B. H. Clendennen

Bertram Hamilton Clendennen, known as B. H. Clendennen, lived from 1922 to 2009. He was an American Pentecostal minister associated with the Assemblies of God and later the founder of the School of Christ International. The ministry's own historical account says that he served for fifty-five years as an ordained minister. In November 1956 he began the Victory Temple Church in Beaumont, Texas. This congregation became an important base for his teaching, preaching and mission work. His later calling did not begin in isolation from local church life; it developed out of years spent pastoring people.

During the 1960s he travelled beyond the United States. The School of Christ history records ministry in Tanzania in 1967 and a return visit in 1968, when his family helped dedicate church buildings connected with the work. It also records travel through several countries, including areas of Asia and Europe. These details come from the ministry's own recollections and should be understood as an institutional account rather than independent measurements of revival outcomes. What they establish clearly is the international direction of Clendennen's ministry and his continued connection with pastors working in different countries.

In the early 1970s his experiences in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, changed how he thought about evangelism. He later described large public meetings that had not produced the lasting results he expected. Rather than give up on missions, he began to place greater emphasis on training local ministers who would remain with congregations after outside visitors had gone. This shift became central to his later work. The question he was asking was practical: how could pastors be prepared to teach, pray and care for a church when travelling evangelists had left?

By 1991 Clendennen believed he should step away from daily pastoral leadership at Victory Temple and devote his time to this wider work. He travelled to the former Soviet Union during a period of major political change. In 1992 he helped establish a training school in Moscow, and the institutional history dates the beginning of classes to October that year. The School of Christ International grew from that initiative. Its stated aim was to teach Scripture and develop local church leaders who could serve in their own countries without permanent dependence on visiting teams.

Clendennen described prayer, disciplined study and the spiritual formation of ministers as essential parts of the programme. The training he developed was intensive and aimed particularly at those already called to serve congregations. The ministry reports that the material was translated for work in Spanish-speaking countries during the 1990s, including Peru, and later circulated more widely. Figures reported by the organisation for its attendance and geographical reach should not be repeated as verified independent statistics. They do, however, show the scope to which its leaders aspired and the centrality of ministerial training to its identity.

Clendennen remained closely associated with Victory Temple and the School of Christ until his death in 2009. His legacy should be understood in two connected parts: a pastoral ministry in Beaumont, and a training approach that grew out of his criticism of short-term results in overseas evangelism. The mission movement bears his name in its records, but its work depended upon pastors, teachers, translators and congregations in many places. A careful history must leave room for those workers while recording the role he played in organising the programme.