William Tyndale College
William Tyndale College, which formerly stood in Farmington Hills, Michigan, was a private, nonsectarian Christian institution. After beginning as the Detroit Bible Institute in 1945 and receiving accreditation from the American Association of Bible Colleges in 1954 and the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in 1988, the institution was renamed after the 16th-century Protestant scholar William Tyndale. On December 31, 2004, William Tyndale University ceased operations. Oneness in what is most important; individual freedom and compassion in all other matters was its slogan.
The Christian Business Men's Committee of Detroit established the institution in September 1945 under the name Detroit Bible Institute. When the original campus was erected in 1950 at 17370 Meyers Road in northwest Detroit, classes were conducted at the Missionary Workers Tabernacle, then the Highland Park Baptist Church, and finally the Elim Baptist Church. In 1960, the institution received accreditation to award bachelor's degrees. Shortly after selling its Meyers Road facility to Lewis College of Commerce in 1976, the institution temporarily relocated to a former elementary school on Franklin Road in Southfield. DBC has settled into its shiny new digs at 35700 W., on a sprawling site that spans 28 acres. Farmington Hills, Michigan's Twelve Mile Road in 1978. After relocating to suburban Oakland County, the institution sought to preserve its ties to Detroit's inner-city churches by providing undergraduate-level Urban Ministry classes and continuing education programmes at Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church. Detroit Biblical College rebranded as William Tyndale University in 1981. Tyndale Bible Institute was founded in 1993 as a continuing education programme in eight congregations around the Metro Detroit area.
Despite the college's lack of denominational ties, its early theological identity was rooted in the dispensationalism doctrine common to other Bible colleges founded in the middle of the 20th century, such as Dallas Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, and Philadelphia College of Bible. Several of the college's administrators and Bible professors were also Dallas Seminary alums into the early 1980s, including the first two presidents. Students came from a wide range of conservative Protestant and independent churches, including Baptist, Assemblies of God, Plymouth Brethren, Evangelical Presbyterian, Church of God in Christ, Bible, and Trinitarian Pentecostal congregations. Alumni and longtime supporters of the institution had mixed feelings about President William Shoemaker's decision to expand the college's theological teaching scope in the mid-1980s.