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Dr. Tony Evans is engaged. The bestselling author and popular preacher has found love again, nearly four years after laying his wife Dr. Lois Evans to rest.
The Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship pastor revealed his fiancée, Dr. Carla Crummie, to the congregation during a recent Sunday service. He credited God with bringing them together and asked church members to keep them in their prayers.
Evans, 74, said he and Crummie had much in common, particularly due to their shared loss. The megachurch pastor stated that his fiancée’s husband died on his way to Lois Evans’ funeral in 2020.
“So there’s been a lot of similarities, and so just pray for us,” Evans said.
Evans revealed the news while on stage with his four adult children standing behind him. Priscilla Shirer, Jonathan Evans, Chrystal Evans Hurst, and Anthony Evans Jr. held hands and looked on as their father addressed the church.
Evans acknowledged that his engagement to Crummie might not land well with everyone due to continued grief over the late Mrs. Evans’ death.
“The one thing I’ve appreciated about Sister Carla is that she has held Lois Evans high in honoring her legacy here at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship,” he said.
Congregation members stood to their feet and applauded when Evans revealed Crummie as his fiancée.
Not much is known publicly about Dr. Carla Crummie except that she appeared to have practiced gynecology when living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her late husband was the Rev. Dr. Robert W. Crummie Sr., who died from a heart attack in January 2020, about a week after Lois Evans’s death. The Rev. Crummie was president of Carver Bible College, where Tony and Lois Evans first met. He was also the pastor of Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in College Park, Georgia. The Crummies shared two children, according to the late pastor’s obituary. Crummie was 58 at the time of his death.
Dr. Carla Crummie is a John Maxwell certified Life Coach, according to a Widow Strong event she participated in in 2021. Her biography on that event page states that she “began counseling in 2009 at church” and that she “specializes in Christian counseling of couples, blended families, widows, and women.”
Crummie appeared as a guest on Chrystal Evans Hurst’s Facebook show in September 2022 to discuss sensitivity toward widows, particularly in church settings.
Crummie counsels widows “with a goal to help them heal,” according to Hursts’s 2022 introduction of her guest. Hurst’s Facebook post also identified Crummie as a Kindness Ambassador for The Urban Alternative, which is Tony Evans’ Bible teaching and resource ministry.
Among the many questions Crummie was asked was how to honor a pastor’s wife who has been displaced due to the death of her husband. Much of Crummie’s advice came from personal experience due to losing her place as “first lady” when her husband died. Based on Pastor Evans’ praise of Crummie during his engagement announcement, she likely put her own advice into practice when she transitioned to his church.
Pastor Evans announced his former wife and ministry partner’s death on December 30, 2019. The late Dr. Lois Evans died after battling biliary (or bile duct) cancer when chemotherapy and radiation were no longer effective at treating her condition. She was 70 at the time. She and Tony Evans were married for 49 years.
“All that has happened in my life, family, and church and the Uran Alternative…has been defined by her,” Evans told his congregation on September 10.
However, Evans credited God’s sovereignty with bringing Carla Crummie into his life after years of experiencing the “ups and downs of singlehood.”
Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship published the engagement news on September 11 on social media with the following message:
“Congratulations to our senior pastor, Dr. Tony Evans, and his new fiance’ [sic] Dr. Carla Crummie on their engagement! As they enter a new season of life and ministry as a couple, our thoughts and prayers are with them. May their union be blessed and filled with God’s wisdom, love, and grace.”
Faithfully Magazine is a news and culture publication centered on Christian communities of color.
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