McLarty was the primary minister of College Church of Christ in Searcy from 1991 to 2005; he has held other preaching positions in Tennessee and Mississippi.
[4] The Harding University Board of Trustees announced on October 30, 2020, that McLarty would end his tenure as president effective November 30.
[3] McLarty never attended kindergarten; he enrolled at Wilson Elementary for first grade after his family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas.
McLarty has described the trip as "traumatic" and "a great difficulty"; the couple returned to the United States after fourteen months.
After serving College Church of Christ for fourteen years, then-President of Harding University David Burks invited McLarty to become the school's Vice President for Spiritual Life in January 2005.
[1] McLarty was president of Harding when Botham Jean, a 2016 graduate of the university, was fatally shot by off-duty police officer Amber Guyger in Dallas, Texas, on September 6, 2018.
The auditorium's namesake, George S. Benson, served as the second president of Harding College from 1936 to 1965 and was at one time a defender of racial segregation[8] and opponent of interracial marriage.
[citation needed] The petition, which proposed putting Botham Jean's name on the building instead, arose in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the related racial unrest across the country.