At the 2007 Shepherds’ Conference, John MacArthur answered this question in a Q&A session:

How would you approach a congregation trapped in years of legalistic tradition?

The Shepherds’ Fellowship granted me permission to upload an MP3 of MacArthur’s 5-minute-and-20-second answer.

Here’s a summary. (It’s not a transcript, but it’s close. The headings are mine.)

1. Love them by not needlessly offending them.

• Advice. “I would not attack legalism. I would not preach on Christian liberty. I would not assault their consciences either by flaunting liberty on a personal level.”
• Scriptural principle. “I think there is a very important principle that comes at the end of 1 Corinthians 10 . . . . Do you offend the non-believer, or do you offend your weaker brother? The answer in that text is you offend the non-believer, and the message that the non-believer gets is that you love one another. . . . You defer always to the weaker brother.”
• Definition of legalism. “In many cases when you’re talking about legalism, you’re not talking really about works-salvation. You’re talking, I assume, about an approach to the Christian life that is needlessly restrictive and narrow and artificially constructed around certain behaviors that aren’t even biblical issues.” (more…)

Grace to You is mailing free copies of this book:

It’s the book’s third edition. The first was in 1993.

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I just listened to Rick Holland’s recent interview of John MacArthur, who reflects for over an hour about his last forty years of ministry at Grace Church (MP3 | transcript). Enjoyable and edifying.

I just saw this welcome announcement from the Shepherds’ Fellowship:

FREE SHEPHERDS’ CONFERENCE DOWNLOADS
All of the past sessions and seminars are now free to download.

Note: You’ll need to create a (free) Shepherds’ Fellowship account to access the free audio downloads.

All of the MP3s for the general sessions and panel discussions are now available for free downloads. Brief bios of the speakers are available here.

I’d recommend listening to these in order:

1. Ligon Duncan: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry
2. Panel Discussion 1: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
3. Thabiti Anyabwile: Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church
4. Panel Discussion 2: Anyabwile, Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
5. John MacArthur: The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
6. Mark Dever: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology
7. Panel Discussion 3: Dever, Duncan, MacArthur, Mahaney, Mohler
8. R.C. Sproul: The Curse Motif of the Atonement
9. Panel Discussion 4: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Sproul
10. Albert Mohler: Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution
11. Panel Discussion 5: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
12. John Piper: How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice
13. Panel Discussion 6: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Piper
14. C.J. Mahaney: Sustaining a Pastor’s Soul

Related:

• T4G 2008 Highlights and Pictures
• T4G 2006 MP3s (general sessions and panel discussions listed in order)
• More T4G 2008 Pictures

Today we received this CD in the mail: “What’s So Dangerous About the Emerging Church?” Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur for a solid hour in layman language. (You can purchase it here as a CD for $6 or an MP3 for $3.) Jenni and I listened to it this evening and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you listen to it, keep in mind that his target audience is laymen—not scholars on epistemology. Overall, we found the interview to be refreshingly bold, even shockingly so. It’s definitely the same MacArthur you watch on Larry King. He is unashamedly outspoken for the truth.