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By Donna Dunn

The man who founded Thomas Road Baptist Church and built it into one of the largest churches in America used to say, “You do not determine a man’s greatness by his talent or wealth, as the world does, but rather by what it takes to discourage him.”

When Jerry Falwell announced to his Thomas Road congregation in January 1971 that he would begin a college, few believed in this “leap of faith.” Even Dr. Elmer Towns, who came to Lynchburg in June to help found the college, was stunned to find out that Falwell didn’t have the $160,000 budget Towns proposed for the first year’s operations. In fact, Falwell didn’t even have $5,000.

“Jerry and I got into his Buick and we drove out for an evening church meeting, approximately 100 miles away. Then, I realized how Jerry planned to raise the money,” Towns explained.

They visited churches across the country that summer of 1971. With pledges of $1 a week from thousands of supporters, they opened Lynchburg Baptist College that fall with 154 students. That fledgling school, with just four full-time faculty, which met in a church and held gym classes in the parking lot, would eventually become Liberty University.

This year, as it celebrates its 40^th anniversary, Liberty University boasts 72,000 current undergraduate and graduate students, making it America’s eighth largest four-year university. It is Virginia’s largest university.

One Night in Ohio

The beginnings of the university that would change the face of Lynchburg, Virginia, actually began, in part, in Canton, Ohio. Dr. Elmer Towns was there to speak at a church one evening in January 1971, when the pastor there encouraged him to start a college with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Towns said, “No.” Still, the pastor was insistent, “Call tonight.”

At the same time, Falwell had called Towns’ home and talked with his wife, Ruth. He told her he wanted Elmer Towns to help him start a college. She got off the phone and began to pray. In a day without cell phones, Towns had no idea what he was getting into when he called Falwell later that night.

“I said, ‘Hello, this is Elmer Towns.’ And he said, ‘What are we going to call the college?’” Towns recalled, and says he replied to Falwell’s question, “We must determine the purpose of the college, before we can determine its name.”

A professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, Towns had written “The Ten Largest Sunday Schools,” which featured Thomas Road Baptist Church, in 1969.

“Then I found out he had been a Bible college president in Canada, and was on a commission for the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges. I was thinking he was my man,” Falwell later wrote.

In that phone conversation, the two men who co-founded Liberty determined the school’s three main objectives: To promote academic excellence, to offer an “action-oriented curriculum” grounded in evangelism and to be cutting-edge.

Today, Liberty University offers 115 undergraduate, 24 graduate and three doctoral programs. Its campus provides 5 million square feet of facilities, 500,000 square feet of which are academic facilities.

The school, which holds a convocation of prayer and worship three times a week, brings in nationally-known speakers, such as John MacArthur, Gary Smalley, David Platt, John Maxwell, Gary Chapman, Steve Saint, Jim Cymbala, Miles McPherson and Mike Huckabee. It also hosts concerts by contemporary Christian artists, including Switchfoot, the David Crowder Band, Jeremy Camp and Third Day.

Liberty’s “action-oriented” students perform about 380,000 hours of community service each year.

On the Cutting Edge

One of the tenets of the new college that would propel its growth was Falwell’s desire to be cutting-edge. He had already become a pioneer in using television to reach new audiences, but he was also interested in other technologies.

“At the time, Jerry Falwell had the only church in America with records on IBM punch cards,” Towns said.

Eventually, Liberty University’s investment in online education would be one of the driving components of its rapid growth. In the last three years, Liberty’s online enrollment has more than doubled–from 25,000 to 60,000.

Steve Peterson, who first came to Liberty as a student in 1993, now serves as the Executive Director for Admissions for Liberty Online.

“I think in celebrating the 40 years, it’s a milestone not only to look back on what the Lord has done, but also a time for vision casting for where we’re headed as an institution,” Peterson said.

“When you look at it now, it’s easy to see Jerry Falwell was right when he said he was going to build this university, but you have to remember those statements were said on a hill on a farm,” he explained.

