After 18 years of service as director of missions for Washington Baptist Association and 39 years as a pastor prior to that, Paul Kendrick is retiring at the end of 2007.
A native of the Zion Chapel community near Elba in Coffee County, Kendrick considers Zion Chapel Baptist his home church. He holds an undergraduate degree from Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham and a master’s degree in education from Troy State University (now Troy University). He went on to earn a master of divinity and doctorate of ministry from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Kendrick served as a bivocational pastor to churches in Clarke, Coffee, Geneva and Walker counties while teaching English and French at the high school level. In recent years, he taught night classes in English and speech at the Alabama Southern Community College campus in Thomasville.
A retirement reception honoring Kendrick was held at the Chatom Community Center Dec. 9. A ground-breaking ceremony for the association’s new Paul and Mavis Kendrick Caring Heart Center took place just prior to the reception.
Mavis Kendrick, who passed away in February, was also from Zion Chapel. The Kendricks’ family includes five children, 13 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.
The Caring Heart Center is an Intentional Evangelism project conceived for collecting reusable clothing and selling it at nominal prices. Although Paul Kendrick is largely responsible for making the center a reality, he had no idea the associational board would ultimately vote to name it after him. “They surprised me with that one,” he said.
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