diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/api/python/PythonMLLibAPI.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/api/python/PythonMLLibAPI.scala
index f585aacd452e0..06e13b717e920 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/api/python/PythonMLLibAPI.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/api/python/PythonMLLibAPI.scala
@@ -1149,7 +1149,7 @@ private[python] class PythonMLLibAPI extends Serializable {
   def getIndexedRows(indexedRowMatrix: IndexedRowMatrix): DataFrame = {
     // We use DataFrames for serialization of IndexedRows to Python,
     // so return a DataFrame.
-    val sqlContext = new SQLContext(indexedRowMatrix.rows.sparkContext)
+    val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(indexedRowMatrix.rows.sparkContext)
     sqlContext.createDataFrame(indexedRowMatrix.rows)
   }
 
@@ -1159,7 +1159,7 @@ private[python] class PythonMLLibAPI extends Serializable {
   def getMatrixEntries(coordinateMatrix: CoordinateMatrix): DataFrame = {
     // We use DataFrames for serialization of MatrixEntry entries to
     // Python, so return a DataFrame.
-    val sqlContext = new SQLContext(coordinateMatrix.entries.sparkContext)
+    val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(coordinateMatrix.entries.sparkContext)
     sqlContext.createDataFrame(coordinateMatrix.entries)
   }
 
@@ -1169,7 +1169,7 @@ private[python] class PythonMLLibAPI extends Serializable {
   def getMatrixBlocks(blockMatrix: BlockMatrix): DataFrame = {
     // We use DataFrames for serialization of sub-matrix blocks to
     // Python, so return a DataFrame.
-    val sqlContext = new SQLContext(blockMatrix.blocks.sparkContext)
+    val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(blockMatrix.blocks.sparkContext)
     sqlContext.createDataFrame(blockMatrix.blocks)
   }
 }
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
index a956084ae06e8..aef9ef2cb052d 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
@@ -192,7 +192,7 @@ object NaiveBayesModel extends Loader[NaiveBayesModel] {
         modelType: String)
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, path: String, data: Data): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // Create JSON metadata.
@@ -208,7 +208,7 @@ object NaiveBayesModel extends Loader[NaiveBayesModel] {
 
     @Since("1.3.0")
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): NaiveBayesModel = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       // Load Parquet data.
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(dataPath(path))
       // Check schema explicitly since erasure makes it hard to use match-case for checking.
@@ -239,7 +239,7 @@ object NaiveBayesModel extends Loader[NaiveBayesModel] {
         theta: Array[Array[Double]])
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, path: String, data: Data): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // Create JSON metadata.
@@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ object NaiveBayesModel extends Loader[NaiveBayesModel] {
     }
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): NaiveBayesModel = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       // Load Parquet data.
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(dataPath(path))
       // Check schema explicitly since erasure makes it hard to use match-case for checking.
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/impl/GLMClassificationModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/impl/GLMClassificationModel.scala
index fe09f6b75d28b..2910c027ae06d 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/impl/GLMClassificationModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/impl/GLMClassificationModel.scala
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ private[classification] object GLMClassificationModel {
         weights: Vector,
         intercept: Double,
         threshold: Option[Double]): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // Create JSON metadata.
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ private[classification] object GLMClassificationModel {
      */
     def loadData(sc: SparkContext, path: String, modelClass: String): Data = {
       val datapath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(datapath)
       val dataArray = dataRDD.select("weights", "intercept", "threshold").take(1)
       assert(dataArray.size == 1, s"Unable to load $modelClass data from: $datapath")
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/GaussianMixtureModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/GaussianMixtureModel.scala
index 7f6163e04bf17..7bef086838541 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/GaussianMixtureModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/GaussianMixtureModel.scala
@@ -149,7 +149,7 @@ object GaussianMixtureModel extends Loader[GaussianMixtureModel] {
         weights: Array[Double],
         gaussians: Array[MultivariateGaussian]): Unit = {
 
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // Create JSON metadata.
@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@ object GaussianMixtureModel extends Loader[GaussianMixtureModel] {
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): GaussianMixtureModel = {
       val dataPath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val dataFrame = sqlContext.read.parquet(dataPath)
       val dataArray = dataFrame.select("weight", "mu", "sigma").collect()
 
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/KMeansModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/KMeansModel.scala
index 45021f4375aef..a40148d9ff478 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/KMeansModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/KMeansModel.scala
@@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ object KMeansModel extends Loader[KMeansModel] {
     val thisClassName = "org.apache.spark.mllib.clustering.KMeansModel"
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, model: KMeansModel, path: String): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
       val metadata = compact(render(
         ("class" -> thisClassName) ~ ("version" -> thisFormatVersion) ~ ("k" -> model.k)))
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ object KMeansModel extends Loader[KMeansModel] {
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): KMeansModel = {
       implicit val formats = DefaultFormats
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val (className, formatVersion, metadata) = Loader.loadMetadata(sc, path)
       assert(className == thisClassName)
       assert(formatVersion == thisFormatVersion)
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/PowerIterationClustering.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/PowerIterationClustering.scala
index 6c76e26fd1626..a6657ed52da8c 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/PowerIterationClustering.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/clustering/PowerIterationClustering.scala
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ object PowerIterationClusteringModel extends Loader[PowerIterationClusteringMode
 
