Across more than forty years John MacArthur has opened and taught the Word of God in one local congregation, Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. Consequences have followed that no one anticipated, and which the preacher himself attributes to the sovereign hand of God: a people united to Christ and to one another, and an influence extending well beyond that one church.

Iain H. Murray is the biographer of Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones and Edwards, and he brings the same method here - letting the ministry rather than the personality carry the narrative. For readers who know MacArthur's books and sermons but not the story behind them, and for anyone interested in what a long pastorate in one place can produce.