Tim Elston

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Biography

My family lived in Klamath Falls, Oregon, until I was two years old, at which time my father accepted a pastorate in Hermiston, Oregon. We lived in a small shack-like house across from the race track between Hermiston and Umatilla. The walls of the house were constructed of stacked WWII ammunition boxes, covered with plaster. I had an exceptionally good childhood, having a loving mother and father, and being able to roam and play freely in the Hermiston area's fields of tumbleweed, lizards, sand, and wheat.

When I was ten years old, my father was appointed to a church in Eugene, Oregon, where we lived for five years. I completed grade school and junior high in Eugene, and in 1977 we moved to Sublimity, Oregon, again due to a new pastoral appointment to a church in Stayton, Oregon. When I was 17 years old, I moved back to Hermiston and rented an apartment with my sister Lisa Anne Elston. After two months, she got married and moved out of the apartment, and I worked part-time at a furniture store to pay the rent and buy food as I finished my last year of high school, from which I graduated in 1980.

After high school, I attended Tomlinson College, a church denominational college in Cleveland, Tennessee. After graduating from this junior college in 1982, with an associate of arts in biblical studies, I spent four years in various ministry activities, including as my denomination's state youth director in Oregon and itinerate evangelist, travelling throughout Oregon and the four provinces of western Canada.

In 1986-1987 I began studies in linguistics at the University of Oregon. After a year of study at the university, I enlisted in the Air Force as an Arabic linguist, studying Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. My permanent duty assignment was to Athens, Greece, where I was stationed for two years. I lived in downtown Athens with a Greek national. After finishing out my four-year Air Force career in Mildenhall Air Base in England, I returned to the University of Oregon to complete my bachelor of arts degree in linguistics.

In 1995, when I was thirty-three years old, I moved to Denver, Colorado, to attend Denver Seminary. I worked as a window cleaner during the six years it took me to complete a master of arts in biblical studies. After completion of the degree in 2001, I relocated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, upon winning a full scholarship to do doctoral research in New Testament studies at the Toronto School of Theology on the University of Toronto campus. During my studies there I lost my life-long passion for biblical studies in particular and religious experience in general. After completing my second and final year of coursework in the doctoral program, serving also as an adjunct professor of biblical Greek at the school, in 2003 I dropped out of the doctoral program and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where I worked as an editor and database manager for the American Theological Library Association.

While in Chicago, I began a master of science in information systems at DePaul University, and in 2008 I accepted a position as an application programmer in Juneau, Alaska, for the State of Alaska, Department of Health and Social Services. I completed the information systems degree in 2011 through online study, and in 2013 I moved to Lacey, Washington, just outside the state capital Olympia, to work as a software developer and consultant.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Robert Elston at registration.