For more than fifty-six years, John served as the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. The emphasis of his pulpit ministry was the careful study and verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture. Under his leadership, the church grew to several thousand members, providing ample opportunities to train up men for ministry and the resources to send more than one hundred missionary families into the field.
John’s faithfulness in the pulpit also resulted in a prolific writing ministry. Books like The Gospel According to Jesus, Our Sufficiency in Christ, Ashamed of the Gospel, Slave, Twelve Ordinary Men, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, The Truth War, The Vanishing Conscience, Strange Fire, The War on Children, and many more were the products of John’s verse-by-verse Bible teaching. In 2015, John completed The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series—thirty-four volumes covering every verse of the New Testament. Without a doubt, the cornerstone resource of John’s ministry is The MacArthur Study Bible, which provides nearly 25,000 study notes to help readers better understand what Scripture says and means. First published in 1997, it is now available in several English translations, as well as Spanish, Russian, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, and Chinese.
From John’s earliest days at Grace Church, his sermons were recorded for the sake of homebound church members. Eventually those recordings made it onto Christian radio, and the ministry of Grace to You was born. Today the sun never sets on John MacArthur’s preaching, as the Grace to You radio broadcast airs around the globe in both English and Spanish. His full sermon library is available for free download.
In 1985, John became president of what is now known as The Master’s University (formerly Los Angeles Baptist College, then The Master’s College until 2016). Located in Santa Clarita, California, it is a distinctly Christian, accredited, liberal arts institution offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Through the decades under John’s leadership—first as president, then as chancellor, the University developed into one of the premier academic institutes in the country, equipping thousands of young men and women for the work of God’s kingdom with an education grounded in His Word.
When John came to Grace Church, he told the elders he wanted to do two things: preach the Word of God and train up other men to do likewise. To that end, in 1986, he founded The Master’s Seminary, a graduate school on the campus of Grace Community Church dedicated to training men for full-time pastoral and missionary work. To date, the school has graduated more than two thousand men who are faithfully ministering across the United States and in almost seventy other countries around the world.
Much of that global work takes place through another ministry that John has helped establish and lead, The Master’s Academy International. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Ukrainian pastors requested John’s help in withstanding the flood of false doctrine that was sweeping into the country. In 1991, graduates from The Master’s Seminary began training pastors in the Ukraine. Nearly thirty-five years later, more than nine hundred pastors across the country have been trained. That school, which continues to this day, became the model for what would become The Master’s Academy International. Officially founded in 2004, there are currently nineteen member schools operating all around the globe, with plans to add several more in the coming years.
Through the years, many individuals have approached John with a desire to support these ministries in their areas of greatest need. In response to this growing request, the John MacArthur Charitable Trust was formed in 2017 with the sole purpose of providing support for the ongoing and expanding work to the MacArthur family of ministries.
In God’s providence, all of that—and much more—has been the direct result of John MacArthur’s pulpit ministry. As he often said, it was beyond anything he could have ever planned or schemed to create on his own. He focused on the depth of the ministry and left the breadth of it to God. “Faithfulness,” he said, “is its own reward.” Only heaven will fully reveal the rich harvest God has brought forth through the faithfulness of John MacArthur.
“Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7).
