Fred Jantz, the founding and longtime senior pastor of Quail Lakes Baptist Church who shepherded a small north Stockton congregation into one of the city’s largest, died May 25 from complications related to pancreatic cancer. He was 82.
Jantz enjoyed a 30-year pastorate at Quail Lakes Baptist Church and its precursor Swain Oaks Baptist Church. He arrived in Stockton in 1970 at age 28 to take the helm of the smallish northside church, now the site of Lincoln Unified School District’s offices. Jantz was called to Stockton after a short stint as youth director of Trinity Baptist Church in Portland, Ore.
Within a decade in the pulpit, Jantz and church leaders bought property in the fledgling Quail Lakes development on the corner of Quail Lakes Drive and Passero Way in 1980. The first building to occupy the once barren land was a two-story sanctuary/activity center and set of classrooms for youth and adult Bible study. Soon thereafter, the church added a third story for more classrooms, and it eventually built a modern 1,000 seat sanctuary.
“We would always say we were in awe of what God did,” said Wayne Bibleheimer, Jantz’s associate pastor for 25 years and friend for almost 60 years. “We were not smart enough humanly to do that, it was God that did all that.”
Jantz was born in Germany during World War II and immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s with his mother and brother. His father had been killed in the Battle of Stalingrad. He learned English by immersion, and must have done so well, for Jantz was highly regarded for his good-natured, folksy humor, and the ability to relate often difficult theological concepts to the everyman during his Sunday morning sermons.
“I sat in the front row with junior high kids every Sunday, and they would be furiously taking notes of his sermons. That a group that age was willing to do that always amazed me,” said Jon Hathorn, senior pastor of Lincoln Presbyterian Church and a former youth pastor under Jantz at Quail Lakes Baptist. “That’s because no matter how hard the issue or principal was, Fred’s goal wasn’t to show how much he knew, but how much he could get us to understand.”
Jantz left Quail Lakes Baptist in 2000 and served a nine-year stint as the Regional Director for more than 30 churches in the North American Baptist denomination located within a two-hour drive of Stockton. Pastor Marc Maffucci, who followed Jantz in the Quail Lakes pulpit, said he was the ideal man to succeed.
“For many years, we sat in a weekly prayer group side by side and prayed for the congregation,” Maffucci said. “He never second-guessed or questioned any of the changes we made, and he was always available for advice.”
Jantz returned to the pulpit as Senior Executive Pastor at Lincoln Presbyterian Church in 2009 and remained there for another 11 years before his retirement. He is remembered as a mentor to many locals in the ministry.
“His legacy is the number of friendships he had, and the number of people he guided,” Hathorn said.
In addition to churchwork, Jantz taught Philosophy and Western World Religions as an adjunct professor at San Joaquin Delta College. He served on a variety of nonprofit boards including the YMCA of Stockton, Sioux Falls Seminary in South Dakota, Western Seminary in Portland, Ore., Stockton’s Gospel Center Rescue Mission, and the North American Baptist Church Investors Fund. Jantz, a former varsity basketball player at Western High School in Anaheim, also played in a weekly lunchtime pickup game for decades before trying his hand at pickleball.
Jantz is survived by his wife of 59 years, Kathy, sons Philip and Steve, daughter Jennifer, nine grandchildren, and a legion of Stockton churchgoers thankful to have been taught the Gospel message by him.
A Celebration of Life will be on June 8, 2 PM at Quail Lakes Baptist Church. In lieu of flowers, the family’s wish is for Memorial Gifts to be given to Hume Lake Christian Camps (hume.org) or Stockton Gospel Center Rescue Mission (gcrms.org).