Dr. Wagner has had a rich and varied career as an engineer,businessman, pastor, missionary, educator, author, church planter, and university president. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1936 and attended high school and the university in that city. After a five year practicum period, he became a licensed Civil Engineer and took over his father’s business, the Albuquerque Testing Laboratory. His desire and call to go into the ministry led him and his wife Sally to one year of Study at the Baptist Seminary in Ruschikon, Switzerland. After that he returned to the United States and attended Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, receiving a Master of Divinity degree. Returning to Albuquerque he went back into engineering and at the same time started his first mission, which became the Hermosa Drive Baptist church.

The church grew in four year to over 400 members before the family went with the Foreign Mission Board to Salzburg, Austria to represent the Baptists. While in Austria he served as the fraternal representative for the Southern Baptists, started three more churches, was selected to be the Home Mission Director for the Austrian Baptist Union and began a very successful youth center work in the city of Salzburg. This youth center won over 300 young people to the Lord over a seven year period.