Frankie Stiefel tried to find every way out of the role he could, but God wouldn’t turn loose, he shared Oct. 19 during the annual meeting of Sand Mountain Baptist Association.
Stiefel, director of SMBA’s disaster relief for the past four years, has been called to serve as a state missionary in the role of disaster relief strategist for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. He begins Jan. 1.
Current DR strategist Mark Wakefield retires Feb. 28 and will overlap with Stiefel to hand off the responsibilities.
Wakefield said Stiefel is the right person for the role.
“He has always taken his job as associational coordinator very seriously, and they almost always have a team to deploy,” Wakefield said. “They also take care of many local events when the wind or small tornadoes hit their area. Frankie has trained in most areas of disaster relief and has a real interest in learning all he can in order to be more useful.”
Stiefel, who has served with SMBA DR since 2005, said the only training he lacks is to operate the feeding unit, and he plans to obtain that training in the spring.
‘Humble leader’
Scotty Goldman, leader of SBOM’s Missions Mobilization Team, oversees hiring for the DR role.
“Frankie’s disaster relief experience, his knowledge of operating and maintaining the DR equipment, and his passion for DR ministry made him the perfect choice for this role,” Goldman said.
“He will be a great asset to our team and a strong, humble leader for our yellow shirt army.”
Stiefel is only the fourth person to serve in the role. Prior to Wakefield were Mel Johnson and the late Tommy Puckett, the first director of DR efforts for Alabama Baptists.
Still, Stiefel said he couldn’t quite see it when Goldman reached out to him earlier this year.
He asked us to pray over it and told us God had been bringing him to their minds for more than two years.
“That hit me like a ton of bricks that God had laid that on their hearts,” Stiefel said. “After that, we began to pray really hard and asked God to show us how to make it work.”
When it came time to decide, the next sermon at their home church — Happy Home Baptist Church in Henager — focused on Abraham and Isaac and not surrendering.
As Pastor Dustin Henshaw preached, “we knew the message was for us,” Stiefel said.
“We prayed at the altar … and I surrendered, saying, ‘OK, Lord, I’m turning it to your hands. … I don’t want to miss the blessing if I don’t surrender and keep doing what I’m doing in life … but I can’t do it.’
“It was like He answered with, ‘If you’ll watch me, I can. You can’t, but I can.’”
Stiefel’s wife, Michelle, who is in her 20th year as SMBA’s ministry assistant, said she has no doubt her husband is called to the role. “It has been incredible watching God move in so many ways the past few months as we’ve prayed about the opportunity.”
One of those ways was Stiefel realizing that he was hitting his 25th anniversary with TVA and turning 55 during 2026, which means he was eligible for full retirement at the end of the year. Another solution to a concern they had was that they won’t have to move away from their home and grandchildren.
“Every time I would have an excuse, God had an answer,” Stiefel said. “The only way I know how to describe it is, God did it, and I was finally willing to listen.”
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