Dinner with a Hero

By Carol Pipes

I had dinner with one of my heroes last night. He's probably not on your list of who's who in the Southern Baptist Convention, but in my eyes he's a hero. 

I first met Steve Fowler when he was planting a church in Houghton Lake, Michigan. As a young teen, this was my first encounter with a real life church planter. I remember thinking that Steve and his wife were totally cool. Here was an amazing couple who'd given their lives to God and moved to this small town to start a church from scratch. That made a huge impression on my young life. Of course, Steve was just following in the footsteps of his father Carrol Fowler—another Southern Baptist hero.

My church, First Baptist Church, Tullahoma, Tennessee, had a partnership with one of the Baptist associations in Michigan. For more than a decade volunteers from our church made trips to northern Michigan to help support new churches and strengthen existing ones. It was on one of those trips that I learned how to put hands and feet to my faith. I also witnessed the results of cooperative missions. And for the first time my eyes were opened to the mission field right here in North America.

I haven't seen Steve since 1989. So imagine my surprise when he and I were seated across from each other at a dinner sponsored by the Missional Network at the North American Mission Board. We were up to our elbows in lasagna when I finally realized who he was. Wow! It's not very often that you get to tell someone how their ministry and missional lifestyle impacted your own life. I'm sure it's no coincidence that we were at the same table last night in a room full of church planters. So I took the opportunity to tell Steve, who now heads the church planting team in Montana, how those trips to Michigan and working with him had given me a passion for missions and church planting.

So thanks Steve and to all the other pioneer church planters in northern Michigan and across North America. You are my heroes.