Leonard Harris

From the Biographical History of Primitive or Old School Baptist Ministers by David Montgomery and Mark Green, Vol. II, 2001:

Elder Moses Leonard Harris Jr. was born into the home of a sharecropper named Moses Leonard Harris and his good wife Lottie Bernice (Moseley) Harris on September 11, 1930, near Crockett, Texas. He attended several different school systems, but finally graduated from Franklin High School of Franklin, Texas. He attended one year of college before entering the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Following his honorable discharge in 1956, he married Ruthie Charlene Glover of Haskell, Texas. God blessed him to raise five children to adulthood: Brenda, David, Samuel, and James.

Although he was raised in an Old Baptist home, he did not join through baptism until November of 1960 in Cortez, Colorado. Elder Jimmy Smart was the able pastor at the time. Soon after joining the church, he began to feel an intense burden to preach the gospel of sovereign grace. He was permitted to exercise his gift for six years before his ordination on April 16, 1967. Elder Smart pastored the Primitive Baptist Church at Cortez as well as Desert Hope Primitive Baptist Church in Aztec, New Mexico.

Shortly after his ordination, Elder Harris felt the burden to move back to East Texas, where he faithfully served Primitive Baptist churches in Waco, Henderson, Texas City, and Crockett. He was also blessed to travel among the Baptists of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Mississippi during this special time of his ministry. After only 4 years in East Texas, he was once again impressed to move back to New Mexico, and in 1971 he moved his family to the north Valley of Albuquerque. He pastored the church in Albuquerque until they ordained Lonnie Wright and called him to be pastor in 1974. In 1976, Elder Harris moved back to northwestern New Mexico, where his ministry had begun, and continued to fill appointments at both Cortez and Bloomfield—the Aztec congregation moved their meeting place to Bloomfield. He pastored in Bloomfield from 1992 until moving back to Crockett, Texas (the home place) in November 1994.

Elder Harris was called to be pastor of the Primitive Baptist Church at Weches, Texas in 1996 and labored in this capacity until his death on October 28, 1998. During the final years of his ministry, he was blessed to travel among the Baptists of Georgia, Alabama, and Arizona, for which he was thankful. He loved the old church and the old gospel story of salvation by the sovereign grace of God alone. He sought to be a faithful servant to “His God in his generation.”