Richard Perry Ellis, retired pastor, missionary and evangelist, died Jan. 16 in Lewisville. He was 84. Ellis was born in San Antonio Aug. 19, 1932, to Neal William and Foncy Perry Ellis. He spent his formative years in Virginia, where his father was a naval chaplain. After attending Mars Hill University in North Carolina, he completed his bachelor’s degree at Baylor University and earned a master of divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He completed further graduate study at Temple University in Philadelphia and was a research scholar at Oxford University in England three years. He married Robbie Johnson Aug. 19, 1955. Ellis was pastor of Baptist churches in Texas, Virginia, Maryland and Florida. He preached more than 1,000 evangelistic crusades around the world, including the major cities of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Brazil. The Ellises served as Southern Baptist missionaries to Brazil from 1970 to 1984. At that time, he was director of urban evangelism for the Brazilian Baptist Convention, a Brazilian representative to the Baptist World Alliance and a professor at the Sao Paulo Baptist Theological Seminary. While there, he also directed the Sao Paulo Billy Graham Crusade and later was a delegate to the Billy Graham Evangelism Conferences in Lausanne, Berlin and Amsterdam. He was preceded in death by his wife of nearly 50 years, Robbie. He is survived by his daughter, Autumn Ellis Ross and her husband, A. Larry Ross; sons, Richard Perry Ellis Jr. and his wife, Rebecca, and Neal Johnson Ellis and his wife, Beth; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.