Portrait of Carolyn Warford. IMB Photo
Carolyn Warford, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Germany, died Sept. 7, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 91.
Carolyn was born Dec. 8, 1933, in Bainbridge, Georgia, to the late Anderson Wayne and Virgie Wilson Gragg. She graduated from Glynn Academy in Brunswick, Georgia, and received a certificate from Mars Hill College in North Carolina, and the Bachelor of Arts from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She also attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
From 1955 to 1957, she taught junior and senior high school English and Spanish and was organist at her home church. In the summer of 1957, she felt led to resign her jobs and continue to study organ at Southern seminary. She married Charles Warford on Dec. 22, 1958. In 1960, they received a work scholarship from the Baptist Convention in the Holy Land. For nine months, they lived in the Baptist House in Jerusalem and took courses at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies.
After their return to the U.S., they began the first of several pastorates before their missionary appointment. In the 1970s, while attending the annual foreign mission conference at Ridgecrest conference center in North Carolina, they began to sense a growing call to some type of missionary service. While seeking missionary appointment Carolyn wrote, “Charles and I are excited by the possibilities of service in the missionary associate program. Our continuing desire is to minister wherever our gifts and experience can be used effectively in our Lord’s kingdom.”
In 1986, the International Mission Board appointed Charles and Carolyn missionaries to Germany. After several years in north Germany, they moved to Berlin, where they worked with the International Baptist Church until their retirement. Her family said Carolyn especially enjoyed working with the German young people and internationals who attended the church during those years.
She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Charles Warford of Nashville; two sons, Brian Warford of Nashville and John Alan Warford of Phoenix, Arizona; and two grandchildren.
A graveside service was held Sept. 9 at Oscar Community Cemetery in LaCenter, Kentucky.
Read an obituary here.