Pastor Charlie is a 9th generation native Floridian, tracing his ancestry back to some of the original Spanish settlers in St. Augustine, He holds degrees from Florida Southern College, Emory University and has a Doctorate in Theological Studies from Boston University. He also did post graduate work in the field of Mental Health Counseling at Florida Gulf Coast University. Pastor Charlie is married to Marcia Rentz M.D., an anesthesiologist. They have a blended family of 5 children.  Pastor Charlie and Marcia live on 6 acres near Parrish with their 3 Labrador Retrievers, pet squirrel, bearded dragon and turtles. When the children were all at home they owned, rode and showed horses, but they sold the horses a couple of years ago and acquired mountain bikes. Charlie and Marcia now enjoy mountain biking and have biked trails throughout Florida and Georgia. The entire Rentz family also enjoys being on the water. Everyone in the family is an avid scuba diver and one of the highlights of their year is their annual trip to the Florida Keys to do offshore sport fishing and dive for lobster. Charlie has also been a licensed alligator trapper with FWC for many years and has been capturing live alligators since he was a child with his grandfather. Charlie has also enjoyed keeping bees and collecting raw honey. Pastor Charlie held a United States Coast Guard Captain’s License – OUPV – with training to 100 Ton Masters (U.S Merchant Marine Officer).

 

          Pastor Charlie is in his 38th year of pastoral ministry and has served churches in (Haines City and Griffin, Ga. as a Student Pastor), Leesburg, Port Charlotte, Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie and Bradenton before being appointed here in July of 2014. Under Pastor Charlie’s leadership as Senior Pastor at UMCSCC, the membership has grown by well over 1000 new members with an average in attendance of 1700 in worship each week (prior to Covid-19). In addition we currently have an online worship attendance of 1500 views each week. UMCSCC was recognized as the 6th Fastest Growing Large United Methodist Church in America (Len Wilson, 2019). Charlie’s passion is preaching and worship. While in seminary at Emory University, he was a Sherman Scholar and was awarded the Marcy Scholarship in Preaching his senior year. This scholarship was a competitive scholarship that paid full tuition and a stipend and allowed him directed study with his adviser, professor and mentor, Dr. Fred Craddock. During seminary, Charlie also spent time in Korea studying Church Growth and Evangelism with Dr. George Morris and Dr. Eddie Fox.

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         Pastor Charlie’s vision for UMCSCC is to continue be a multi-generational, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural congregation that warmly welcomes every child of God and reaches our entire community with the message of Jesus Christ. “Everything we do here, whatever it is, is to bring people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and to help us to grow in our faith and in our Christian walk as faithful disciples."