Background
Rayburn was born in Newton, Kansas, and studied at Wheaton College, Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Dallas Theological Seminary.
Rayburn was born in Newton, Kansas, and studied at Wheaton College, Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Dallas Theological Seminary.
He served as a chaplain in the United States. Army from 1944 to 1946, and again from 1950 to 1952, during the Korean War. Between these two terms of service, he was pastor of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Rayburn served as president of Highland College in Pasadena, California from 1952 to 1956.
He became the founding president of Covenant College, which belonged to the new denomination, and then founding president of Covenant Theological Seminary.
He relinquished the presidency of the college in 1965 after it relocated from Saint Louis, Missouri to Lookout Mountain, Georgia, but remained president of the seminary until 1977. He died of cancer in 1990.
Rayburn wrote O Come Let Us Worship in 1980, in which he "sought to reintroduce evangelicalism to its history and liturgy." According to Bryan Chapell, Rayburn "became the vanguard" of "modern integrative liturgies", anticipating the work of Robert East. Webber, Thomas C. Oden, and Hughes Oliphant Old. Rayburn College, in Manipur, India, is named after him.
Rayburn had four children, including Robert South. Rayburn.