SPARTA, Ky. (KT) – Steve Ellis retired from his secular job and as a full-time pastor seven years ago, but he has since found his niche as an interim pastor and supply preacher.
Ellis, who is 70, has held five interim assignments since 2018 and has preached in more than 80 different churches.
And he takes all his assignments — interim or otherwise — seriously. Ellis has been the interim at Oakland Baptist Church in Sparta since Jan. 15. The small church regularly attracts between 40 and 55 people on Sundays.
Ellis preaches the word with boldness, with one congregation member telling him he is like an “old-school preacher who is loud and doesn’t hold back.”
“He came up to me later and asked if he offended me,” Ellis said. “I told him, ‘No, I considered it a compliment.’”
Ellis does not take interim assignments just to be the fill-in until somebody else comes along. While he does not intend on being the full-time pastor, he does a lot more than keep the lights on. For instance, at Oakland, he challenged the church to have 20 baptisms by the end of the year.
“It hit me one day,” he said. “I was listening to a (Leadership Lessons) video when (Kentucky Baptist Convention Executive Director) Todd Gray was talking to (Pastor) Abram Crozier at Trinity (Southern) about a button process Abram did that worked. I’d heard about it from other churches.”
The process included getting enough prayer warriors to pray for the number on the button they received. He ordered 20 buttons, each representing someone who needed Jesus.
“I wanted a prayer warrior to go along with the person who would be saved,” he said. “I didn’t know if they would buy into it or not. When I asked them, the whole church almost lined up. I passed out the buttons, and off we started.”
Halfway through the year, the church is halfway there with 10 professions of faith. It has brought some fire and commitment to the church, Ellis said. So far, four adults and six youth or children make up the 10 salvations.
Vacation Bible School starts this week at Oakland Baptist, and Ellis is optimistic that more decisions will be made. However, he is not just looking for numbers. He wants to make sure it is a genuine decision and will counsel anyone who comes forward seeking salvation.
“I’m very strict on genuineness of faith,” he said. “I told the VBS teachers, ‘Don’t do any of those, 'Let’s all pray and raise your hand if you feel like you’ve been saved.’ We want to make sure it’s real and that they understand what it means.”
Last week, he baptized a 10-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy — but only after counseling with them. Ellis asked questions about what they believed and why they believed it, and was satisfied with the answers he heard.
The young man had been coming to church with a church member for a couple of years, he said. “When he walked the aisle, he came down in tears,” Ellis said. “There was something about him. I really liked this kid.”
When Ellis was presenting the two in front of the church, he asked who was there for the young girl, and several people stood up. When he asked about the boy’s family, nobody stood. “Then a lady stood up and said, ‘(His) family is the church,’” Ellis said.
The teenager is a tall young man, and when Ellis was getting ready to baptize him, he looked into his eyes. “I could see light in his eyes. I thought, ‘This kid is saved. His whole face has changed.’ He is not the same anymore. I love to see these kids changed.”
One of the Sunday school teachers led the young girl to the Lord, Ellis said, but he counseled with her and was stunned at how much a 10-year-old understood. She was truly saved, he said.
While he said it was important to be careful with young salvations to make sure they were real, he said it is also important that they come to the Lord at a tender age considering the obstacles they are facing in school and an ever-changing culture. Suicide numbers are up among young people, and many are facing questions about sexuality and transgender issues.
“Kids are being attacked through schools and social media,” he said.
Ellis said the church has been enthused about growing and wants to do some of it through a more robust youth ministry. He said the Sunday School teachers are tremendous leaders who do a little of everything for the children, including feeding them.
“Satan goes after these kids when they’re so young,” he said. “At first, I was thinking, ‘We’re just saving kids.’ But with the suicide numbers and sexual confusion, we need to get them saved whenever they can understand what it means.”
Ellis said he was saved at 33 and was called to pastor at age 55, later in life than most. But he has had more than his share of blessings.
“I’m a nobody in the preacher world,” he said. “I look at everybody else as a much better pastor than me.”
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This story appeared in Kentucky Today.