     @Since("1.4.0")
     def save(sc: SparkContext, model: PowerIterationClusteringModel, path: String): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       val metadata = compact(render(
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ object PowerIterationClusteringModel extends Loader[PowerIterationClusteringMode
     @Since("1.4.0")
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): PowerIterationClusteringModel = {
       implicit val formats = DefaultFormats
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
 
       val (className, formatVersion, metadata) = Loader.loadMetadata(sc, path)
       assert(className == thisClassName)
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/feature/Word2Vec.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/feature/Word2Vec.scala
index c226e3cc7976d..131a862552308 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/feature/Word2Vec.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/feature/Word2Vec.scala
@@ -588,7 +588,7 @@ object Word2VecModel extends Loader[Word2VecModel] {
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): Word2VecModel = {
       val dataPath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val dataFrame = sqlContext.read.parquet(dataPath)
 
       val dataArray = dataFrame.select("word", "vector").collect()
@@ -602,7 +602,7 @@ object Word2VecModel extends Loader[Word2VecModel] {
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, path: String, model: Map[String, Array[Float]]): Unit = {
 
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       val vectorSize = model.values.head.size
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/recommendation/MatrixFactorizationModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/recommendation/MatrixFactorizationModel.scala
index 46562eb2ad0f7..0dc40483dd0ff 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/recommendation/MatrixFactorizationModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/recommendation/MatrixFactorizationModel.scala
@@ -353,7 +353,7 @@ object MatrixFactorizationModel extends Loader[MatrixFactorizationModel] {
      */
     def save(model: MatrixFactorizationModel, path: String): Unit = {
       val sc = model.userFeatures.sparkContext
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
       val metadata = compact(render(
         ("class" -> thisClassName) ~ ("version" -> thisFormatVersion) ~ ("rank" -> model.rank)))
@@ -364,7 +364,7 @@ object MatrixFactorizationModel extends Loader[MatrixFactorizationModel] {
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): MatrixFactorizationModel = {
       implicit val formats = DefaultFormats
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val (className, formatVersion, metadata) = loadMetadata(sc, path)
       assert(className == thisClassName)
       assert(formatVersion == thisFormatVersion)
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/IsotonicRegression.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/IsotonicRegression.scala
index 877d31ba41303..9b8c860259b3d 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/IsotonicRegression.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/IsotonicRegression.scala
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ object IsotonicRegressionModel extends Loader[IsotonicRegressionModel] {
         boundaries: Array[Double],
         predictions: Array[Double],
         isotonic: Boolean): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
 
       val metadata = compact(render(
         ("class" -> thisClassName) ~ ("version" -> thisFormatVersion) ~
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ object IsotonicRegressionModel extends Loader[IsotonicRegressionModel] {
     }
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String): (Array[Double], Array[Double]) = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(dataPath(path))
 
       checkSchema[Data](dataRDD.schema)
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/impl/GLMRegressionModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/impl/GLMRegressionModel.scala
index 317d3a5702636..02af281fb726b 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/impl/GLMRegressionModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/regression/impl/GLMRegressionModel.scala
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ private[regression] object GLMRegressionModel {
         modelClass: String,
         weights: Vector,
         intercept: Double): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // Create JSON metadata.
@@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ private[regression] object GLMRegressionModel {
      */
     def loadData(sc: SparkContext, path: String, modelClass: String, numFeatures: Int): Data = {
       val datapath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(datapath)
       val dataArray = dataRDD.select("weights", "intercept").take(1)
       assert(dataArray.size == 1, s"Unable to load $modelClass data from: $datapath")
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/DecisionTreeModel.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/DecisionTreeModel.scala
index e1bf23f4c34bb..1faef1c2fd050 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/DecisionTreeModel.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/DecisionTreeModel.scala
@@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ object DecisionTreeModel extends Loader[DecisionTreeModel] with Logging {
     }
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, path: String, model: DecisionTreeModel): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // SPARK-6120: We do a hacky check here so users understand why save() is failing
@@ -244,7 +244,7 @@ object DecisionTreeModel extends Loader[DecisionTreeModel] with Logging {
 
     def load(sc: SparkContext, path: String, algo: String, numNodes: Int): DecisionTreeModel = {
       val datapath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       // Load Parquet data.
       val dataRDD = sqlContext.read.parquet(datapath)
       // Check schema explicitly since erasure makes it hard to use match-case for checking.
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/treeEnsembleModels.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/treeEnsembleModels.scala
index df5b8feab5d5d..3cbe634c67654 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/treeEnsembleModels.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/tree/model/treeEnsembleModels.scala
@@ -413,7 +413,7 @@ private[tree] object TreeEnsembleModel extends Logging {
     case class EnsembleNodeData(treeId: Int, node: NodeData)
 
     def save(sc: SparkContext, path: String, model: TreeEnsembleModel, className: String): Unit = {
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       import sqlContext.implicits._
 
       // SPARK-6120: We do a hacky check here so users understand why save() is failing
@@ -473,7 +473,7 @@ private[tree] object TreeEnsembleModel extends Logging {
         path: String,
         treeAlgo: String): Array[DecisionTreeModel] = {
       val datapath = Loader.dataPath(path)
-      val sqlContext = new SQLContext(sc)
+      val sqlContext = SQLContext.getOrCreate(sc)
       val nodes = sqlContext.read.parquet(datapath).map(NodeData.apply)
       val trees = constructTrees(nodes)
       trees.map(new DecisionTreeModel(_, Algo.fromString(treeAlgo)))