Steve Gaines, former Southern Baptist Convention President and senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, recently announced he would be stepping down amid health complications related to his battle with kidney cancer. In a statement released over the weekend, Gaines sought to set the record straight regarding these recent developments.
“I want you to know two things. First, no one has asked us to do this. We have not felt any pressure from any person to make this transition. Donna and I began talking several years ago and we agree that this is the right time,” Gaines said to his church alongside his wife, Donna.
However, Gaines maintained that he is not stepping down solely because of the cancer diagnosis, noting there have been positive developments with his treatment. While drawing on his faith in Jesus Christ, the prominent pastor, that he would not face death.
“Second, … While I received a cancer diagnosis 10 months ago, this transition is not connected with that. My treatments are going well. I received a good PET scan report this last week, but regardless of what tests show, my faith is in the Lord and in His Word where he has told me from Psalm 118: 17, ‘I will not die,” Gaines said. “Now I’m going to die one of these days, but not from this.”
Continuing, Gaines expressed the utmost gratitude for Bellevue Baptist Church which he has faithfully served for decades fulfilling his calling from God. “We can never put into words how grateful we are for Bellevue Baptist Church. It’s been a great honor to serve as a pastor in four churches over the past 41 years, but many years ago, the Lord spoke to my heart that he would one day want me to serve as an itinerant preacher,” Gaines said. He added, “That simply means that I would travel and minister at different churches instead of serving as the pastor of one church.”
Citing wisdom from Ecclesiastes, Gaines pointed out that life has various seasons, where some are invariably more difficult than others. “The Bible says there’s an appointed time for everything, and there’s a time for every event under Heaven. That’s Ecclesiastes. Ninteeen years ago, the Lord began a season for us here at Bellevue and now we’ve heard his voice that it’s time for a new season,” Gaines said.
“I’m so grateful for your prayers,” he said, voicing gratitude for the spiritual support he has received from his brothers and sister in Christ. The improvements in his treatment come as great news for Gianes as a PET scan revealed “multiple polyps” in his lungs. “The last PET scan that I had showed that there were no more polyps of cancer in my lungs,” he said.
Featured image credit: Dillonsherlock, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Gaines,_Ph.D..jpg