About Elder King

Elder King Harris was born in South Carolina in 1940. He spent his early childhood with his parents and nine siblings living on the same farm where his father worked as a sharecropper and his grandfather had been a slave. In 1943, the family moved north to a small community called Cumminsville in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father took over as the minister of a storefront church in the west end of Cincinnati and the family moved to an apartment up above the church. 

 

But tragedy struck with the death of Elder King’s mother in 1952. Shortly after, Elder King dropped out of the eighth grade. Run-ins with gangs, drugs and guns soon followed. Determined to change his trajectory, King left home at the age of fifteen. He falsified his school records, which then allowed him to join the air force. 

 

Elder King completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas and served at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, WY. After bring stationed in Tachikawa, Japan, he returned stateside to conclude his military service at March Air Force Base in Riverside, CA. 

 

Elder King returned home to Cincinnati and married Ernestine Smith in 1960. The newlyweds moved to Denver, along with Elder King’s brother Clifford and his wife Betty. Over the next few years, King worked as a carpet cleaner, steel pourer and painter. His ambition and work ethic pushed him to complete his GED. Looking to further advance his career prospects, Elder King enrolled at Metropolitan State College and studied business. 

 

After college, he was hired as an analyst at United Bank of Denver. By the late 1970’s, Elder King had risen to be the head of the bank’s leasing company. In 1980, he left the finance industry to focus on expanding his own company. His first successful bid for a construction contract at Stapleton International Airport birthed a hugely successful, groundbreaking construction management company called CMTS. 

 

Since that time, Elder King has founded 78 businesses located in multiple cities, including Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York, Detroit, Washington, DC, Washington State, and Salt Lake City, UT. In 2000, he enrolled in seminary, attending Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and later Ilyff School of Theology in Denver. 

 

In 2002, Elder King was appointed pastor of Epworth Church. Under his leadership, the “small but mighty” church initiated many charitable programs including the VBS Youth Talent Camp, the Take Flight Aviation Program, the Family-to-Family Program, the Feed-A-Family program and Daddy Bruce’s Thanksgiving. Today, Elder King divides his time between The Epworth Foundation and his work with REconstruction Road Ministries.