Pastor Steve Gaines Stepping Down From Bellevue Baptist Church, Will Begin Transition Out

Pastor Steve Gaines of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, has announced that he’s stepping down from the senior pastor position at his SBC megachurch and will begin the transition to new leadership, nearly a year after being diagnosed with kidney cancer.

Gaines, a former Southern Baptist Convention President we last wrote about after he joined other SBC presidents in helping torpedo the Law Amendment and allow SBC churches with women pastors to be considered in cooperation with the denomination, shared the announcement with his church on Sunday.

With his wife on stage, he told his congregation that years ago, the Lord put it into his heart to be an itinerant minister and that now it was time to begin that transition.

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.

“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. Now I’m going to die one of these days, but not from this.”

Gaines has not set a date for when he formally steps down and passes the torch, but insists that he will not fully be leaving Bellevue when the time comes. Rather, it will remain the home base from which they operate.