When Wade Morris went to college at Samford University, he went with financial aid — his family couldn’t help him.
“He didn’t have a good family situation,” said his wife, Deborah, explaining that his mother left her children after he graduated high school.
Then after Samford, when he wanted to attend seminary, “the only way he was able to go was that he was a youth minister at Green Valley Baptist, and someone at the church anonymously gave money to pay for his seminary,” Deborah Morris said. “He didn’t know who it was until years later.”
But because of that gift, Wade Morris spent decades traveling and sharing the gospel as a full-time evangelist.
And in 2021, when he contracted COVID-19 while preaching at a camp and later died, it made sense to the family to honor him with an endowed scholarship in his name at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — the Timothy Wade Morris Endowed Scholarship Fund for Evangelism.
‘Passion and need’
“We wanted it to go to someone who feels called to be in evangelism and has a passion for it, and also someone who has demonstrated a financial need,” Deborah Morris said. “Wade wouldn’t have been able to go without help.”
She said she — along with their daughters, Eden and Trinity, and the board of Wade Morris Ministries — are “really wanting to raise up more people who are passionate about evangelism.”
“We just feel like there’s a void, a big hole with Wade gone, and with the next generation as well,” Deborah Morris said. “We started the scholarship to hopefully raise up some younger students who want to carry that on.”
At the camp in Oklahoma where Wade Morris contracted COVID-19, more than 500 students reported giving their lives to Christ.
Legacy continues
His older daughter, Eden, feels led to carry on his legacy through evangelistic ministry. She’s studying now at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
She said the story of losing her father would be completely devastating and hopeless “but the fact that Jesus loved us and died on the cross for us and had an ultimate story for us where we can be in heaven with Him forever. That’s my hope, and I want to share that with other people.”
That’s the vision the family hopes to see spread in the next generation through the scholarship, which they’re working hard to endow. The board of Wade Morris Ministries is also trying to gather digital content of Morris speaking or preaching in years past.
To submit video or audio files of Wade Morris preaching, email deb@wademorris.com. For more information about Wade Morris, visit wademorris.com. To give to the scholarship, visit swbts.edu/giving and designate the gift to the Timothy Wade Morris Endowed Scholarship Fund.
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