Then and Now: Former Director of Church Ministries for The Master’s Fellowship (TMF), Mark Rodriguez, Died from Covid; One of MacArthur’s Secretaries Also Loses Long Battle with the Virus
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Throughout 2020, and much of 2021, Tom Patton would give the announcements, direct you to the Visitor’s Center, encourage you to register your attendance, and briefly mention people who had gone to be with the Lord. This is their story. This will be very short as I’m trying to salvage the rest of one of the nicest Saturdays in a while, and because these deaths need no editorial comments, just sympathy. Lest we forget what we all went through during the “pandemic” and that the current variant is making some progress throughout California at the time of this writing, I think it’s probably good to take a moment and consider how blessed we are to be able to speak up/speak truth everyday.
I chose that picture, a screenshot of BTWN’s thumbnail for a Youtube video where John MacArthur was marveling that despite the narrative and statistics, the “doom and gloom” Covid panic, Grace Community Church remained untouched. Michelle Lesley, that’s hubris. That’s narcissism. For a church that used the mantra, “Just Preach the Word”, John repeatedly drew attention to himself, his stance, and his “faithful elders”. The truth of the matter is that Grace was experiencing several outbreaks. Fellowship groups were moving into private Facebook groups and people were dying. To the outside world, they could only see the elderly preacher speaking on Fox News or written about in Christian news outlets, interviewed by the Fallkirk Center.
All. Was. Good. (But it was a lie). If you were the unfortunate person to arrange a funeral at Grace Community Church, there were rules. There would be no mention of Covid. I can’t imagine the compound indignity that that must have been to be told that, but that was the world you had to navigate when John is in charge.
Mark Rodriguez, Director of Church Ministries for the Master’s Fellowship at TMU, Former Professor, TMS grad, Pastor
I was told about Mr. Rodriguez after he had died. Everyone I heard from said nothing but wonderful things about him. I listened to his TMU Chapel message and instantly enjoyed the robust presentation of the Gospel. I can understand how great a loss this was to the community. In my research regarding Mark Rodriguez, I found a peculiar post at Crossroads Community Church in Valencia, CA, which was a rather large church, given how short a time it has been open, that is lead by many familiar names, TMU professors, and ex-GCC elders and leaders. I had asked Dr. Sam Horn about this, but…I stopped waiting for a reply. It sounds like Mark Rodriguez still worked in some capacity at the Master’s University (perhaps for the TMU Covid Task Force) arranging for the transport and housing of Covid positive students. If you recall there was a terrible outbreak in October 2020 and another later on, but Sam Horn was given the impossible task of both placating the LADPH, protecting the school, and pleasing his employer, John MacArthur.
Pastor Rodriguez also lead Redemption Church Foothills, in Sylmar, CA.
I started to wonder if Mark Rodriguez was the same one mentioned at Crossroads Community Church. And then this was confirmed November 2020.
Grace Community Church secretary Dies of Covid
So as BTWN’s Tim Hurd made videos praising MacArthur and accusing us of lying about “Pastor John”, as Phil Johnson raged about “Faucism” and “screeching survivor communities” and as Steven Lawson stood in for MacArthur and praised his health from the pulpit calling him “an atlas” (the allusion lost on 99% of the crowd, the figure who holds the world on his shoulder), people were dying. Maybe they weren’t people that you knew, but they were people they knew and they were happy to tell you, “everything is fine. Nothing to worry about”.
We have several emails from GCC that I have not received the permission to print. A secretary, who had been at GCC for decades along with her family, died of Covid after a long battle with Covid in the hospital last February 2022. I did not see any mention of the woman by Tom Patton during the announcements or in the Grace Today, which I find peculiar and quite telling. Mark Rodriguez also received the same treatment: scrubbed from the TMU website and the Master’s Fellowship, given a funeral and never mentioned again. Astounding that you can devote your working days, spend your Sundays with these people, and in the end, you are not given the honor you deserve.
I am not a reporter. I do not have the obligation to support everything I am saying. I hesitate to use real names as it may embarrass the family, especially when there are children involved, especially when there is potential and probable litigation involved.
“Keep Your Mouth Shut! You don’t know the Whole Story” — John MacArthur
Because of the Eileen Gray scandal, there is a sizable and inevitable rift forming, the cracks of which deepened with the resignation of Elder Hohn Cho last week. We all realize that Grace Community Church will not issue a statement or apologize or remove the “excommunication” status from Eileen Gray. What is happening though is enough. We have major news outlets looking to cover the story. Impending protests and more outrage that will succeed even John’s successor. This Social Justice thing is fun and they know it. They’re just on the other side of it and don’t realize.
From what I am being told, people are terrified at GCC: the elders, members alike. Afraid to breech the Gray subject and speak openly about it. I am sorry if that only makes me laugh. For all their talk about Freedom and rights and the Constitution and “tyranny” and “censorship”, there are no outliers there to rush the Elders’ meetings and demand answers. Because they know that speaking up will mean losing “everything”: job, ministry opportunity, seminary, positions of authority, missions assignment, or friends and family. It is a gamble. I can tell you where I side. If anything can be lost, it should be.
All the best,
I’ll be here all week.
Greg Fox
