Steve Rowland

Caring, kind, and with and for God, my hero is my youth pastor, Steve Rowland. About two years ago, my parents decided to switch churches, for the church we currently attended was going in a direction that they did not like. The churches we visited had okay services, but there were either so few kids that there was no youth pastor, or the kids were all stuck up and the youth pastor couldn’t control them. But then we found The Kimball Church of Christ, where Steve is the youth minister. Before I met him, church was only a time to visit friends, mess around during service and write notes to each other, and talk about the attractive opposite , but it all changed when I met him. Church had a meaning. With Steve’s help I was able gain an intimate relationship with my maker.

This last summer, my mom found out that she had skin cancer, a Melanoma. I had known Steve for about a year and a half when this happened. After church one Sunday, when it was announced that my mom had cancer, Steve sought me out personally to ask me if I was ok. No one else had approached me to ask that except my closest friend, and at that moment I knew that God has sent him to me. Besides being caring, Steve had fun ways of stating God’s love and compassion to all of the kids he was teaching. Some people were annoyed at his methods of teaching, they thought that he went too deep and they could not understand his point. I found his discussions interesting and very encouraging in helping me grow closer and become more trusting that God knew what was best, and that he will always be there for me.

However uncomfortable it was, Steve was not shy and he covered subjects that I had never even heard spoken in Sunday school. But that was a good thing since we learned something from it. His teaching had opened my mind and ears, I started listening to the pastor in church instead of messing around and sleeping, and tried harder to do what was right and pleasing to God.

Steve can’t fly. He doesn’t have super strength. He hasn’t done something amazing so that he is known world wide or will go down in history. But he was there when I needed him most, and he has taught me so much that, in my book, he qualifies as a hero, my hero.