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Well-known pastor and speaker Chuck Swindoll is changing titles at his church in Texas but not hanging up his pastor 'hat' just yet.
This week Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, founded by Swindoll, announced that a new lead pastor will take over Swindoll's position starting May 1.
Jonathan Murphy, currently chair of pastoral ministries at Stonebriar, will take over the lead pastor position. Swindoll will continue preaching but switch his title to founding pastor.
"One of my great goals in life is to live long enough to where I am in the pulpit, preaching my heart out, and I die on the spot, my chin hits the pulpit—boom!—and I’m down and out," Swindoll said in an interview at age 75. "What a way to die."
For 60 years Swindoll has been preaching, making him the oldest megachurch pastor in the country. Swindoll pastored two churches in Texas, one in Massachusetts, and one in California before he took the lead pastor role for Stonebriar in 1998. Swindoll and his wife Cynthia started Insight for Living Ministries, a Bible study radio program in 1979 that continues to run to this day.
"We have the founding pastor being able to continue to preach as long as the Lord would have, and I can have a season as a senior pastor taking responsibility for the staff and caring for them and the ministry direction of the church at large," says Murphy.
Swindoll has been mentoring Murphy for a few years and the transition of titles has been in the works since 2022.
"God was at work long before we knew He was at work in our relationship and had plans in mind that were not revealed to us when we were walking together," says Murphy in a video. "What we came to found out was that also was what God was doing in the hearts of elders in church unbeknown to me and to you. God was at work with them. Then they came to let you know of their interest not knowing that you and I were walking so intimately."