[2][3] Fairbanks founded and has served as the director of BoardServe LLC, "a consulting service for governing boards and their leaders", since 2011.
[16][17] To help supplement the family income and pay for his education, Fairbanks worked afternoons after school at the local A&P grocery store.
[22] A few months after his conversion in 1959, during his senior year of high school, Fairbanks was diagnosed with leukemia, and advised that he would not live.
[28] In his first week at TNC,[29] Fairbanks met his future wife, classmate Edith Anne James (born September 16, 1942, in Gainesville, Georgia).
Concurrently, Fairbanks enrolled in the Master of Divinity program at Nazarene Theological Seminary, and was a teaching assistant to Dr. Chester "Chet" Galloway, the first professor of Christian Education at NTS.
[43] Under his leadership, ENBC expanded the curricular choices by including the Bachelor of Arts program offered in conjunction with MidAmerica Nazarene College.
[44] Additionally, Fairbanks worked to implement a special relationship with MANC both to share faculty and to allow selected ENBC students to graduate with baccalaureate degrees accredited through the U.S.’s North Central Association.
Fairbanks visited APNTS for the first time in July 1984, and moved to Manila with Anne and their son, Stephen, in September 1984.
He turned his attention to separating and transferring the financial records and administration of APNTS from the regional office to the Seminary, and to helping the faculty articulate a mission statement for the school.
[50] Fairbanks resigned from APNTS in July 1989 and was succeeded as President by Dr. John M. Nielson, then a Vice-President of Eastern Nazarene College, and a former missionary to Denmark.
In my most recent article for “In Focus,” our internal communication newsletter, I shared with the faculty and staff some thoughts about change at MVNU.
"[53] From 1995 until his retirement in 2007, Fairbanks was also a professor at MVNU, teaching a one-week module "The Pastor as Leader: Leading a Christian Community of Faith" on four occasions.
[54][55] In 1998, Fairbanks was credited by The New York Times as the originator of the 1994 idea for MVNC and five other Ohio colleges to save money by seeking ways to combine administrative tasks and other resources, resulting in a $4 million grant from the Teagle Foundation, a midsize private philanthropy, to establish the Collaborative Ventures Program.
[57] At the invitation of Bob Ney, chairman of the Subcommittee On Housing and Community Opportunity, in March 2003 Fairbanks testified before a United States congressional subcommittee in favor of the Bush administration's proposal that would make it easier for religious groups to receive federal social security funding, specifically arguing that MVNC wanted to build subsidized housing for low-income students but was prevented by legislation from applying for such aid even though public colleges were eligible.
[58][59] After Fairbanks left MVNU, he spent a few months at their home in Lakeland, Florida, completing Learning to Be Last: Leadership for Congregational Transformation (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2008) that he co-wrote with Stan Toler.
In late March 2007 Fairbanks travelled to The Netherlands where he participated in meetings of the International Course of Study Advisory Committee (ICOSAC) and the IBOE.
[60] In September 2007, the APNTS Board of Trustees elected Fairbanks as vice-president for Planning and Development, a non-resident administration position.
Reflections and Markers", which has since been translated into six additional languages: Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, Burmese and Mandarin Chinese.
[72] In 1991, Fairbanks was given the Ministerial "T" Award as the clergy Alumnus of the Year by his alma mater, Trevecca Nazarene University.
In 2011, Fairbanks was presented with a Certificado po Servicio Distinguido by Seminario Theologico Nazareno, Ciudad de Guatemala.
During the 89th Session of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene that met in Overland Park, Kansas, in February 2012, Fairbanks' ministry in the Church of the Nazarene was recognized, and the following tribute was included: In 2012, Fairbanks was recognized as a Certified Nonprofit Consultant in Board Development by the National Development Institute.