Dr. Mike Holloway

FROM THE COCKPIT TO THE PULPIT In 1976, I graduated from Indiana State University with a degree in Aerospace Technology and a goal of becoming an airline pilot. After learning that over eighty percent of all airline pilots had been pilots in the military, I applied for and was accepted into the Navy’s flight program. Two years later, I received my wings as a Naval Aviator and was assigned to an A-7E squadron based near Jacksonville, Florida. As attack pilots trained to drop nuclear weapons, my squadron was assigned to the aircraft carrier CV-59, the USS Forrestal, and completed two tours to the Mediterranean. During this time, I completed over three hundred carrier landings, one hundred of which were at night. In between my cruises to the Mediterranean, I got saved; and God began working in my heart about serving Him in the ministry instead of becoming an airline pilot. Following my fulfillment to the Navy, I resigned my commission and was hired as an Assistant Pastor in a Baptist church that my wife and I had joined after I got saved. After almost six years on staff, I was asked to become the pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Kokomo, IN, and began my pastorate there in 1988. After five years of pastoring, I began Baptist College of America with two goals in mind. First, it was created purely as a correspondence college. This was the intention from the beginning because while I was in the Navy preparing to become a pilot, my training was conducted in two different phases. The first phase was Ground School where I studied various aspects of jet aircraft with most of those studies using correspondence courses. Books were provided with minimal classroom instruction. Each pilot was responsible to read, study, and absorb the information with tests being administered. The second phase was actually flying an aircraft with an instructor pilot. Baptist College of America was created along those same lines with two separate phases involved for each student. The first is a biblical ground school with courses being used along with correspondence teaching materials completed at each student’s pace which are then submitted for grading. The second phase is being involved in a solid local church under the leadership of that church’s pastor. The second phase is not graded but is vital for a BCA student to become properly trained in and for the ministry. As such, it is not necessary to attend a resident Bible college which means that a complete biblical education can be accomplished while remaining in one’s own local church. As of this writing, BCA has over one thousand students with students in every state of the country and in thirty-three countries around the world.