Steve Gaines (pastor)

Born to parents Edgar and Dorothy Gaines, Steve and his only sibling, Ed, spent most of their youth in the small town of Dyersburg, Tennessee. Their father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad and retired in 1976 as a track supervisor. Their mother founded and supervised a janitorial business in Dyersburg, for which both Gaines and his brother worked. He was baptized by his pastor at First Baptist Church in Dyersburg, Dr. Robert Orr.

During his senior year at Dyersburg High School, Gaines was selected as first team defensive end in his high school's "Big Ten Conference" and as All-District in track. He entered the University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM) on a full football scholarship in the fall of 1975.[5] By the third game of his freshman season, he shared a starting defensive end position with a senior teammate. At UTM, he began attending weekly meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In the fall of 1977 he gave up his football scholarship to transfer to Union University, a Christian college in Jackson, Tennessee.[5] On October 23, 1977, Steve Gaines was licensed to the Gospel ministry by his home church in Dyersburg.

At Union University, Gaines met Memphian Donna Dodds, a campus leader who was selected as Miss Union University. Their first date was in December 1978, and they were married on June 14, 1980. Donna Gaines is a Bible teacher and author who leads women's ministries at Bellevue and speaks at churches and conferences across the nation.[5] She has a Master's of Education from Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas, and is board certified as an educational diagnostician. Steve and Donna Gaines have four children.[5]

After graduating from Union University in 1979, Gaines began studies for a Master of Divinity degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. For seven years he served as Professor Roy Fish's grader, longer than anyone else to ever hold that position. In the final year of his master's program, the seminary preaching faculty awarded Steve with the H. C. Brown, Jr. Preaching Award for "Outstanding Achievement in the Study and Practice of Preaching." At the same time, the evangelism faculty presented him with the W. Fred Swank Evangelism Award for best demonstrating the spirit of evangelism as a graduating student. Fred Swank was the legendary pastor of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.[6]

He was the only Southwestern Seminary graduate to ever receive both awards. For Senior Preaching Week, Gaines was selected to preach in the seminary's chapel services before his professors and peers. He graduated with his Master's of Divinity on May 11, 1984.

He began doctoral seminars at Southwestern in the fall of 1985, majoring in preaching and minoring in evangelism. Dr. Fish's course on The History of Spiritual Awakenings particularly inspired him to pray and seek genuine revival for America. His doctoral dissertation was entitled, "An Analysis of the Correlation between Representative Baptist Hour Sermons by Herschel H. Hobbs and Selected Articles of The Baptist Faith and Message." He graduated from Southwestern Seminary with a Ph.D. on May 10, 1991.

On July 27, 1980, Steve was ordained to the Gospel ministry at First Baptist Church, Dyersburg. In 1978 he became youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Milan, Tennessee, where he served for a little more than two years before beginning studies at Southwestern Seminary. While a student at Southwestern Seminary, he was associate pastor/youth minister at Lake Shore Baptist Church in Lake Dallas, Texas. When the pastor resigned, he was asked to serve as the church's interim pastor, and six months later the church called him as pastor. The church grew steadily during the next five years, adding an educational wing and renovating the church facility. The church also planted Shady Shores Baptist Church in Shady Shores, Texas, during Gaines' tenure as pastor there.

After eight years in Texas, Gaines returned to Jackson, Tennessee, in 1988 to serve as pastor of West Jackson Baptist Church. In 1991, First Baptist Church in Gardendale, Alabama, called him to be the pastor. For 14 years of his ministry at Gardendale, the church membership grew exponentially. For the Easter 2005, services were held at the Birmingham–Jefferson Civic Center where more than 10,000 people attended.[5]

While serving in Alabama, Steve was an annual guest speaker at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, at the invitation of Pastor Adrian Rogers. After Rogers' retirement in 2005, the church voted to call Gaines as pastor. On July 10, 2005, Gaines accepted the call and preached to more than 10,000 people in two morning worship services.[5] He preached his first sermon as pastor on September 11, 2005.[5] Numerical growth in every area of the church's life marked Gaines' first year at Bellevue, but the church experienced leadership transition difficulties in the second year.

In April 2009, Dr. Gaines was honored with the "Open Door Award" by the April 4 foundation.[8] This was in recognition "His passion for evangelism (which) has galvanized his congregation to reach their city with the Gospel in unprecedented ways by meeting practical needs throughout Memphis."

On December 18, 2006, the church announced that a minister and staffer at the church for thirty-four years had been placed on leave with an investigation pending regarding a "moral failure", identified by Gaines and others as alleged child molestation in the 1980s.[10] The staffer reportedly counseled child molestation victims during his employment at Bellevue and was permitted to continue having contact with children at the church after the allegation was revealed to Gaines.[11] The next day, December 19, Gaines released a statement that acknowledged that he had been aware of the allegation since June 2006 but that he did not address it for several months because the staffer had been attending professional counseling and also because of confidentiality concerns and compassion for the staffer.[10] The same day, Michael Spradlin, who is president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (located across the street from Bellevue's campus), told the Commercial Appeal that "[i]f a minister has first hand knowledge of allegations of child molestation and does nothing about it then that minister should resign."[10][12][13] On December 20, 2006, Gaines addressed several hundred members of his congregation, saying he would like to remain pastor at Bellevue.[14][11] On January 28, 2007, a church committee released a report on the incident. The report noted that the victim (the former staffer's son) had personally come forward to Gaines along with a group of friends to reveal the abuse.[15] The report criticized Gaines for not immediately coming forward with the information related to the alleged abuse, either to the church or to authorities. No criminal charges were ever brought regarding the allegations'[16][17]

In May 2022, Guidepost Solutions released an independent report stating that Gaines allegedly admitted that he "had delayed reporting a staff minister’s prior sexual abuse of a child of “heartfelt concern and compassion for th[e] minister,” while acknowledging that he should have “brought it to the attention of our church leadership immediately.”[18]

• Morning Manna, a 365-day devotional book (2003)
• When God Comes to Church (2007)
• Pray Like It Matters (2014)
• Share Jesus Like It Matters (2016)

• List of Southern Baptist Convention affiliated people
• Southern Baptist Convention
• Southern Baptist Convention Presidents