About the Author
Early Life and Education
Born in 1942, Virgil Warren grew up in Indiana’s southeast county. The family purchased a sixty-seven-acre farm in 1946, where Virgil lived and worked till high school graduation. There were eighteen students in the eighth-grade class at the nearby Guilford 1-12 school. That number grew to thirty-three his freshman year when several parochial schools nearby added their numbers to the group.
Guilford high school had little music program, only two years of mathematics, and no foreign language. Beginning his sophomore year, Virgil paid his own way to Lawrenceburg City High School ($450/year) some eight miles away on the Ohio River. The money came from working at $5 a day for farmers nearby. LCHS provided a better range of course work (as well as an opportunity to play basketball at a bigger school). The large youth group from the Church of Christ in Lawrenceburg afforded a ready-made set of close friends at the high school.
The lack of transportation to school now meant he had to bum rides from a neighbor who worked in town, and hitchhike back home in the evening till basketball season began. His father eventually started driving to town each evening to get him after ball practice, because getting home well after dark was getting to be a bit much.
In the end, he accumulated half-again as many credits necessary for graduating in Indiana. He was able to take two years of Latin. Some years later, that saved him a semester in his doctoral program, which required testing out of at least one extra-biblical research language before full admittance into the program. Music became a big thing in those three high school years: he played trombone in the band, sang in the chorus, and arranged a couple of his guitar compositions for the high school band. Those extras probably contributed to his receiving the J. Philips Sousa and School Spirit awards at graduation in the spring of 1960.
Seminary and Early Ministry
That fall he enrolled in The Cincinnati Bible Seminary, taking Bible, Greek, Hebrew, and theology from the start because he followed his father’s advice not to worry about earning a degree. A couple months into the fall, he met Ruth Ann Messimer; they married at the Western Hills Church of Christ in June of 1963, her father Walter Messimer and Dr. Lewis Foster officiating. In the sophomore year, he began grading classical Greek papers for R. C. Foster, New Testament professor, all of whose many courses Virgil ended up taking during years of study at The Seminary. He also covered some of those courses when Mr. Foster had to sit out with health issues from time to time. The year George Mark Elliot took his sabbatical, Virgil covered his four-hour, two-semester Biblical Theology course.
By that time, it was becoming evident that local church ministry was not so much in the offing as teaching ministry was becoming. Consequently, he started filling in general education courses and graduated in 1967 with an A.B. degree (valedictorian) and the following year with a Th.B., accumulating eight years of full-time study altogether at CBS.
In 1965, David was born, and fifteen months later Steve came along. Ruth Ann stayed home with the boys while Virgil worked in the grocery business to finance the family and education, and to pay for the duplex the family bought six doors from The Seminary entrance. The 1967-1968 year, Virgil transferred from working at A & P’s warehouse and stores to working full-time nights at a large Kroger store in northern Cincinnati. That was in addition to carrying a full load of classes and teaching Greek and Written Composition. He submitted his Th.B. study “The New Testament’s Witness to the Old Testament’s Inspiration” to finish his stay in Cincinnati.
Graduate Studies at Wheaton
In June of 1968, he hooked up the little (overheating) Rambler American to a fourteen-foot U-Haul and drove 35 mph for eighteen hours on interstates to Wheaton, Illinois. After standardizing his degree with a lab science and six hours of literature, he entered Wheaton Graduate School pursuing an M.A. in New Testament and an M.Div. degree, granted respectively in 1973 and 1971. During those years he served as fellow for Dr. Merrill Tenney, dean of the graduate school, and supported the family by working fifteen to thirty hours a week at the grocery side of the local K-Mart. Ruth Ann did more than her part raising the little ones and teaching several piano lessons a week.
Virgil took advantage of the studios at Wheaton College to make a number of guitar recordings of pentatonic Christian songs, which supplemented a body of such work done earlier at CBS for LaVerne Morse, a missionary that grew up in southeast Asia. The recordings were broadcast from FEBC in Manila into southeast Asia, where they dubbed Lisu, Meo, and other languages over the guitar solos. Such recordings could also be used for sign-on and sign-off music. At Wheaton, Doug Schoen, a senior undergraduate music major, arranged Virgil’s choral piece “Moses’ Song of Triumph,” which the choir at the Glenn Ellyn Christian Church performed to Virgil’s delight.
In November of 1968, Tara was born. The church people thought it was great fun that they heard about it before Virgil did. He was teaching Sunday school, unaware that things were moving along so quickly at the local hospital when he left mommy while he went to church.
In the summer of 1971, the family moved back to Cincinnati for Virgil to begin teaching at CBS: Bible, theology, English composition, and Greek. On Sundays he and the family were often away at a church for the day in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. In 1973, Virgil was finally able to submit his M.A. thesis: The New Testament Basis for the Non-Denominational Church. When he returned to Wheaton that summer to defend his thesis, the Glen Ellyn Christian Church ordained him into the Christian ministry. Dr. Tenney delivered the charge for the occasion.
Doctoral Studies and Family Life
By this time, David, Steve, and Tara were 9, 8, and 6. If Virgil was going to do a doctorate, it was time to get on with it. So, in the fall of 1974, he and the family of five moved to Louisville, Kentucky, for him to enroll at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in systematic theology under major professor Dr. Dale Moody. In addition to classes on campus, SBTS required two doctoral-level external courses, which Virgil fulfilled at Indiana University and the University of Louisville with an extra voluntary course on Karl Barth at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He ministered part-time with the Maryville Church of Christ (now Hillview) south of the Louisville metropolitan area, finishing his doctoral work in the spring of 1977 with a dissertation entitled The Implication of Divine Self-Consistency for the Doctrine of Natural Depravity: A Biblical-Systematic Approach. Michelle was born in February of that last year, just in time to go with the family into the next phase of life.
Manhattan Christian College Years
The Warrens moved to Manhattan, Kansas, that summer, and Virgil began teaching at Manhattan Christian College. At first, he covered Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament critical introduction and content courses. Later came a series of theology courses, New Testament critical introduction and content courses, and guitar, as well as overseeing a series of basic ministry courses. For a few of those earlier years, he taught twenty-four hours a semester to get the requirements covered. Those duties went along with committee work, student involvement, writing for Christian Standard, The Lookout, and other Christian periodicals and putting together for College Press What the Bible Says About Salvation (1982). On Sundays, he held interim ministries and filled the pulpit in some 135 churches and other meeting points in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Nebraska. He usually presented papers each year in the scholars track of the North American Christian Convention as well as at the Stone-Campbell Conference in its early years when it was meeting in St. Louis.
Later Ministry and Current Work
These activities went on for eighteen years till Virgil finished teaching at MCC in 1995 and began adjunct teaching at Kansas State University (medical terminology, Latin, and Greek) and a nearby extension of Highland Community College (medical terminology, philosophy, and ethics). For the next sixteen years, he developed a roofing business on the side that grew to the point that seventeen others were working along with him on the projects. In the same year, he began preaching at the Vermillion Christian Church in Vermillion, Kansas, a part-time relationship that continues into the present. His latest efforts have gone into organizing this website.