of Philosophy and Christian Thought, Covenant Theology, Patristics, Evangelism, and Theology of the Westminster Standards. He became the Senior Minister of First Presbyterian, Jackson in 1996.

.