Fishers of Men

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts April 11, 1951 but I only spent 6 weeks of my life there and then we moved to the small quaint town of Milo, Maine where many of my family members actually lived.It was great growing up in small town Americana. It was like the whole town was my family! Even though it was great growing up in a small town, close knit community, something was missing in my life. I didn’t know it then,but it was Jesus Christ. I didn’t come from a family that had much to do with God. They were poor, but hard working farmers, honest people that were always willing to give people a helping hand but with 3 farms to keep running. They saw no real value in going to church or having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Thank God that some of my extended family members saw the value of having a relationship with Christ and thank God, with His guidance, that my mother agreed that it might be good for me to learn some of God’s wisdom, principals and Christian values. I was blessed from God at a very young age with a passion for music. I got my first roots in music by singing in the Milo Nazarene Church Choir. I also performed in the school band and chorus. I also from time to time played special music on my trumpet at church. I had my first garage band at the age of 13 and after working through a couple of garage band combinations, I finally formed a band (Fifth City Report) that actually made some money. Our first gig was a local talent show and we won a $30.00 prize!!! It was split 4 ways. We were now soaring with success and even doing a few street dances!!! My musical passion got me enrolled in a music program at the University of Southern Maine, where I auditioned and made 1st trumpet in the concert band, was selected to perform in a special brass ensemble for special events at the Blaine House for the governor and actually played trumpet for the Portland Symphony. Then I contracted a very terrible disease called “Sutton’s Disease”.Because of my extended family inviting me to church and their encouragement to be involved in the church, I initially accepted Christ, as my Lord and Savior, at the young and tender age of 12. At that point in time, I didn’t fully realize just how important that decision I had made was.Peer pressure at high school, lack of a Christian environment at home, lack of fellowship and discipleship and teen rebellion years slid me off track quite a ways from where I should of  been. My spiritual walk as a Christian and my relationship with Christ became even more distant when I went off to college (liberal professors can have a very big impact on young impressionable college students).I graduated from the University of Southern Maine in 1974 and immediately received a teaching job in the Dexter School District. My wife and I were also blessed with a beautiful baby boy, (Steve Jr.), shortly after starting my teaching career. I also was simultaneously pursuing an ambitious professional music career.I was able to balance teaching, coaching and performing music quite well (burning the candle at both ends). Back in those days I only seemed to require 2 to 3 hours of sleep, not realizing what it was doing to me health wise.In 1976 I contracted a serious disease called “Sutton’s Disease”. According to the doctors in Massachusetts, I wouldn’t be able to return to teaching or singing anymore due to significant scar tissue that developed on my voice box from the disease. In fact, I wasn’t even expected to have much of any ability to talk at all, (which would probably be considered a big blessing to some people that know me), however, back in those days I was a bit of a “Christian Bargainer”, praying to God and saying, “God, if you do this for me, I’ll do that for You.” Ha! Like God really needs anything from me! Sometimes we do stupid things! So anyway, I prayed and asked God to heal my voice (so I could at least talk and sing to my children at home), even if the doctors said that there wasn’t much hope. I told God that if He did heal my voice that I would start going back to church and serve Him with my voice or in whatever was His will.God kept His part of the “prayer bargain” agreement and the doctors didn’t give any of the credit to God. They just called it a miracle and said that they couldn’t understand how my voice was able to heal as well as it did (not as much vocal range as before but I could at least talk and sing).Guess who didn’t keep his part of the “prayer bargain” agreement? That’s right Steve.By this time my wife and I had a 2nd child. We were blessed with a beautiful baby girl (Mandi). It’s hard to break old habits or patterns so I fell back into the juggling act of teaching, coaching and performing music. Being gone so much (being a work-a-holic) wasn’t very conducive to a healthy marriage and neither was the environment of bars or clubs by playing in a band. So eventually my wife and I grew apart and the environment that my band was in eventually lead to my easily being seduced into an extra-marital affair which resulted in a divorce. Leaving my family was the hardest thing I ever had to do! I can still see the tears on the faces of my children, at the top of the stairway in our home. But my flesh was very selfish and I was only thinking about my own interests and needs.I still kept a close relationship with my children