Practical Classes: Administration, Finance, and Leadership
Dr. Marty Butler - Long Time Adjunct Professor
My official name is D. Martin Butler, but I go by Marty. I was born and raised in Ohio, but have spent nearly all of my adult life in other places. My father was a retired autoworker, and my mother spent her career as a homemaker. I am the third child in a family of six. I was first introduced to the Church of the Nazarene when a neighbor invited us to Vacation Bible School when I was nine years old.
As a high school sophomore, I felt a call from God into the ministry. After graduation from high school in 1968, I attended Mount Vernon Nazarene College in Mount Vernon, Ohio. It was while a student there that I met my wife, Ruth. We were married in 1970 and transferred to Bethany Nazarene College in Bethany, Oklahoma where I received both a BA and an MA in religion. I was on staff in a church in Oklahoma City as a Minister of Youth.
Academic endeavors then took me to Kansas City where I enrolled in and graduated from Nazarene Theological Seminary. Following Seminary, I pastored churches in Youngstown, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky. While pastoring in Louisville, our son, Ryan, was born. In 1978 I accepted the invitation of the Nazarene Seminary to return to join their staff and to pursue a Doctor of Ministry degree which I completed in 1980. I served the Seminary for twelve years, two of which were as Assistant Director of Field Education and ten as Business Manager. Since all of my educational preparation had been in the area of religious studies, I returned to college to become credentialed in business matters. In 1987 I received the Masters of Public Administration degree from the University of Missouri and in 1994 was awarded the Ph.D. in Not-for-Profit Management and Educational Administration from the same institution.
Following the twelve years at NTS, I became the Director of Planned Giving for the denominational headquarters of the Church of the Nazarene, a post I held for four years. In 1994 I moved to Eastern Nazarene College where I served as Vice President for Institutional Advancement. From there I moved to Nazarene Bible College in 1996 where I served as Vice President for Finance until 2005. I returned to NTS and served as Dean for Administration and Student Services and taught courses in Church Administration and Leadership, Church Finance, and Managing Change and Conflict for nine years until my retirement in the spring of 2014. I have written and published materials in the same fields. I have served as treasurer of several Nazarene churches, chaired the finance committees of other churches, and helped develop the first church accounting software package distributed by NPH.
One of the great privileges I have is teaching online. I have taught adjunctively for MNU, PLNU, TNU, NTS, and online for NBC since online classes were first introduced in 1998. Now that I am retired, I continue to teach for NBC in a desire to facilitate the ministries of those whom God has called into the wonderful world of parish ministry.
Dr. Martin Butler, NBC Adjunct Professor