(CP) Author and pastor Alistair Begg has announced plans to retire because the senior pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 14, 2025, five many years after moving into the ministry.
“On September 8, 2024, Alistair Begg announced to the congregation of Parkside Church that he will likely be concluding his time as senior pastor in September of 2025,” the church said in an announcement on its website. “He will proceed his pastoral and ministry work at Truth For Life. Alistair informed the Parkside Elders about his decision in August of 2024, and the Elders will nominate a candidate for senior pastor within the yr ahead.”
The elders will nominate a candidate for senior pastor within the yr ahead, and the church will vote on that candidate.
The 72-year-old Scottish pastor and voice behind the radio and online teaching ministry Truth for Life has served as Parkside Church’s senior pastor since 1983.
Speaking to the church on Sunday, Begg said he and his wife, Susan, decided to retire a yr upfront to “give the church “time to regulate to the prospect of and to organize in a timely way for what this transition will mean.”
“It just isn’t precipitous,” he said. “It’s not driven by anything of which I’m personally aware, apart from my ambition to pass the baton safely into the hands of my successor.”
“I could have opportunities as time and interest and health [enable] me to be involved in various places and things, definitely to be more committed and more involved at Truth For Life once I haven’t got the responsibilities and privileges here,” Begg said.
Begg said over time, he’s seen many pastors transition out of the ministry. While some “stayed for much longer than they need to,” he said, “a couple of fellas have gone before they ought, and really, only a few have been able to achieve success in doing what we hope to do.”
“I would like to go once I don’t desire to go,” Begg said.
“I’m not jaded, I’m not frustrated, I’m not dissatisfied, I’m not disgruntled, I’m not disillusioned, not one of the above,” he said. “In fact, I’m jealous of the opportunities that now fall to the lads that follow me. If it were possible to rewind, if I could have all of it yet again, I do not mean go for one more 42 years, but when I could restart and do a greater job under God and revel in the privileges that I’ve known, I might. … There will likely be a time for farewells. This just isn’t it.”
Begg asked the congregation to hitch the elders in praying for “clarity and unity” as they seek his successor.
“It is an incredible privilege to be involved together at the moment on this church and to appreciate that God has plans that far extend our ability to even conceive.”
On its website, the church confirmed the pastor is in “excellent health” and “will proceed to evangelise at Parkside throughout this yr in addition to fulfill his speaking commitments elsewhere.”
Earlier this yr, Begg sparked controversy after refusing to repent for comments he made in a 2023 podcast during which he advised a grandmother to attend her grandson’s marriage to a trans-identified person as an act of affection.
“In that conversation with that grandmother, I used to be concerned in regards to the well-being of their relationship greater than the rest,” he said on the time. “Hence my counsel. Don’t misunderstand that in any way in any respect.
“If I used to be on the receiving end of one other query about one other situation from one other person at one other time, I could answer absolutely in another way, but in that case, I answered in that way, and I might not answer in every other way irrespective of what anybody says on the web. … I’m not able to repent over this. I haven’t got to.”
Begg’s retirement announcement comes just days after he spoke on the Getty’s annual Sing! Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lamented the diminishing role of Scripture in congregational life and called for a return to reverence.
“Instead of coming into worship with the express understanding that every one of this begins with God in His glory, people include coffee in hand, saying, ‘Let’s see if he’s got something good for us today,'” he said.
“Expositional preaching gives strategy to inspirational talks, which supplies strategy to therapeutical endeavors,” he continued. “I’m unsure that America understands just how deep the issue is in relationship to biblical illiteracy. You cannot proceed to make your journey through life without your Bible, not as a talisman, not as something simply to be revered in a corner, but without the Bible as our day by day source of data and encounter with God.”
Begg called for a return to what he calls “serious engagement with the Bible,” where the main focus is less on inspirational talks and more on expositional preaching.
“There is a correlation between a collapse in our understanding of God and the expressions which can be represented within the pulpit,” he emphasized. “You see, the duty of the pastor in coming to the scriptures just isn’t simply to offer details about what the Bible says with a couple of tips to take home, fill within the blanks sort of stuff. That’s not the first objective within the unfolding of Scripture. The desire, the longing of the pastor and the preacher and the people is that we might need a divine encounter with the living God through His Word, that we would meet God, that we would hear from God. … We need not hear what Alistair knows about this or that. We must hear from God.”
“Congregational worship just isn’t only a get-together. It begins with God, not with myself in my need,” he told the audience, adding that when the main focus shifts from God’s Word to private experience or entertainment, something vital is lost.
