Great Soul-Winning Churches - Elmer Towns

fundamental church in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Harry G. Hamilton directed Mr. Dunn to Pastor
Fleming, who, learning of this open door opportunity, immediately resigned his church and made
plans to go to Dayton. Dr. Fleming and his wife left their two-year-old son with their parents in
Kansas City, Missouri, arriving in Dayton about June 20, 1951, full of expectation and,
according to his confession, “with stars in our eyes.” Pastor Fleming had borrowed $25 from his
father to get to Ohio, but instead of finding a nucleus of people ready to start an old-fashioned
church, he found several elderly folks who were disgusted with liberalism, but they were not
interested in starting an aggressive soul-winning church to reach the city of Dayton.
Even though the prospects were meager and he was broke, Dr. Fleming testified, “We
would not be discouraged because we felt that God had led us to Dayton.” Just when Pastor
Fleming’s money ran out, he and his wife were invited to use Mr. Dunn’s quarters, since he had
plans to be out of the city for several weeks on some business. The situation being what it was,
they gladly accepted and moved into Mr. Dunn’s sleeping room when he left the city. A preacher
friend in Troy, Ohio, about twenty miles north of Dayton, referred Pastor Fleming to Dr. Dallas
F. Billington, pastor of Akron Baptist Temple, who had a daily broadcast that covered Dayton,
because he might know of prospects to start a church. The next day Pastor Fleming drove to
Akron and walked into the office of Dr. Billington, a man he had never personally met. The
pastor of the world’s largest Sunday School graciously put the young couple in a hotel for the
night, provided food, and next day provided a church secretary to go through the files, where Dr.
and Mrs. Fleming found 128 names in the Dayton area. It took Brother Fleming five days to visit
the prospects, most of whom were not interested in helping to begin a New Testament church.
As a young lad, Dr. Fleming came through the Depression, when his family lost
everything. His father was an old-fashioned “sharecropper” farmer who preached in little country
Baptist churches on Sundays. Due to the droughts, floods, and bad crops over a period of several
years, the family was forced to move into the small town of Independence, Missouri, where the
father could get on W.P.A. As a young boy in Independence, Gerald delivered papers in the fall,
winter and spring months all over the town; in fact, even to Harry Truman himself! During the
summer months he worked on the farm, riding a bicycle 14 miles one way to work ten hours and
then riding home in the evening. Also he sold aprons and hot-pad holders his mother made on an
old Singer sewing machine, from door to door, in order to supplement the meager family income.
That prompted him on one occasion, when greatly discouraged, to tell his mother, “I’ll never do
anything again where I have to knock on doors.” Today he admits, “Sometimes God makes us
eat our words.” The success of Dayton Baptist Temple is Dr. Fleming’s aggressive door-to-door
visitation.
He was saved at ten years of age, when his family took him to a little basement Baptist
church, Waldo Avenue Baptist in Independence. During his teen years he got away from God
and spent the latter part of World War II as a merchant marine, sailing around the world twice.
After the war, upon the insistence of his father, he heard Dr. Wendell Zimmerman
preach, pastor of Kansas City Baptist Temple, and went forward for rededication. It was here he
first began to serve God, leading singing in the young people’s department, witnessing on the
streets and working in the Sunday School. After young Fleming surrendered his life to the Lord
for full-time service, Dr. Zimmerman recommended to him the Bible Baptist Seminary in Fort