The story of Emory Wallace began simply enough. Growing up on a farm in Jacksonville, Texas,
he attended local schools; and like many young men his age, served in the military during World
War II. Wallace spent four years in the Navy, from 1942-46. After the war, he attended Baylor
University in Waco, Texas, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business.
Emory met his wife, Mary, in January 1948, while attending a Church Training Union meeting in
her hometown of Harlingen, Texas. They were married on July 1, 1948, and began life together
in California after brief time apart. He worked at the Johnson Wax Company, and they attended
a small First Baptist Church in their area.
“All they could do was write in those days,” said Mark Wallace, the youngest of the couple’s
three sons. “Well, I found both sets of letters, the correspondence that they sent each other
over that period. That was special.”
A lay leader in his California church, Emory served as director of Sunday school and as a deacon.
But things began to change once he and Mary attended Billy Graham’s September 1949 crusade
in Los Angeles. It was at this meeting, considered by many to be the first major city-wide
crusade in the young evangelist’s career, that Emory got a sense that God was moving him in a
new direction. Sure that the Lord was calling him to full-time ministry, the Wallaces returned to
Texas in December of 1949. Both he and Mary began taking classes at Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
“He was raised in East Texas, poor through the Depression,” Mark Wallace shared. “There was a
pastor at his church in Jacksonville, Texas, who saw potential in him. That pastor encouraged
him to go into the ministry, so that was in the back of his mind.
“Then he found the right woman in my mother, a woman who was just as strong a Christian as
he was. That coming together with the Billy Graham crusade led him to say, ‘Let’s do this.” And
she was on board. It all started from there.”
Even before his graduation from Southwestern in 1953, Emory began a ministry journey that
would take him to three states and last more than 35 years. In 1952, he became the pastor of
First Baptist Church of Naches, Texas. Two years later, the Wallaces moved to Springfield,
Missouri, and Hamlin Baptist Church.
Meanwhile, the couple started their family. And while the scrutiny that comes with being a
pastor was intense at times, Mark Wallace recalls a house filled with love and grace.
“There was this great Christian kind of love that I thought every family had,” Mark said. “It took
growing up and getting out of the house to know that not every family was like that. We were
preacher’s kids, and we messed up. But the forgiveness that God gives was passed on to us. We
lived with that, and it was special.”
Emory remained at Hamlin Baptist until called to the First Baptist Church of DeRidder, Louisiana,
in July 1958. He remained in DeRidder for nearly three decades, until his retirement in 1987.
“He spent 29 years in DeRidder and accomplished a whole lot,” Mark explained. “He always
tried to stay on the cutting edge of stuff. He always wanted to find a new way to get the Word
out. He was always on the radio, and he was one of the first with a TV ministry in Louisiana.
That was a big deal.
“First Baptist DeRidder probably started six or eight of the churches in our parish today, and he
started a retreat center on 15 acres out by Bundick Lake. He was always looking for ways to get
people involved and to keep people involved.”
Along with his duties at the church, Pastor Wallace provided solid leadership for Southern
Baptists at the associational, state, and national levels. He sat on the boards of several
denominational entities, including the Louisiana Baptist Convention and Louisiana College. He
also served two terms as the Louisiana Convention’s president (1973-75) and on the board of
trustees for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (now the North
American Mission Board).
After retirement, Emory continued serving God by speaking at revivals, leading marriage
retreats for pastors and their wives, and teaching Bible studies until his death in 1993. He and
Mary were married for 45 years.
“He spread himself thin; and how he did it, I don’t really know,” Mark Wallace confessed. “He
just followed God’s vision, and he didn’t waste any time. He made all the time he had count.”
While it seems impossible to overstate the contributions of Emory Wallace to the kingdom of
God and to the lives of Louisiana Southern Baptists, his family recently established the Emory
Wallace Family Scholarship at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to
honoring Pastor Wallace’s legacy, the endowed scholarship will help train and retain pastors
across the state of Louisiana.
“I don’t know if you can ever completely take Texas out of a Texan, but he really loved
Louisiana,” Mark Wallace said of his father. “I think he would have wanted something like this
for the state of Louisiana. There seems to be a shortage of pastors. It feels like fewer people are
surrendering to the ministry; and, when many of them do, it’s happening later in their lives.
They have families they are trying to raise and go to school too. That brings a certain kind of
hardship. Those are the people we want to help.
“We want to create something that helps folks, that will bring them into the ministry and keep
them in the ministry. And we hope the ones receiving the scholarships will learn what kind of
guy Emory Wallace was.”
Mark and the Wallace family also believe the scholarship allows others to contribute to God’s
work through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are interested in giving toward
the Wallace scholarship or in providing financial support for NOBTS in some other way, you can
contact the Office of Institutional Advancement at (504) 816-8224 or development@nobts.edu