Matthew Stepp

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Biography

Matt Stepp was born in the Mountain State Hospital in Charleston, WV on 02 Sep 1966. My folks had already moved to the Cleveland, OH area, but Mom's gynecologist was still in hometown Charleston, so she returned to WV for my birth (God ordained to be a Mountaineer, I suppose!) and three days later, we were home in North Madison, Ohio. When I was two, we moved to Elyria, OH on the other side of Cleveland. My folks were involved in starting a Christian school there at the church, so I went for a half year of kindergarten classes, before my Dad was called to be a Baptist preacher, and we ended up going to Goshen, Indiana for his first pastorate at the New Testament Baptist Church. There, I was enrolled in the Southwest Christian School, Southwest, IN from first thru seventh grade. In 1972 we bought a house on County Road 44 in Wakarusa/Nappanee area. In 1976 we moved from Elkhart County to the next county south, Koskiosko County, across US 6. On County Road 1100 we lived until we headed back to WV. Dad resigned as pastor of NTBC and we moved our attendance to First Baptist Church of Nappanee, pastored by Eld.Ralph Hawkins. Dad visited several other Sovereign Grace, Landmark, Independent, Missionary Baptist churches from Illinois to North Carolina, before finding out the LORD wanted him to do missionary work, with the purpose of starting a church in the Charleston, WV area. We moved to Given, WV in Jackson County in 1979. While we were starting the mission work in Charleston, we rented out our Given farm, and rented a house in Amherst on the Kanawha River on Riverlane Drive for two years. We met at various places over the next few years, until the building and then organization of the Heritage Landmark Baptist Church in 1987 stabilized our family in Jackson County. I attended Fair Haven Christian School from 8th grade through graduation, when I started working full time at the family business at Stepp & Sons Garage Doors. I always say that when I graduated, Dad needed someone to work long hours for little pay, and that I fit the bill pretty good. I never really considered going to college and only slightly considered the US Navy. In 1991, I realized that I was still single and started looking for a godly woman to marry, and after prayer and intervention of the Holy Spirit, I asked Fair Haven's current cheerleading captian out, and courted then Rebecca Sue Russell throughout her senior high school year. She chose Appalachian Bible College and I asked her to marry me, the week before she headed to that "marriage mart", so she'd arrive already wearing an engagement ring. We married on 07 Aug 1993 at her folk's church, Kanawha Baptist Temple, on Mill Creek in Charleston, WV. During the Summer of 1993, I took off work to build our first home on the Given/Rockcastle Farm in Jackson County. Creel Kerns and I built it with help from my brothers and father, as necessary. We moved in after our Honeymoon, split between Pipestem State Park and Nags Head, Outer Banks, NC. In 1995, I started teaching the Adult Sunday School Bible class regularly at HLBC. In 1996, 97, 98 our first three children, Andrew, Noah and Miriam were born in quick succession, by God's Grace. We loved to travel around to Bible Conferences and camping in WV state parks while the kids were growing up. Moses was born in '01 and Abigail in '04, while I started filling in as a supply speaker in various pulpits of SGLIMBC's. In 2005, the HLBC ordained me to the Gospel Ministry and after not being given liberty to pastor at SGBC in Wake Forest, NC, the LORD gave me peace to accept the call to pastor the Big Creek Baptist Church in Wayne, WV, starting October 2006, and we moved forthwith on Thanksgiving weekend, 2006. Fourteen years later, this is where we are still laboring, by God's Grace! Matt Stepp, 28 Sep 2020