Born to missionary parents in France, Tom grew up in an environment of evangelism and missions. In his last year at Wheaton College, God confirmed Tom's call to full-time ministry. He attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, founded the Trinity Evangelistic Teams, and in 1985 founded Evangelism Unlimited to facilitate a ministry of teaching and leading evangelism. Following seminary Tom went into teaching and pastoral ministry in Quebec, Manitoba, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, also teaching evangelism in the Netherlands, Russia, and Togo, West Africa.
Tom completed a Ph.D. in Evangelism at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2001, and during his four years in Kentucky founded and led the Southern Evangelistic Teams and "Celebrate Jesus 2000" and 2001 Revival Training for students at Southern. Tom began preaching revivals during his time at Southern.
Since 2001 Tom has been teaching evangelism and church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as directing the Midwestern Evangelistic Teams. His Ph.D. research was published under the title "Examining Billy Graham's Theology of Evangelism" (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003). In 2007, Tom received the Professor of the Year award at Midwestern and his "Charts for a Theology of Evangelism" were published by Broadman-Holman Academic. In 2011 he edited a book including chapters by eighteen other Southern Baptist professors of evangelism, titled, "Mobilizing Great Commission Churches for Harvest: Voices and Views from the Southern Baptist Professors of Evangelism Fellowship" (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011).
In this video Tom shares his passion for biblical evangelism in relation to his teaching at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Tom was awarded a six-month sabbatical by Midwestern for the spring of 2012. In that spring he taught evangelism for six weeks at ESBTAO, a French-speaking Baptist Bible college in Togo, West Africa, spoke at a conference on biblical interpretation in Montreal, Quebec, and attended a dual conference in Paris, France, at the Institute of Medieval Studies of the Catholic Institute of Paris of the University of Paris and at the Sorbonne. In 2013, he completed a book which he coauthored with the help of Georgia Evangelist Keith Fordham, titled, "The Worth and Work of the Evangelist for Christ's Great Commission Church."
Tom's major area of research since 1985 has been a study of what the Bible has to say about evangelizing. This study is gathered in almost 1,200 pages of notes titled, "Evangelizology"–found on this website. Also since reading "Évangile et évangélisme (XIIe-XIIIe siècle)" [Gospel and Evangelism (12th and 13th Centuries)] (Nice, France: Privat, 1999) and Jean Crespin's Martyrology (Geneva: Crespin, 1570; 1964), Tom has been researching and writing on evangelism prior to and during the Protestant Reformation. His findings are collated in "Evangelism in the Western Church, Parts One and Two"–also found on this website, along with other notes and sources.
