Interview
4 minutes 30 seconds read
In January 2026 Steven took on the role of Team Leader for the Media to Movements (MTM) team, having originally joined on a part-time basis three years earlier as marketing coach. Alongside Arab World Media and Preparing Arab-world Leaders for Ministry, MTM is one of the ministries of Pioneers Media.
Steven comes from Oklahoma, growing up, in his words, ‘in and out of church,’ in a family with godly grandparents. He married while at high school, and both he and his wife renewed their commitment to Christ, ‘growing up in Jesus together in our late teens and early twenties.’ He started a few different companies and started volunteering at a local church plant, where he was mentored and discipled. By the age of 26, he was a father of five and deeply involved in church planting networks. He spent 21 years serving as a lead pastor across various congregations in Oklahoma, operating several businesses in order to fund his ministry activities.
In 2007, Steven’s wife was sadly diagnosed with an illness that left her wheelchair-bound and facing cognitive challenges. Several years later, a devastating tornado struck their town, destroying a primary school and claiming the lives of a number of children. Steven’s church, which had only been planted about 18 months previously, immersed itself in local relief work to which there was a significant spiritual response. This experience inspired Steven to help produce a documentary film, Where was God?, which explored emotional and spiritual recovery in the wake of tragedy. The film had a limited theatrical release and was streamed on Netflix for a while.
The Lord has his people in all these spaces. They’re already there.
This was the first time he had used more creative media and, initially, he ‘really thought we were going to win the world to Jesus using movies.’ People did take great efforts to find his personal contact details, and some days he would receive up to two dozen messages from viewers. One email arrived from a single mother in Alaska, who wished to turn her life around and follow Jesus, asking directly what her next step should be. To Steven, the message was both encouraging and deeply frustrating; he had no regional context, knew no one in Alaska, and possessed no local infrastructure to support her. Media had successfully delivered information and inspiration, but it could not provide the local relational context essential for true spiritual transformation.
By 2017, Steven’s wife required constant, 24-hour care. ‘I was in the four walls of my house, an over-the-top extrovert with evangelism being a significant, motivational, spiritual gift,’ committed to his wife, the Lord, the church he was pastoring and his five children. ‘I thought to myself, what do I do now?’ The answer came when he heard a disciple-maker who had been serving in Central Asia for 20 years and who introduced him to Discovery Bible Study methods and to the book, Miraculous Movements, by Jerry Trousdale. He had a thousand questions, and over the next few years the disciple-maker really invested in Steven, who immediately applied the methods locally, starting Bible studies with different groups of Arabs, and forming key groups.
At the same time, he turned to social media, to find spiritually open people, particularly Muslims, and engage them. Over six months, ‘I grew some social media channels to several million followers, but I didn’t find quite what I was looking for. I just ran ads in every country in the world… but then I started zeroing in on the Middle East and North Africa.’ He recorded a 32-second video, for English-speakers in Arabic-speaking countries, explaining his pastoral background, his situation, and his desire to discuss faith. The ad directed seekers to a basic landing page with a five-minute video showing his home and family! Launched on a Friday night, 400 people had joined a private Facebook group by the following morning. Steven paused the ad and established eight Zoom-based Discovery Bible Studies that filled immediately with 12 people in each group.
Madonna,* a young, very articulate woman from a wealthy family in North Africa was one of them. ‘She engaged with us on Zoom, got to know my wife, who would pray for people. But, a few weeks in, she just disappeared. This had happened before. I remember thinking about her and praying for her and realising that what she needed was not an American couple from Oklahoma, thousands of miles away; she needed a Spirit-filled Kingdom-woman in her city who could model for her what it looked like to follow Jesus in her environment.’ As Steven prayed, he realised, ‘the Lord has his people in all these spaces. They’re already there.’
This insight defines the core identity of media to movements which Steven describes as, ‘the strategic use of marketing and media to identify spiritually ready people and transition them to face-to-face disciple-makers, so that they can be developed in local groups.’
Steven’s wife went to be with Jesus on Christmas Eve 2020. They had been married for 28 years, had five children, and he is now grandfather to six. He took a sabbatical and God started opening doors for him to start travelling, be involved in training and engage more with media and disciple-making movements. He has married again and she is ‘definitely a bright light in my life.’
Having now coached more than 100 teams globally, Steven says that there are several key things he has learnt, including:
’God has a mission and he allows us to join him. What a privilege!’
Read more of our interview with Steven in the November edition of Reach.
*Name changed for security purposes
