PAVO — The last thing a Salem Baptist Church committee searching for a pastor wanted was a first-time preacher with no experience and retired from the military.

John F. Grebeta is the man they chose for the job. The Salem pulpit is Grebeta’s first, he has no preaching experience to speak of, and he is a retired U.S. Navy pilot.

Ricky Stephenson and Vera Smith, lifelong Salem members and search committee members, went to Naval Air Station Whiting Field at Milton, Fla., earlier this year to hear Grebeta fill in for a base pastor.

“It was amazing,” Smith recalled, describing the search committee question-and-answer session with Grebeta after the service.

“We had been looking for a pastor since the end of August of ’08,” said Stephenson, whose great-great-grandfather, Asa Stephenson, was the 134-year-old church’s first pastor. “We had John’s résumé and really basically dismissed it.”

Stephenson said the church was in a crisis period and seeking leadership. Suddenly, Grebeta’s leadership through his military experience was obvious. He also had a strong Baptist background.

Grebeta, 41, grew up in Michigan and California. He answered the call to the ministry in 2006.

Grebeta preached a trial sermon at Salem on a Sunday morning last summer. The membership voted on him at the worship service that night. The vote was 79-1 in his favor.

For Grebeta, the door to the country church near Pavo never closed. It stayed open, and things became clearer and clearer.

The Grebeta family was fairly entrenched in the Florida Panhandle. Grebeta planned to stay in the Pensacola area and work with a ministry for the homeless. Although his friends urged him to become an airline pilot, he was determined to join the ministry after ending a 22-year military career.

“If it was the minister of doorknobs, I would be the best pastor I could be,” Grebeta explained. “I felt some kind of calling all my life. I knew it was coming.”

For the past dozen years, Grebeta has served as a lieutenant commander on an E-6, a Navy communication plane.

“We brought admirals and generals with us who had nuclear-release powers,” Grebeta said.

His planes could launch weapons from in-ground silos, submarines and bombers. “We would get messages in that tell us to launch,” Grebeta explained.

The E-6 was a backup to Air Force One.

“I was mission commander,” said the Salem pastor, adding that his primary work was to safely get the plane and crew from place to place. His responsibilities included scheduling, weather and maintenance.

Before he earned a college degree while in the Navy, Grebeta served as a radioman on submarines, working out of Scotland. He also was assigned to a ship with a homeport of Charleston, S.C.

“I felt led to be a pilot,” Grebeta explained. The college degree moved him upward in his military career. He is the first person in his family to earn a college degree.

His brother, Dave, also is in the aviation field. He maintains aircraft for Roy Disney, Walt Disney’s nephew and longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company.

Grebeta and his wife of 19 1/2 years, Deanne, have three children: Bethany, 17, Matthew, 15, and Joseph, 10. The children are home-schooled.

Grebeta, who is working toward a master of divinity at New Orleans Theological Seminary, is the 41st pastor of the picturesque, little church on Salem Road. Standing beneath an oak tree on the church’s front lawn while discussing his mission at Salem Baptist, Grebeta was the picture of contentment on a warm, sunny fall morning.

The red-brick church in a quiet, pastoral setting could not be more different from piloting a plane with nuclear capabilities.

“I enjoy this more than I did any of that,” the Salem minister explained.