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BACKGROUND

/ELTDRAFT Elmer Towns is best known as the co-founder of Liberty University, the largest Christian private educational institution in 2013. While Jerry Falwell is the founder of Liberty who gained fame as the founder of Moral Majority, and was the preacher on one of the largest nationally syndicated television programs, The Old Time Gospel Hour, which aired the services of Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia, Towns was the educational architect of Liberty. They met while Towns was doing research on the perennial best seller, The Ten Largest Sunday Schools and What Makes them Grow (Thomas Road Baptist Church was the ninth largest). According to C. Peter Wagner, Towns was the first to write on the mega church movement and this book was the first to systematically research American church growth. Towns thought Thomas Road Baptist Church would be the perfect situation to build a great Christian university. Falwell told Towns, "You hire the faculty, schedule the classes, and determine the educational policies and I'll recruit the students, raise the money and construct the buildings and together we'll build the largest Christian university in the world." That was in 1971 and forty years later they achieved their dream.

In the first year, Towns was the only full time professor and over the years he has never been satisfied with most available textbooks because they were written from a secular or liberal Christian orientation; so he wrote his own and released them with several major publishers, i.e., Houghton-Mifflin, Thomas Nelson, Baker Book House, Moody Press, etc. Over a dozen books have become best sellers in several areas including Systematic Theology, Bible exposition, Evangelism and Church history. Book writing became the second areas of reputation, publishing an encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and a second in Evangelism and Church Growth. Moving toward the later years of his writing ministry he became more interested in writing about prayer, fasting and revival. He wrote 16 volumes on Praying the Scriptures. He won the coveted Gold Medallion for the Book of the Year awarded by the Christian Bookseller Association and Christian Publishers Association with the Names of the Holy Spirit, and came in second with Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough, and Praying the Lord's Prayer.

Towns has written a total of books, resource packets for leadership training in churches, and courses taught for Liberty University online education.

There have been five doctoral dissertations written on Towns that examine his contribution to Christian education. He has written over 1,000 popular and scholarly articles and written articles for 13 encyclopedias.

He was born Elmer Leon Towns, Jr. on October 21, 1932 to Elmer and Erin Towns in Savannah, Georgia, the oldest of three children. His father worked 42 years as a hardware salesman and was known for an almost perfect memory; he memorized the ordinary number for every stock item in the store. Young Towns got his extensive memory capability from his father and indomitable will to work from his mother who told him at age 12, "You're a Towns, you can do anything you set your mind to do."

EDUCATION

Towns attended Columbia Bible College 1950-53 where he met Ruth Forbes of St. Louis, Missouri. He transferred and graduated from Northwestern College, B.A. 1954. He attended both and graduated from Southern Methodist University, MA 1958 and Dallas Theological Seminary Th.M. 1958. He also graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, MRE 1970 and Fuller Theological Seminary, Doctor of Ministries, 1982. He has received honorary doctorates from six different seminaries and colleges.

PLACE OF SERVICE

Towns taught philosophy at Dallas Bible College in 1957 while finishing his seminary degree. He became professor at Midwest Bible College, St. Louis, Missouri, 1958-61, president of Winnipeg Bible College (Canada) the oldest Bible college in Canada, and while there was president of the Canadian Christian college presidents. He served on the board of the accrediting association of Bible colleges and led the Winnipeg College to accreditation and the Manitoba legislature granted it full secular college accreditation. He was instrumental in the establishment of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois 1965-71.

Towns was recognized by the National Association of Professors of Christian Education for research into the sociological factors of church life and death. His study into Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Richard Niebuhr led to the recognized book,Is the Day of the Denomination Dead.

While in Canada, Towns couldn't grow Winnipeg Bible College in spite of attaining better accreditation possible than his competition Bible colleges. He saw two great growing Bible colleges built by great powerful preceding presidents and determined he would never again be a college president but would attach himself to a powerful preaching pastor, and he would give himself to the educational aspects of a college. He met Jerry Falwell and wanted to build a college and determined three principles in their first meeting. First, academic excellence. Falwell wanted to build a Bible college, but Towns insisted on a liberal arts college to prepare graduates for all types of ministry. Second, action-oriented curriculum. Students would be involved in their life vocation as part of their education. Towns has led student educational tours to Israel, the Near East, England, the Far East, Central and South America. Third, the students would be challenged to personal spiritual exponentialism. As such he developed the motto, "Training Champions for Christ."

Another reason for the success of Liberty University is its local church orientation. Towns said, "To have the blessing of God, a Christian college must be the extension of a local church at the collegiate level. It's goals, administration and discipline must grow out of the church and work in harmony with the church." Towns believed the primary purpose of a local church is the Great Commission and to preach the gospel to every person. Since Jerry Falwell was doing that through Thomas Road Baptist Church, that gave strength and credibility to Liberty University.

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