Today, the university that began on an empty farm offers:

• A School of Aeronautics with a state-of-the-art flight simulator
• A law school in which all classrooms, the law library and three mock trial courtrooms, including the Supreme Courtroom (with a nine-seat bench replicating the U.S. Supreme Court bench), have the latest technologies
• The Human Performance Laboratory for athletes of all levels with a Bod Pod that calculates body composition
• 95 percent campus-wide Wi-Fi coverage
• MyLibertyU, an app for mobile devices that offers students on-demand access to Liberty news, athletic news and courses through Blackboard Mobile Learn
• The myLU portal, a customizable Web site
  

Pioneering Spirit

Paula Oldham Johnson, the Jerry Falwell Museum Curator, who came to Lynchburg Bible College in 1971, is quick to say that Falwell’s pioneering spirit lives on.

Johnson actually toured with Falwell and Towns the summer before the college opened, because her father, Doug Oldham, a popular gospel singer helped draw in the crowds. But, she said she had no interest in going to their school. Having just finished her first year of college at her family’s school in Indiana, the teenager couldn’t understand why anyone would want to attend Lynchburg Bible College.

“I thought, ‘There’s no campus. Who’s going to go to a college with no campus?’” Johnson said.

But at their last rally, “I heard the voice of God telling me to go,” she said.

Johnson remembers crying over the decision.

“But I’ve never regretted it since. … It was a life-changing encounter with Dr. Jerry Falwell, which is something a lot of people could say,” she recalled.

She remembers living in the basement of the Donald Duck Bottling Company and having to bring her own chair in order to attend class in Towns’ office.

“I don’t think Liberty has ever lost that pioneering spirit,” she said about those first students and those who’ve come after them–those who lived in “dorms” on Treasure Island, a summer camp in the James River and those who slogged through red mud on an empty mountain.

“It had a very humble beginning,” she said. “There were times you thought we would shut it down, but then we just saw miracle after miracle.”

“We’ve Come This Far By Faith”

One of the most difficult times for Liberty University came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as scandals surrounding Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart tainted all televangelists. The university saw its donations dwindle. That’s when Jerry Falwell, Jr., who began working with his father in 1988, began to formulate a business plan for the university that would not depend on donations to Thomas Road.

Falwell, Jr., who is now Liberty’s Chancellor, recalls not having money for day-to-day operations–including faculty and staff salaries.

“Even in the darkest days, there was always a last-minute miracle that resulted in just enough money coming in and unexpected sources just in time to avoid catastrophe,” he said in the Liberty Journal.

Chronicled by the likes of Forbes magazine, the comeback included savvy financing, an increase in donors and the restructuring of debt.

In 2010, Liberty University issued $120 million in tax-exempt education facilities bonds. The bonds will be used for the “finance and construction of a multitude of new facilities on campus that will greatly enhance the education experience for students,” said Falwell, Jr.

“These days are on par with the early days when it comes to excitement … and the fast pace of it all,” Johnson said.

Looking at the campus now, she recalls flying a kite on an empty Liberty Mountain when the only buildings there were the Carter-Glass Mansion and a barn, feeling that it was a lifetime ago.

“We didn’t see a university here, but we believed in what Dr. Falwell said,” she said. “There is a sea of people who gave what they could, even if it was $1. They gave it consistently and they made Liberty what it is today. … They believed in what God was doing here.”

Jerry Falwell, Sr., always maintained that his vision for the university was from God. On one occasion, he visited the property with two local businessmen. He left them in their truck and knelt to pray.

“He went to the clearing where the prayer chapel is today and he opened the Bible and started praying,” Towns said, “He came back and said, ‘I can see it all. Over here, I see the dorms. Over here, I see the classrooms and over here will be sports.’”

When Falwell began to open those buildings, he and Towns would personally inspect every room, every bathroom, every closet.

“But he said, ‘There will come a day when you won’t be able to go in every room and then, not every building,’” Towns said.

From his office in the School of Religion, Towns pointed to Campus East and said with a smile that he hasn’t even been in the dorms there.

Towns said Liberty University was a leap of faith. But not in the way he used to think.

“[Jerry Falwell] always talked about the leap, and I always talked about the landing,” he said with a smile. “Turns out, we were talking about the same thing from different perspectives.”

Liberty University by the Numbers

• 72,000 students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries
• 115 undergraduate, 24 graduate and three doctoral programs
• 380,000 hours of community service performed by students each year
• 21 NCAA Division I athletic teams
• 5 million square feet of facilities, including 500,000 square feet of academic facilities
• $120 million slated for current campus projects and future expansions in the coming years