The Master’s University’s newest executive isn’t new to TMU.

Russell Moir is returning to the campus as vice president of student life and campus pastor. From 1985 to 1991, he held similar positions, emphasizing a student-life culture of Spirit-empowered heart transformation. His focus hasn’t changed, and he says his goal is to pick up where Harry Walls, who stepped down from the position this summer, left off.

“Harry did a phenomenal job,” Moir said. “It’s my responsibility to receive that baton and run as hard as I can. We have a strong student life staff and a strong spirit in the student body. We’re healthy. We just need to stay healthy.”

Moir brings extensive ministry and business-management experience to his second tenure at TMU.

After leaving what was then The Master’s College, Moir served as senior pastor at Blackhawk Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for 10 years. (Along the way, he and his wife, Heide, had five children, and they now have 20 grandchildren.) In 2000, Moir changed careers, buying his parents’ small orthopedic device company in Solvang, California, and building it over the following decades into an international operation.

As for returning to TMU, he says he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to serve under the leadership of President Abner Chou and Chancellor John MacArthur, whose preaching has so encouraged him and his family over the years. He also loved the idea of once again serving a school that’s wholeheartedly committed to the authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency of Scripture.

“You get to work at a place that stands for holding forth the Word of God,” Moir said, “and that’s an incredible privilege.”

Chou is equally pleased to have Moir back at TMU.

“At this pivotal moment, I am so grateful the Lord sent us one who is not an outsider to Student Life but who helped to found it,” Chou said. “Russ brings with him not only the enthusiasm, passion, and zeal of old, but a seasoned maturity produced by years of ministry and service. His presence will solidify Student Life in its careful balance to ‘admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.’”