Harold Robert “Bob” Tucker, an emeritus International Mission Board missionary who shared the gospel among American Peoples and European Peoples for 32 years, died March March 9, 2019, one day before his 85th birthday.
Born March 10, 1934, in the small East Texas town of Athens to Dr. H.R. Tucker, Sr. and Louise Robbins Tucker, he graduated Athens High School and Baylor University (1955). He married fellow student Margaret Sue Roberts of Tahoka, Texas; they were married for 63 years. The Tucker’s family included five children: Mark, Elaine, Karen, John, and Phil.
Earning an additional degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, the Tuckers accepted the challenge of planting and growing a new Baptist Church in Toledo, Ohio.
In 1963, Southern Baptists appointed the Tucker family to service as missionaries to Venezuela. Following a year of language school in Costa Rica, Tucker served as a pastor and planted new congregations in Maracay, Anaco, and Los Teques, Venezuela. He was a founding faculty member of the newly established Seminario Teológico Bautista de Venezuela, training men and women for service across the country.
After 13 years in Latin America, Bob was selected to serve as the associate to the area director for Western South America, serving as a pastor to missionaries and their families in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.
The Tuckers later moved to El Paso, Texas, where he guided the Spanish Baptist Publishing House as the period’s largest producer of Spanish-language Bibles and religious literature across the Protestant world. Later, they accepted the challenge of assisting the founding of the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, Alberta.
With the fall of the former Soviet Union, the Tuckers ventured to a new work assisting the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Moscow to create graduate and lay training programs for local churches. Two years later, Tucker took on the task of administering and encouraging missionaries in the newly liberated Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.
The Tuckers retired in Athens, Texas, where he served as minister to single adults at First Baptist Church. Several years of guiding singles gave way to encouraging Hispanic pastors across East Texas on behalf of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Moving to Boerne in 2006, Tucker continued this work among Hispanic Baptist pastors in the Hill Country as a member of Primera Iglesia Bautista. In 2013, the Tuckers joined St. Marks Presbyterian Church, where he served as a deacon and sang in the choir.
“Preaching from the tip of Chile, looking across the Straits of Magellan at Antarctica, to the snow-swept streets of Arkhangelsk, Russia above the Arctic Circle, Bob Tucker typified the life of the biblical ‘Faithful Servant,’” his obituary reads. “His laughter still rings in the ears of people across both hemispheres and the legacy of his loving lessons and gentle training continues to assist churches and ministries worldwide.”
Memorial services were conducted March 19 at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Boerne. Memorial gifts may be given to the Venezuela Baptist Seminary (gift tag: G48H-VEN), IMB, PO Box 6767, Richmond, Va. 23230. To help track the gift, please email Paul Tinley (navegados@gmail.com).
Read Tucker’s obituary here.