Abe F. Penner was born on April 11, 1929 to Peter P. Penner and Lena Giesbrecht. He was baptised in 1940 and joined the Foam Lake Mennonite Brethren church in Saskatchewan. Around 1951 he was married to Helen. He graduated from Bethany Bible school in Hepburn, Saskatchewan. Around this time he and his parents moved to Steinbach, Manitoba. From 1959 to 1965, he sang with the Sacred Music Society of Manitoba, often featured as a tenor soloist. Penner continued his studies at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas in 1964, which led to the completion of graduate studies at Wichita State University in 1970. In Kansas he attended the Parkview Mennonite Brethren church where he conducted the choir and functioned as minister of music. In 1970 he took a three-year assignment with North American Baptist College in Edmonton as director of the Department of Music. At this time he joined the Baptist church. Here he conducted the King's College Choir. In 1984 he was diagnosed as a "Coronary Vascular diseased patient with Angina" and resigned from King's College. He was featured as guest conductor at Fraserview Mennonite Brethren Church in 1987. By that time he had joined the Mennonite Brethren Church again.