John Steven Gaines (born December 31, 1957) is an American Southern Baptist pastor, and the 61st President of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is currently serving at Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova (a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee), one of the largest congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention and has visited Israel 16 times. On Sunday, July 10, 2005, the Pastor Search Committee of Bellevue Baptist Church presented Dr. Steve Gaines to the church congregation. At the conclusion of the services the Bellevue family overwhelmingly voted to call Steve Gaines as the seventh Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church. Gaines succeeds the longtime Bellevue pastor Adrian Rogers.
Before arriving at Bellevue Baptist, Gaines pastored for 14 years at the Gardendale First Baptist Church, an 8,500-member church in suburban Birmingham, Alabama. There he became one of the leading voices in the conservative wing of the SBC. In 2004, Gaines was elected president of the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference, and was the keynote speaker at the SBC annual meeting in Nashville. He served with his predecessor at Bellevue and three-time SBC president, Adrian Rogers, on a committee charged with revising The Baptist Faith and Message. The document, which is the primary doctrinal statement for all SBC agencies, including its six seminaries and International Mission Board, was adopted by the SBC in 2000. On March 9, 2016, Dr. Johnny Hunt announced he would nominate Gaines to be President of the Southern Baptist Convention at the upcoming SBC annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. He was elected, and was then re-elected for a second one-year term at the 2017 annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
Gaines' theology is best described as conservative and evangelical.
Early life
Born to parents Edgar and Dorothy Gaines, Steve and his only sibling, Ed, spent most of their youth in the small town of Dyersburg, Tennessee. Their father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad and retired in 1976 as a track supervisor. Their mother founded and supervised a janitorial business in Dyersburg, for which both Gaines and his brother worked. He was baptized by his pastor at First Baptist Church in Dyersburg, Dr. Robert Orr.
During his senior year at Dyersburg High School, Gaines was selected as first team defensive end in his high school's "Big Ten Conference" and as All-District in track. He entered the University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM) on a full football scholarship in the fall of 1975. By the third game of his freshman season, he shared a starting defensive end position with a senior teammate. At UTM, he began attending weekly meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In the fall of 1977 he gave up his football scholarship to transfer to Union University, a Christian college in Jackson, Tennessee. On October 23, 1977, Steve Gaines was licensed to the Gospel ministry by his home church in Dyersburg.
Family
At Union University, Gaines met Memphian Donna Dodds, a campus leader who was selected as Miss Union University. Their first date was in December 1978, and they were married on June 14, 1980. Donna Gaines is a Bible teacher and author who leads women's ministries at Bellevue and speaks at churches and conferences across the nation. She has a Master's of Education from Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas, and is board certified as an educational diagnostician. Steve and Donna Gaines have four children.
Education
After graduating from Union University in 1979, Gaines began studies for a Master of Divinity degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. For seven years he served as Professor Roy Fish's grader, longer than anyone else to ever hold that position. In the final year of his master's program, the seminary preaching faculty awarded Steve with the H. C. Brown, Jr. Preaching Award for "Outstanding Achievement in the Study and Practice of Preaching." At the same time, the evangelism faculty presented him with the W. Fred Swank Evangelism Award for best demonstrating the spirit of evangelism as a graduating student. Fred Swank was the legendary pastor of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
He was the only Southwestern Seminary graduate to ever receive both awards. For Senior Preaching Week, Gaines was selected to preach in the seminary's chapel services before his professors and peers. He graduated with his Master's of Divinity on May 11, 1984.