The King's University

On February 16, 1996, Dr. Jack Hayford was flying back to Los Angeles after speaking to more than 39,000 pastors at the Promise Keepers Clergy Conference held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta—the largest gathering of pastors in modern day history. He was relaxing in his seat, looking out the plane window and enjoying the majestic beauty of the clouds floating at an altitude of 37,000 feet when, out of the blue, Pastor Jack heard a still, small Voice tell him to begin a seminary. Founding a seminary was a leap he never expected, though education had always been important to him in leading his church congregation at The Church On The Way. In the preceding two decades, The School On The Way, the church’s internal teaching ministry, offered classes in Bible, practical ministry and theology. The majority of the students were not pursuing a call to professional ministry, but simply gaining a deeper sense of God’s truth to equip them as believers and servants in their local congregation. The School On The Way had several volunteer faculty whose academic qualifications and course content established a base for some students to receive transfer credits to a nationally accredited ministry training school. This earlier expression of Pastor Jack’s sense of mission to train leaders for ministry was fruitful, but it was not until the 1990s that the Lord moved him to establish a college- and seminary-level institution to provide undergraduate and graduate diplomas and degrees.