(RNS) — Bible teacher and bestselling author Beth Moore announced Thursday (March 5) that her ministry will stop holding large-scale Living Proof events in 2027.
The decision to end Living Proof Ministries events, which feature Moore’s Bible teaching and worship music, will coincide with her 70th birthday. She plans to continue speaking and writing but will no longer host events.
“Though it may sound like retirement, unless the Lord wills it, it’s meant to actually delay retirement, making the best use of my remaining energies in the last chapter of ministry,” Moore, the founder of Living Proof Ministries in Houston, said in a video announcement.
For decades, Moore taught at stadiums and megachurches and sold millions of Bible studies and books, in a remarkable career that started when she began teaching a Bible study at a church in Houston. One of her studies, “A Woman’s Heart: God’s Dwelling Place,” wound up in the hands of an editor at Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention publishing arm, which led to a publishing deal that lasted for decades and made her a household name among evangelicals.
Though not seminary trained, Moore became a serious student of the Bible, investing hundreds of hours of research into her studies and seeking out the best scholars to sharpen her understanding.
The election of President Donald Trump upended Moore’s world. Her criticism of Trump’s behavior, which she has said fell short of the morality she learned about in the Bible, alienated evangelicals who supported Trump. Some stopped buying her books or going to her events, and to some pro-Trump evangelicals, she became a pariah.
Moore left the SBC in 2021 and cut ties with Lifeway, with her ministry taking over her events. She would later retell the story of her own experience of abuse as a child and how the church and Jesus had saved her in her 2023 memoir, “All My Knotted-Up Life,” and how she found a new church home after leaving the SBC.
“Never underestimate the power of a welcome,” she told RNS in a 2023 interview.
This year, the ministry will run a pair of sold-out events in Asheville, North Carolina, in April, a cruise to Alaska in July and an event at a Lutheran church in Iowa in September, followed by church events in Massachusetts and Seattle. A final event is set for April 2027, in Nashville, Tennessee.
In her announcement, Moore said planning for the future of Living Proof started when she turned 65. She said she prayed for a year before presenting a plan to the ministry’s board of directors. She also gave thanks to God and to the staff at the ministry.
“I work with the most wonderful people on earth,” she wrote. “I adore them. I love what I get to do and hope to keep serving Jesus to my last breath.”
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