Maranatha Campus Ministries

Maranatha Campus Ministries was a Charismatic/Pentecostal-oriented Christian ministry founded by Bob Weiner which existed from 1971 to 1990. Its primary outreach was to college and university campuses.

Maranatha began in 1972 in Paducah, Kentucky as a youth center led by Bob Weiner, a former Assemblies of God youth pastor. It was an outreach of a California-based ministry called "Global Missions." Weiner and his wife, Rose, had helped lead a large revival in Paducah, Ky earlier that year. Many disenfranchised "60's" teens found a new expression of Christianity in the center located near Paducah Tilghman High School. Large numbers of students from the surrounding area also began attending.

In 1972, Weiner founded a campus ministry called the "Maranatha House" at Murray State University, a few miles from Paducah. The word "Maranatha" means "Our Lord, come" or "Our Lord is come" in Aramaic, and was a popular Christian phrase around that time. Later in 1972, Weiner struck out on his own and changed Maranatha House's name to "Maranatha Christian Church." During the mid-1970s and early 1980s, other Maranatha chapters were established across the United States and Canada, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. The ministry moved its headquarters from Paducah to Gainesville, Florida in 1979.