The morning that Kay Arthur died, a woman led a Bible study using Arthur’s material as a guide in Gainesville, Florida.
Another did the same thing in Hampton, Virginia. A third in Elizabeth, Colorado. And a fourth in Spokane Valley, Washington. More women gathered more groups the next day—and more will meet tomorrow and the day after.
All of them use Arthur’s books and methods.
“You need to know God’s Word, and there are basics,” Arthur said in 2023. “You want to mark the text. The very action of marking the text and coloring the text—we’re known for being ‘the colored pencil people’ … marking the text, seeing key repeated words, finding out what the text says.”
Arthur wrote or cowrote more than 100 titles explaining and applying her method of inductive Bible study. Her books have sold more than 18.5 million copies combined. Several individual titles, including Lord, Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days, were bestsellers, and several, including Lord, I Need Grace to Make It and A Marriage Without Regrets, were recognized by evangelical retailers as the best in Christian publishing.
Arthur also had a radio and TV broadcast for more than 20 years that reached up to 75 million homes.
And yet for her, the ultimate measure of success was the people she equipped and empowered to study the Bible and teach others to study it too.
“It’s the real priesthood of the believers, you know?” Arthur said. “We teach people how to uncover God’s truth themselves and to hear God through His word.”
Arthur died on Tuesday, May 20, at age 91.
“I’ve never known an individual more devoted to the Lord or to the tireless, faithful teaching of Scripture than Kay Arthur,” Bible teacher Beth Moore wrote on social media. “Thank you, Kay. You were unmatched.”
Pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie called Arthur “a real gem.”
“She loved to study the Bible—and even more than that, she loved encouraging others to study it too,” he said. “She will be missed.”
Arthur was born to Leah and John E. Lee in Jackson, Michigan, on November 11, 1933. Her father was a lay leader in the Episcopal Church, and the family regularly attended church, but Arthur found it all pretty boring. She tried to read the Bible, she later recalled, and couldn’t get through it.
Arthur moved to Ohio to attend Case Western Reserve University and become a registered nurse. She met and married Frank Thomas Goetz Jr. when she was 20. Tom, as she called him, was an athlete and a Navy ensign, and he gave her a huge diamond ring and the hope of a happy life. They had two children together, but the marriage was a mess, Arthur later recalled, partly because of undiagnosed mental illness. The couple divorced after six years.
As a divorcée, she started modeling, going out with various men (including one who was married), and pursing things she thought would make her happy but didn’t.
“I had a mink, I had money, and I was miserable,” Arthur said. “I thought, ‘If I could just erase my past. If I could just have a new start.’”
Then at a party in 1963, a friend told her that she didn’t really need all the things she thought she needed. All she needed was Jesus.
The next morning, the 29-year-old committed her life to Christ. She immediately felt clean, loved, and at peace.
She started reading the Bible again and was surprised to find it was fascinating.
“It became a brand new book,” Arthur said. “I have been in the Word ever since.”
The newly converted mother of two also devoured missionary biographies. After her ex-husband died, she moved to Chattanooga to go back to school and finish her nursing degree at Tennessee Temple University—but also dreamed of serving God on a mission field. One day she saw a prayer card for a missionary scheduled to speak at chapel. She felt God tell her she was going to marry him.
Jack Arthur agreed that’s what God wanted, and the couple wed in December 1965. The following year they moved to Mexico as independent missionaries. Arthur, now in her early 30s, was tasked with teaching the Bible to teenagers. Most of the Bible study material she found seemed really boring, however. Some just asked kids to listen to a lesson and fill in the blanks, not even encouraging them to read the text for themselves.
When Arthur found the work of Bryan College Bible professor Irving Jensen, it felt like a breakthrough. He advocated inductive Bible study—starting with a careful reading of the text, looking for key words and phrases, cross-referencing those with other verses, broadening out to consider the context of the whole book, and then looking for larger takeaways that can be applied to life.
“It takes time, but this Book is the Book that is absolute, pure, unadulterated truth!” Arthur said. “Scripture interprets Scripture. … Go through the Bible book by book. Mark the text. It will soon become your friend.”
The family returned to the US after three years. The couple started a ministry to young people on their 32-acre farm in the Tennessee Valley in 1970 and called it Reach Out. Arthur continued to teach Bible study and developed her own teaching tools to equip people to study on their own.
When she published her first study guide on the Book of Romans in 1982, Reach Out was renamed Precept Ministries. The name was taken from Isaiah 28: “Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.For precept must be upon precept” (vv. 9–10, KJV).
Arthur continued teaching how to read the Bible for the next four decades. She became “one of the most prolific Bible study authors and teachers in the world,” according to scholar Halee Gray Scott. Arthur has been frequently cited as a major influence on other women with ministries teaching Scripture, including Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer, and Kelly Minter.
Precept reports it has trained more than 250,000 people to lead Bible studies—many of them women who will teach other women how to read the Bible this week.
One woman has a Bible study in her home in Lakeville, Minnesota. Another in her home in Kennesaw, Georgia. There are others in nondenominational churches in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin; and at a Baptist church in Canton, Texas; a Presbyterian church in Santa Ana, California; a Bible church in Dallas, Oregon; and even an airport in Zanesville, Ohio.
“My burden is for every person to be able to stand on his or her own two feet spiritually. They can’t do that without knowing the Word of God,” she said. “When we see people who are exemplary followers of Jesus Christ, studying the Bible inductively, viewing the world Biblically, and serving the church faithfully in the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s the wonderful finished product!”
Arthur was predeceased by her husband in 2017. She is survived by her three sons—Tom Goetz, Mark Goetz, and David Arthur, who now leads the ministry—as well as nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. The family is planning a private memorial service that will be streamed online for public viewing.
