C. Thomas Wright, executive director of missions for the Mobile Baptist Association, was recently awarded the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award from Shorter University in Rome, Georgia.
The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes outstanding personal achievement, public service or accomplishment, according to a news release from the college.
Wright is a 1979 honor graduate of Shorter with a B.A in religion, communications, speech and drama.
He served two years as a missionary journeyman in Thailand with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He earned a master of divinity and doctor of philosophy at Southwestern Seminary and completed additional coursework at Baylor University and Fuller Seminary. He also served as a visiting scholar at the Whitefield Institute of Oxford University.
Wright was the founding pastor of the First Laotian Baptist Church and Saginaw Laotian in Texas and was instrumental in the founding of the First India Baptist Church and helped begin an African American mission in Atlanta; African-American churches in Mobile; and a Filipino church in Clarkston, Georgia, among others.
He is the author of three books and dozens of articles and training resources. He has taught in seven seminaries as an adjunct in the United States and overseas, at the University of Mobile and online at Liberty University.
Fluent in Laotian and Thai, Wright served with the Home Mission Board and North American Mission Board for 22 years in the language, evangelism and prayer departments.
He has been executive director of missions for the Mobile Baptist Association since 2005, where he has led the association to grow from 99 to 118 churches and missions.
Trained in SBC Disaster Relief, he led the Mobile Baptist Association in ministry during Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sally (2020) where thousands of volunteers were processed and hundreds of families received hope and help with storm damage.
He has been married for 37 years to his wife Donna, a 1981 graduate of Shorter. They have two married children, Jason and his wife Sarah, and Amy and her husband Seth. (Shorter University)
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