The Rev. Dr. Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, brings to his leadership a deep awareness of the urgency of the gospel of Jesus Christ—and a passion for the vital role that Fuller Seminary plays in the enactment of that gospel.  He served for 16 years as Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, when he joined Fuller’s faculty in 2009 as Lloyd John Ogilvie Associate Professor of Preaching and Director of the newly established Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching. On July 1, 2013, he stepped into service as Fuller Seminary’s fifth president.

In 1982 he cofounded the Christian International Scholarship Foundation (CISF) and served on the CISF board for 17 years. He has also been chair of John Stott Ministries, cochair of the John Stott Ministries Global Initiative Fund, and senior fellow of the International Justice Mission. He has been a popular and well-traveled speaker for years and has taught at New College Berkeley for Advanced Christian Studies. In addition to publishing articles in such periodicals as Christianity Today and Radix, he has authored the books, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus (2010), The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (2007) and Called: The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today (2014). 

A Washington State native, he embraced a personal relationship with Jesus Christ on the threshold of his undergraduate years at Whitman College. After earning his bachelor degree, he came to Fuller for his MDiv. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and began what was to become three decades of pastoral ministry—along the way meeting and marrying his life partner, Janet Morrison Labberton.