When Terry Stephan’s name was called out as Volunteer of the Year during the Alabama Baptist State Convention in November, he was nowhere near that meeting.
In fact, he was nowhere near his hometown of Mobile at all.
He was swinging a hammer in a small village in Guatemala, putting a ceiling in a “very, very poor missions school on the top of a mountain,” Stephan said. “It was the most exciting trip I’ve been on.”
That’s a big statement from a man who’s been on more than 20 international missions trips in the last four years alone.
“I retired with a very early retirement in 1998, and I always said, when I retire, I’m going on missions. My wife says, ‘Well, you sure have,’” Stephan joked.
And according to Clint Pressley, Stephan’s pastor at Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, in Mobile Baptist Association, it has revolutionized the church’s view of volunteerism. “Terry is the one man who brought missions back to the one church who had forgotten what it meant to be Southern Baptist and missions minded,” he said. “He’s brought a passion for missions back to Dauphin Way Baptist Church.”
Engaging his church
Once a thriving church with a membership in the thousands, Dauphin Way had dwindled to about 200 members when the Stephans moved their membership there in 2003.
Church leaders soon approached Stephan and asked if he would help the church start some missions projects, first in the Mobile area then on the international missions field.
“So we did, and we soon put together a trip to Japan — at that point, the International Mission Board needed people there more than any place in the world,” he said.
He coaxed a team from the church into taking Dauphin Way’s first missions trip since 1997. In Yokohama, Japan, they helped distribute 12,000 Japanese New Testaments. And they were hooked on missions.
“They stepped out of their comfort zone and came back with a testimony of obedience,” Stephan said. “They started telling their friends and getting others to go.”
Soon the church started a partnership with a church plant in Matamoros, Mexico, and began sending teams frequently. By 2007 they had placed a missionary there from Dauphin Way, the first full-time missionary from the church since the early ’90s.
Under Stephan’s leadership, Dauphin Way also started and continued many local efforts, such as rebuilding the Sav-A-Life center and supporting the local Alabama Baptist Children’s Home, 15th Place Homeless Coalition and the International Seaman’s Center.
And when Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, Dauphin Way sent Stephan to Bayou La Batre and Heron Bay as a full-time volunteer to coordinate the church’s recovery efforts there.
Derrall Marshall, pastor of First Baptist Church, Bayou La Batre, said he “found Terry to be a man of great compassion, love and tenderness of heart.”
Mobilizing other churches
“Wherever there was a need, Terry sought to meet it in some way,” he said. “Terry poured himself out on behalf of anyone and everyone he met.”
Since then, Dauphin Way members have traveled to Norway, Guatemala and Vermont, all as part of partnerships with those countries. Many of these trips involved members from other churches, some of whom did not have the capability to send teams on their own.
For many, it was their first missions effort, too, Stephan said.
“Terry is a gifted local church mobilizer with a biblical understanding of evangelistic ministry,” said Thomas Wright, director of missions for Mobile Association. “He continues to work tirelessly to involve churches in local, state, national and international missions.”
The Volunteer of the Year Award is presented annually by the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM). Reggie Quimby, director of the SBOM office of global missions, said the honor is given to a state Baptist who is actively involved in missions.
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