John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church, as well as an author, conference speaker, chancellor of The Master’s University and Seminary, and featured teacher with the Grace to You media ministry.
In 1969, after graduating from Talbot Theological Seminary, John came to Grace Community Church. The emphasis of his pulpit ministry is the careful study and verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible, with special attention devoted to the historical and grammatical background behind each passage. Since completing his first best-selling book The Gospel According to Jesus in 1988, John has written nearly 400 books and study guides, including Our Sufficiency in Christ, Strange Fire, Ashamed of the Gospel, The Murder of Jesus, A Tale of Two Sons, Twelve Ordinary Men, The Truth War, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, Slave, One Perfect Life, and The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series.
John and his wife, Patricia, live in Southern California and have four married children: Matt, Marcy, Mark, and Melinda. They also enjoy the enthusiastic company of their fifteen grandchildren.
Eric has lived all around the country, including Minnesota, Colorado, South Carolina, Florida, California,and Indiana. He served as senior pastor at Castleview Church in Indianapolis and associate pastor at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles under Pastor John MacArthur. Eric has a B.A. from Trinity International University (Miami campus) and a M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary (Los Angeles).
In addition to pastoring, Eric helped start the Indianapolis Theological Seminary, the Indianapolis Chapter of The Gospel Coalition, the Indy Sr. Pastors Network, and has served as a Fellow at The Mathena Center for Church Revitalization at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Eric’s passions include preaching and discipling, dating his wife of 22 years, raising his teenage sons (18, 16, 15), and helping serve other pastors. His hobbies include CrossFit and anything outdoors
Kurt was saved out of a home where there was no gospel influence. God rescued him and gave him light for his darkness, hope for his despair, and Christ’s righteousness for his sin. The beauty and power of the gospel of grace overwhelm him to this day.
For his ministry training, Kurt had the privilege of studying at The Master’s Seminary and serving at Grace Community Church under John MacArthur. The 15 years he spent at Grace were amazing and a gift of shaping grace to him. In recent years, he have pursued a doctorate at Southern Seminary and he has served with ministries in North Carolina and Chicago. He now makes his home in Central Florida, where his roots run deep and where he pastors The Grove Bible Chapel of Tampa.
He is most passionate about: 1) Making disciples 2) Training leaders and 3) Doing all things for the sake of the gospel.
As for his favorite things, Julie and his six kids are tremendous gifts from God and he loves time with them, doing ministry with them, and seeing God’s goodness through them. When Kurt is not holding his wife’s hand, he’s probably holding a Puritan biography.
Jeff Dalrymple is an organizational leader and experiential branding expert. Jeff’s leadership experience includes several president and C-suite executive roles in higher education, non-profit, and non-governmental organizations. Through assembling and leading teams, Jeff enjoys experiential branding, strategic planning, and making things happen.
Experience includes non-profit and for-profit organizational management, team building, communications, development/fundraising, hospitality, conference & event planning, international relations, media and production management, strategic planning, revitalization, emergency management, disaster response, and board governance.
Education includes bachelor’s degree in organizational management, masters in international relations and conflict resolution, and certificates from Disney Institute in leadership excellence and fundraising from Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy
Jeff served as board president of Louisville Rescue Mission. He currently serves on the boards of The Apollos Project and Hadassah’s Hope. Jeff enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with family. Married to Kristil they are the parents of: JJ, Kassie, Katherine, and Kylie. They reside in Jacksonville, Florida.
Jeff has a passion for taking things to the next level. This is evident in everything he has his hands on. His passion for excellence is what led him to create the Hospitality Project. Jeff strategically understands the power of creating memorable experiences and has witnessed the success that this brings to any industry. He believes that intentional hospitality is a leadership philosophy and that life is too short for mediocrity.
Matt has been married to Haley for 17 years and they have six beautiful daughters — Taylor (16), Ashlyn (14), Hope (12), Aubrey (10), Payton (7) and Shelby (4). His family has salt water in their veins and they love spending time at the beach. He has embraced being the “lone testosterone” in his household. Matt enjoy’s all things sports, music (from classical to hip-hop) and spending time with his queen and 6 princesses!
Matt played football and basketball in high school and college. After two years at the University of Evansville he transferred to the University of Northern Colorado (the “other” UNC 🙂 ) where he graduated with a finance degree. Shortly after surrendering His life to Christ in college, Matt and Haley became a part of Mountain View Community Church (the first Crossway Chapel) in Fort Collins, CO.
Matt served in student and small group ministry before being recognized as one of the pastors of Mountain View in 2006. Matt completed a two-year pastoral training program at Mountain View Community Church and is a licensed pastor with Crossway Chapel International. He and his family were part of the initial leadership team who planted Crossway Chapel of Wilmington. Matt worked for State Farm Insurance from 2001-2016 and served as a pastor bi-vocationally for ten years. In 2016 he went into ministry full-time and assumed the lead elder role at Crossway.
Will Thomas accepted his role as pastor and elder of Berean Community Church on June 1, 2006. He graduated from North Carolina State University with a BA in Horticulture before experiences as a youth minister at Manteo Baptist Church confirmed Will’s desire to serve the church in pastoral ministry. God provided the opportunity for Will to attend The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, California. He graduated in 2005 and began attending the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in pursuit of a Master’s in Theology. A long-time friend and fellow Master’s Seminary graduate asked if he would consider full-time pastoral ministry in New Bern and he first took the pulpit at Berean on Easter Sunday of 2006. Will met his wife, Melia, at NCSU and they were married the weekend after graduation. God blessed them with their son Beau during their time in California. God later blessed them with their son Benji, daughter Kinsey, and son Luke. Will is a survivor of Burkitt’s Lymphoma and God has graciously chosen for him to be cancer free since September of 2007.
Daniel and his wife Lisa came to Cornerstone on Easter Sunday April 2006. Both originally from Wilmington, they moved from California where Daniel was on staff at Grace Community Church. Daniel graduated from NC State with a BS in Math Education and received his Masters of Divinity from The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, CA. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Ministry from Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY. Daniel and Lisa have four children, Jacob, Josiah, Ellie and Judah.