In 1965, Towns became Associate Professor of Christian Education at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. A year later he became the Sunday School editor of "Christian Life" magazine, a position he held for 22 years. Both of these appointments corresponded with a remarkable increase in published works from him. Both posts also provided Towns with an environment for gathering and analyzing data on Sunday schools, Christian education, and church growth through the use of yearly surveys, interviews, and church attendance records. This combination of sociology and ministry to create models for church growth was unique.