Thomas H. Olbricht grew up in Churches of Christ, has taught in several of their universities, and has given religious lectures on six continents and in most states in the United States. He has met most leaders in Churches of Christ globally. He has been active in several religious and rhetoric societies and has worked with leaders in all these organizations to bring about changes over the past sixty years. C. Clifton Black and Duane F. Watson wrote about Olbricht, "Tom Olbricht possesses a memory of elephantine proportions. Not only does he have at his fingertips the names and places and dates; better than most he understands how the study of rhetoric has flourished among, while cross-pollinating, multiple disciplines in the humanities, classics, English, speech communication, and religion."