Steve has been married for twenty-seven years to his wife, Stacey, who he met in Hampstead in 1988 two weeks before she graduated from Topsail High School. They both attended and graduated from North Carolina State University and pursued careers in environmental research and development. After several years of working in R&D the Lord clearly moved them into full-time ministry with youth and families in their local church. Ministry to youth and families became their heart and they served with delight in that area of ministry for twenty-two years, especially working with children and families in crisis.

 

Steve and Stacey have one daughter, Ashlyn, and a son-in-law, Ben. For the first twelve years Steve served as a youth and missions pastor in Myrtle Beach, SC. The Lord moved them from there to rural Illinois to help start a ranch for at-risk teenagers and start a ministry called Safe Families for Children out of Chicago which helps at-risk children and their parents. At Salem Ranch they lived with thirty boys, seventy horses, and nine dogs on one hundred acres of ranch land. The goal was to offer young men a place to escape the problems of home and get a new start in Christ while finishing their high school education and learning vocational skills.

 

Steve and Stacey returned to Hampstead in 2009 to begin the process of planting a Christ-centered, Bible-teaching church. From the day that GCT was planted in Hampstead in January of 2011, Steve has primarily been a bi-vocational pastor. While planting the church for the first five years, Steve owned his own auto-body shop specializing in paintless dent repair while also serving as the NC State Director for the establishment of Safe Families for Children in NC. His desire is that the Church would return to the forefront of caring for the most vulnerable people in our communities with the gospel that renews, recovers and regenerates those in crisis for lasting life change.

 

Steve has his undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University and his Master of Divinity and Doctorate in Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.