By Pat Hammert/Staff Writer

When Rev. John Chennault takes charge of Sunday services this morning at the 1,000-member First Baptist Church, he will be giving his last Christmas message to the congregation he has led for the past 24 years.

Chennault announced he’ll retire in February and he and his wife, Judy, will move to Broken Arrow to be closer to their daughters, son-in-law and granddaughter. He’s been in the ministry for 30 years.

He intends to place his name on the Southern Baptist Convention’s pulpit supply list, attend to his fishing and scratch off items on his list of “honey-dos.” But one thing’s for sure, he’ll be in church on Sunday.

“I’ve never not known going to church. My dad was a deacon in the church in Altus where I grew up and mother and dad both taught Sunday school. My older brother, Henry, was called to the ministry,” Chennault said.

The 6-foot-5 former all-conference basketball player attended Oklahoma Baptist University on an athletic scholarship where he met his wife, a fellow student. Just out of college he served as youth director at First Baptist Church in Midwest City for about 18 months.

“I considered coaching but the Lord opened doors for me to go into youth work,” he said. He did so at the 800-member-strong North Fort Worth Baptist Church while attending Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary part time. Then he was called to Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., as minister of youth and activities.

Dauphin Way was a mega-church with a strong youth core. During Chennault’s four years there he helped build the most complete recreational facility in the Southern Baptist Convention.

It included a full-sized basketball court, a track, four lanes of bowling, a handball court, heated swimming pool, game room and a crafts area that boasted a kiln. Their first child, Kristi, was born in Mobile and her younger sister, Misti, followed close behind.

He was called back to the Midwest City church to be minister of education and a short time later moved his family to South Carolina to Ashley River Baptist Church, the largest church in Charleston, where he served as minister of education.

“God then called me into the pulpit,” he said simply. On four successive Sundays, when circumstances demanded it, he had to fill the pulpit at Ashley River.

“People had been telling me for years, ‘John, you have a pastor’s heart,’ but I was never interested until then,” he said. “But (things) began to work in my life and I had to ask: ‘What are you saying, Lord.’”

Shortly afterwards, a church in Elloree, S.C., offered its pastorship to Chennault. Elloree was a town of 1,000 residents in the heart of farm country. The Chennaults found a home for awhile, he said, staying there 7 1/2 years. He said the town was small and the church was small but he felt at home having grown up on a farm in Altus.

“The town was small so growth of the church wasn’t a question, rather we worked for a spiritual deepening in the lives of the people and a seeking to grow the people in their understanding of the Word,” he said.

Lifelong friendships were established. “We loved it there, and we figured my ministry would stay in South Carolina,” he said. But God had different plans.
Enter First Baptist Church, El Reno. His friend, Dave Fuller, Oklahoma SBC youth director at that time, contacted Chennault about a pulpit opening in El Reno. Soon afterwards, they made the trip to the Midwest City Baptist Church, where he presented a sermon with El Reno church board as visitors that Sunday morning in May 1983. He moved his family in June to El Reno.

During his tenure, the church has changed its physical layout, adding a fellowship hall, buying a nearby former bank building for its youth ministry, expanded its parking lots, started D.R.O.P. Zone for middle school students and began the Shepard Ministry, an outreach clothing center. Most of the 500 block of Rock Island has been purchased.

“I believe this church will eventually want to build a gym on that property,” he said.

Outreach ministry was expanded considerably during his tenure. The church sent teams to South Dakota, Kansas, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil and Malawi. Chennault led the Brazil team as well as a team to Malawi, one of the world’s least developed countries.

“Malawi continues to be a focus. We built feeding stations there and helped build a church,” he said.

Closer to home, he’s served as a local hospice volunteer chaplain for many years and has been a constant for El Reno Ministerial Alliance and El Reno Community Clinic. He’s preached 450 funerals in his time here and grief counseling is an area he finds very rewarding.

His favored Scripture in the Bible is from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 3:20, “Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”

For 24 years, he’s counseled countless numbers of youths and adults in the privacy of his office on the second floor of the church.

“You point them to the Lord and his way and show them that if they are disobedient in his way, all things in their life will be out of kilter.”

The church has voted to call a transitional pastor that is trained by the Southern Baptist Convention to lead churches as they move from a longtime pastor to another.

“It will be hard to leave. You invest your lives in people you’ve grown to love,” he said. “I pray for this church to continue to grow and make an impact on the community and be the lighthouse to grow and follow the Lord.”