Where Are They Now? Dr. Tom Taylor.

Church History teacher Dr. Tom Taylor was a Bible Institute favorite for years, and countless alumni have their own stories to tell about the always-entertaining instructor. Shirley Richards from the Bible Institute’s New York campus checked in with Dr. Taylor and his wife, Ruth, to see how the Taylors are doing and to collect some memories for alumni to enjoy. Dr. Taylor has had an uphill climb this year as he recuperates from breaking his hip in October. Please join us in praying for Dr. Taylor’s recovery as we remember what made him one of the best.

Dr. Taylor was a guest lecturer at the Bible Institute from 1971 to 2010, including trips to the Florida and Owen Sound campuses once they started. That meant up to six weeks of teaching each spring, sometimes finishing in Canada on a Friday and driving all the way to Florida for the next week’s classes.

Dr. Taylor took on the nearly impossible task of teaching 2,000 years of Church History in 20 class hours. He had a gift for making all the details about people, places, and various “things” interesting by adding his sense of humor to the lectures. He was also known to give a harmonica concert or two during the class week, which students always enjoyed.

When I worked with Dr. Taylor and other guest lecturers, he would write “story tests” in which the test questions were embedded in the storyline. One line from a story test had a sentence that read, “The pastor knew that his church was being persecuted by the neighborhood when he found a cactus leaf on the pulpit chair.”

Ruth Taylor says her husband always found their weeks at the Bible Institute exciting and profitable, with both of them blessed by the students and faculty, their dependence on the Lord, and their happy spirit. One memory she mentioned is of the time Dr. Taylor said in a lecture that he always picked up pennies when he saw them on the street. The next morning, there were pennies all over the platform.
The 2002 yearbook for the New York campus, which was dedicated to Dr. Taylor, had more to say about the man it called “everyone’s favorite Church History teacher.”

“Dr. Taylor feels that people do not know enough about the history of the church, and he wants to keep them informed,” the dedication said. “He especially enjoys teaching at Word of Life because ‘I can use the same jokes every year!’ He loves keeping his students interested by telling of his wedding day, of which he claims, ‘I barely survived, and it was too much work!’ He loves to invest individual time in his students’ lives and distinctly remembers having Dr. Davis and Dr. Wicks in his classroom.”

The dedication also noted, “He warns future students that he is in the process of making new tests and says that they should probably begin studying immediately.”

Dr. Taylor left those students with some words of wisdom: “Always take advantage of the time God has given you to study His Word, and always remember to set our minds on the things above.”

Dr. Taylor also spoke at many Word of Life conferences and banquets, and he enjoyed fishing and gardening in his free time. (It’s an exciting day when the seed catalogs arrive!) He has also written a book, Your Old Testament Tool Box.

I am thankful for the ministry of the Taylors over the years, and I’m sure students have great memories of his classes, too.

Feel free to share your memories of Dr. Taylor on our alumni Facebook group, or send them to alumni@wol.org if you want to be an encouragement to Dr. Taylor at this time.