Pastor Steve Gaines played college football at the University of Tennessee-Martin and was well known for love of music and his singing voice.
The passing of Steve Gaines is a loss for many, including me, and a moment of personal reflection for how he impacted my life. I’m grateful for that.
I knew of Steve in high school and early college through “Living Water,” a band well known in West Tennessee that sang in youth groups and concerts across the region.
I heard more about Steve and his time at Union University when I arrived on campus. He was a few years ahead of me. During my junior and senior years, I served as youth minister at his home church in Dyersburg and I got to know his parents. I met Steve when he came home to visit family and he often told me he enjoyed my weekly church newsletter column and was encouraged by what was happening there.
Later, when I attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, he and I reconnected. He was working on his doctorate, and I was pursuing my master’s degree. We often talked about home, life, and ministry — and even about serving together one day.
After completing my degree, I was between ministry roles and praying for direction when I received an unexpected call from Sing Oldham, then pastor of First Baptist Church in Martin, Tenn. He asked for my résumé and said the church wanted to speak with me about its open youth minister position. I had neither applied nor heard of the opening. Later, I learned Steve had met Sing on a plane, learned of the church’s need, and said, “You need to hire Jeff Jones.”
Though the church had already narrowed its candidates, they added me based on Steve’s recommendation. I was eventually hired and served nine years in Martin. I owe that opportunity to him.
That was typical of Steve, though. Even as his influence and ministry grew, he consistently connected with and cared for people.
He likely inherited that concern for others, certainly by example. My wife, Jan, who grew up in Dyersburg, knew the Gaines family well and once taught his mother, Dorothy, to swim — at age 70 — so she could enjoy time in the water with her grandchildren. That’s just the way the Gaines family was.
Steve Gaines, here with his wife, Donna, is remembered by his friends as “a premier preacher, as a leader of leaders and as a man of deep conviction.”
There was a brief opportunity to serve alongside Steve when he and his wife, Donna, were at First Baptist Church in Gardendale, Ala., but God led Jan and me instead to plant a church in Topeka, Kan. Four years later, we came to serve with the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board through the University of Memphis Baptist Collegiate Ministry. We arrived in fall 2004, and the Gaineses came the next year when Steve became pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church.
Our paths crossed many times through the years. Steve was a godly, wise man of prayer who consistently encouraged me. He modeled faithfulness as a husband, a father, and a minister.
His influence extended far beyond me. The number of young men he discipled is remarkable, and his investment in people multiplied ministry and transformed lives. A Bellevue staff member recently told me, “Dr. Gaines is by far the godliest man I’ve ever known.”
The full impact of Steve Gaines’ life will not be known this side of eternity, but his faithfulness is now fully realized. His death is a loss, but his legacy remains an example for all of us to follow.
Thank you, Steve, for your influence on my life and that of so many others. You were impactful because of God’s Spirit within you and your faithful obedience. God used you greatly. Well done, faithful servant. B&R
