Page 10 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2025 - Online Magazine

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Steve McMeans
Making an
Eternal Impact
by Nathan Layton
hen I think of people who
have made an impact on
Wmy life, I do not think
of one-time occurrences. Rather, I
think of people who have been in
my life for years, who have made a
continuous impact on me, through
the thick-and-thin that life has to
offer. One person who stands out
is the pastor at my church, Pastor
Steve McMeans, more informally
known as Pastor Steve.
In 2008, my family moved back to
Lubbock from Hawaii, where my
dad was stationed in the Navy.
My parents began searching for
a church home, and we landed at
10 Lubbock Senior Link
Senior
Senior
Indiana Avenue Baptist Church. instructions, and learn I did. I can
The pastor, whom we would come confidently say that the person I am
to know very well, greeted us today, and the person I will forever
with open arms, and we’ve been be, has been impacted greatly by
attending ever since. Although we Pastor Steve.
were always a church-going family,
it was not an important and integral Whenever my family experienced
part of my life until my eighth difficult times, Steve was always
grade year in 2020. It was then that there lifting us up, sending a kind
I found a close-knit group of guys text, a letter, or just dropping in
at church, began to attend more to check on us. He has truly been
regularly, and started listening more a blessing to me and my family
closely to the sermons! I realized and provided me with a great role
how blessed I was to have a mentor model.
like Pastor Steve in my life. It was One thing that helps me relate
like a door was opened to me that more to Pastor Steve is that he was
had been previously closed. He was not always this great man. In fact,
a wonderful role model to look up and he would back me up on this,
to, someone whom I could imitate he was quite the opposite. It was
to become more like Christ. not until college that Steve came
to Christ. From there, he pursued
I came to realize that I had been a career in ministry and has never
taking this spiritual giant, a man looked back. But much like my
who embodied every virtue own experience, he had a role
important to me, for granted for model whom he could look up to
years. The only way to fix this, while growing up. That was Jesus
however, was to start being grateful.
The first way I saw to show Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of
gratitude for my pastor was to our faith, who transformed Steve
actively listen and take notes, which McMeans from a lonely and lost
he always said was a good idea to man, into the bold, strong, and kind
reinforce learning. I followed his one whom I know today.