Pastor Albert N. Martin (11 April 1934–7 April 2026)

Albert Newton Martin passed into glory on 7 April, just a few days short of his 92^nd birthday.

He was raised in a Christian home, the second of eleven children born to George and Mildred Martin. Although he always gave intellectual assent to the truths of Scripture taught faithfully by his parents and made repeated professions of faith in childhood (the result, he said, of a sensitive conscience and a fear of God’s judgment), it was not until his late teens that he was converted. His considerable native intelligence, zeal and energy—devoted till then to schoolwork, football and baseball—were now and for the rest of his long life to be harnessed for the cause of Christ. Knowing God through knowing Scripture and telling others about this God from his Word became his all-consuming passion. He spent endless hours reading his newly-purchased Thomson Chain Reference Bible, wearing it out within three years, preaching at the local Mission Hall and on the street corner in Stamford CT, and praying with other newly converted friends. He studied at Bob Jones University and Columbia Bible College, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1956.

He married Marilyn Hart in June 1956 and they enjoyed 48 years of happy marriage and were blessed with three children. Mrs Martin was called home in 2004 after a six-year battle with cancer. In 2006 Pastor Martin married Dorothy Chanski, a great support and blessing to him in retirement, who predeceased him in 2020.

Pastor Martin exercised an itinerant ministry from 1957 until the birth of the Martins’ first child, Joel, in 1961. This change in circumstances persuaded him that he needed to be at home much more than his itinerant ministry allowed. In September 1962 he received a call to be the pastor of a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in North Caldwell, NJ, about an hour from New York City. During these years he was discovering the doctrines of grace as he preached consecutively through books of Scripture. An instrumental figure in Pastor Martin’s developing understanding of biblical doctrine at this time was Ernest Reisinger (who was to become the first U.S. Trustee of the Banner of Truth Trust in 1967). Through Mr Reisinger, Pastor Martin read such books as The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink and The Death of Death in the Death of Christ by John Owen. After about a decade of reading, preaching, praying and thinking, Pastor Martin became unshakeably convinced that Reformed Christianity is nothing less than biblical Christianity and that it ought to bear the fruit of a deep and genuine piety. One of the texts that has informed Pastor Martin’s ministry is 1 Timothy 4.16: Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. He has preached and lectured and written on this verse countless times, but his own life and ministry stands as a living sermon on the text, as anyone who had the privilege of knowing him can testify.

Pastor Martin faithfully served the CMA church in North Caldwell from 1962 until 1966, but as his convictions developed in an increasingly Reformed direction he realised that he could no longer pastor in a denomination whose beliefs were so different from his own and so offered his resignation. The congregation however, refused his resignation! They loved and esteemed him and his teaching so much that they disbanded as a CMA church, leaving behind the buildings and parsonage. In September 1967 the church reconstituted with the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith as its subordinate standard and the name Trinity Baptist Church. This congregation was to become Pastor Martin’s life’s work, into which he poured every ounce of his strength and abilities for another forty-six years, seeing the church grow from small beginnings in the little rented building affectionately known as the ‘Cracker Box’ in Caldwell, NJ to the present large suite of buildings (incorporating a Christian School) in Montville, NJ. The name of Trinity Baptist Church and Albert Martin came to be inseparable in the minds of innumerable believers throughout the world who (like the present writer) owe an incalculable debt to the ministry of this servant of Christ and the church he shepherded so faithfully.

Ernest Reisinger not only introduced Pastor Martin to books but to men who would shape him—not least Iain H. Murray and Professor John Murray. As a result of these friendships Pastor Martin was first invited to preach at the Banner of Truth Ministers’ conference in Leicester, England at the age of thirty-four. When Professor Murray was invited to speak at the three evening meetings of the 1967 Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference he replied, “If Al Martin is to be there I really think he should be asked to take the three evening services you propose for me. He is one of the ablest and moving preachers I have ever heard. In recent years I have not heard his equal. My memory of preachers goes back sixty years. So, when I say he is one of the ablest, this is an assessment that includes very memorable preachers of the past and present.”

Pastor Martin’s preaching gifts were continually sought after in family conferences, pastors’ conferences and other settings all around the world. His preaching ministry was multiplied exponentially through the work of the Trinity Pulpit (begun in 1971) sending out more than 800,000 cassette tapes of Pastor Martin’s recorded sermons to all parts of the globe. In 1977 Trinity Ministerial Academy began as a ministry of Trinity Baptist Church. Pastor Martin taught Pastoral Theology to generations of students at the Academy until it closed in 1998. Alongside these many and varied public ministries, Pastor Martin also came to be a kind of Pastor of pastors, as men sought his counsel on all aspects of pastoral ministry. He was a diligent and conscientious correspondent, carefully replying personally to every enquiry that came across his desk, as well as spending untold hours on the phone counselling pastors who needed his wisdom and encouragement. As a result he and his fellow elders decided to begin an annual Pastors’ conference where the recurring issues about which he was being consulted could be addressed in a more time-efficient way. This conference continues to this day and is one of the highlights of the year for many of those who regularly attend.

If I may speak personally, I first encountered Pastor Martin through the Trinity Pulpit cassette tapes. I listened to his 90+ lectures on Pastoral Theology in the year before entering seminary and they proved to be an ideal preparation for my formal ministry training. Pastor Martin seemed not only to have read every significant work relating to pastoral theology and to have mined them for every gem of wisdom they had to offer, but to have distilled their riches and woven them throughout his lectures. No matter what the topic, Pastor Martin provided counsel that was biblically faithful and practically wise. I never dreamt that one day I would have the privilege of attending the Trinity Pastors’ Conference and getting to know the man whose voice and teaching had become so familiar to me, but thanks to Ted Donnelly’s gentle insistence I did attend each year and got to know the man behind the lectures.

I discovered that every word of these lectures had been hammered out on the anvil of pastoral experience over decades of faithful ministry, and that these lectures had been lived before they were taught. I’m thankful that Pastor Martin was able to commit them to writing and leave in his three-volume Pastoral Theology an enduring legacy for future pastors. Every page provides a window into Pastor Martin’s own life and ministry: for with a consistency that I have rarely witnessed, he has sought to practise every word he teaches. His own character and work commend his teaching and exemplify a saying he was fond of quoting: ‘The life of the minister is the life of his ministry.’

It was as a preacher, however, that Pastor Martin was most used, both in Montville and throughout the world. In the pulpit all his gifts and character were at full stretch—his hard-won understanding of whatever passage of Scripture he was expounding, through a lifetime of prayer and laborious study, his natural rhetorical powers reinforced by decades of reading the masters of preaching, the lucidity of his mind, the powerful logic of his argument, the passionate zeal for the truth, devotion to his Lord and love for those to whom he preached. He used to quote what was said of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, ‘He preached as if he was dying to have you converted’; Pastor Martin preached as if he was dying to have you either converted or sanctified. And supporting his preaching was the scrupulous consistency of a man determined to keep a clear conscience before God and men. By God’s grace he was enabled to finish his race well and keep that clear conscience to the end.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Heb 13.7)