Service Information
Time, Day, Date: 10 a.m., Monday, March 14, 2016
Place: Acton Baptist Church
Officiating:
Disposition: Alexander Cemetery, Alexander, Texas
Services for Charles Leonard Chaney, 81, will be held at 10:00 a.m., Monday, March 14, 2016, at Acton Baptist Church. Charles was a preacher, a pastor, a scholar and teacher, a church planter and missions coordinator, and a denominational leader for Southern Baptist churches and organizations at the state and national level. Visitation will be held at the church in Acton from 9-10 a.m., prior to services. Burial will be at 2:30 p.m. at the Alexander Cemetery. Charles was born in Alexander, Texas, on April 11, 1934, to TC Chaney and Marie (Mitchell) Chaney. Charles received a call to preach in 1950 while a 16-year-old freshman at the University of Texas and soon gave his first sermon in his home church in Mullin, Texas. The following year he became pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Coleman County. Charles married Fannie Estella Ingram, his Mullin High School sweetheart, on December 21, 1951, in Mullin. After he graduated from Howard Payne College, Charles and Fannie left Texas so that Charles could pursue an advanced education. He received a Th.M. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and later an M.A. and doctorate in Mission History and Theology from the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, he and Fannie started a family, and Charles pastored new churches in Morganfield and Oak Grove, Kentucky, and Palatine, Illinois.
In 1972, he began his executive work in home missions as an administrator and strategist in planting churches and growing new congregations. He served as Director of Church Extension for the Illinois Baptist State Association until 1981. He was a dean and then president of Southwest Baptist University from 1981-1988. He was Vice President of Extension for the Home Mission Board, SBC, in Atlanta from 1988-1997. Charles and Fannie returned to Texas in 1997 where Charles was appointed Minister in Residence at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He authored five books, innumerable articles, spoke and preached all around the nation, and in many places around the world. In all these endeavors, Charles combined a commitment to evangelism and mission with academic excellence and scholarship.
Survivors include Fannie Chaney, his wife of 64 years; his 3 children, Carey Chaney and wife, Debbie, of Bentonville, AR, Bart Chaney and wife, Andrea, of Dallas, and Gena Porter of Bentonville, AR; 6 grandchildren; 2 sisters, Dianna Locke of Stephenville and LaWana Chaney of Stephenville; and 2 great-grandchildren.
“In lieu of flowers the Chaney family requests memorials be made to Southwest Baptist University noting either The Marie Chaney Endowed Library Fund (and/or) The Charles & Fannie Chaney Scholarship Fund. Memorials should be made payable to Southwest Baptist University with the chosen fund noted in the memo line.”
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