and was very much involved with their lives. They mean the world to me but Satan and my foolish flesh, at that time, was speaking so loudly that from that point on, or at least for the next 10 years, my addiction wasn’t so much alcohol or illegal drugs. My “drug of choice” was sex and the “high” of having sex with a new and different person and also the “rush” of trying to get away with it without my current partner finding out. So for the next 10 years, needless to say, I was in and out of many relationships. That 10 years was a blur of many earthly highs and lows. There were many broken relationships but, there were also many successes in teaching, coaching and many awards accomplished in music. Probably the most special accomplishment for me in music was forming a band with my children and receiving many awards and even being offered a recording contract, but even that wonderful bubble burst. Yeah, there were many shiny trophies, plaques and accolades. I even had a very successful music store business and DJ business. Yup! I had the world by the horns. I was footloose and fancy free. I had my freedom and my wonderful successes ( which I now realize any successes I had were through God’s grace and the skills He blessed me with) but with all the successes there still was a big emptiness.God was surely allowing me to work on my testimony during that time but, He was continually calling to me too and I was too proud and self-absorbed to listen to Him. I mean after all I didn’t need God. I was successful. I had lots of recognition and no commitments to worry about but “pride comes before the fall” and there were some pretty big “falls” or failures. Boy! God sure works in interesting ways! My daughter, Mandi, who had a very strong relationship with Jesus Christ, called me up crying one night and I asked her what was the problem? She told me that she was praying her evening prayers and she got thinking about her Dad and was worried that when she passed on to heaven that she might not get to see me or spend time with me anymore. So she asked the BIG question! Dad are you a Christian and are you saved? I was speechless (and anyone that knows me, knows that I’m never at a loss for words) but I certainly wasn’t expecting her to ask me those questions! After I regained my composure, my response seemed to calm her fear and anxiety. I told her that I guess I haven’t been living a very godly life but yes I am saved. I asked the Lord to come into my life and be my Lord and Savior at the age of 12. That seemed to calm her down enough to go to sleep but then I wasn’t able to sleep. I began to reflectively think about my life and the things that really matter in life and I remembered a time that Steve Jr. was very young and he crawled up in my lap, smiled and said, “Daddy I love you so-o-o-o-o much! When I grow up, I want to be just like you.” When I first heard him say that, I was proud to hear my little boy say that about his Dad. Thinking back on that moment of time, now, I shivered and said to myself and God, “God help me get this right! Please don’t let my children go through the stupid things that I had to go through!! Help me to be a better father and a better role-model.”At that time, or a few weeks later, I had a BIG music opportunity offered to me that was a musician’s dream-come true! I discussed the whole thing over with my children and told them that it was a great opportunity but that I would be gone a lot traveling with the band. Both Mandi and Steve said that I should follow my lifelong dream and “go for it”! I told them that I would think long and hard about it. I then went home and had a very restless night talking to God and after a long evening of conversing with God and very little sleep, I went over and told Steve and Mandi what my decision was. I told them that I decided not to go to Nashville. Their reply was almost in unison, “But Dad that’s your lifelong dream!!!” My reply to them came swift and without hesitation. I said, “My real lifelong dream is to be your Dad and the best Dad I can possibly be for you guys!” We all sat there for a while hugging each other and in tears of joy with my decision and you know what? When you pray about something as hard as I did and you truly search out God’s will and you know without a doubt that you’re truly doing God’s will, it’s amazing what peace you get from a decision like that. I’ve never looked back on that decision once in regret wondering, “what might have been.”Shortly after that, I started going to church every once in a while, especially when Steve and Mandi were doing special music in church at First free Baptist Church and guess what? When I went inside the church, the walls didn’t crumble and cave in because I was there so I figured it might be safe to go a little more often because I was actually trying to find out more about God and His wisdom so I could keep my promise to become a better Dad.One week when I went to church, Steve Jr. gave me a tape and said Dad you should do this for special music for “Father’s Day”. I listened to the tape and cried. The title of the song was, “I Want to Be Just Like You”. It took me 15 years to get the courage up to sing in church! I just felt that because of the sins I did in my life that I was not worthy to sing in God’s house. Finally after getting into His word, fellowshipping with Christians more and the fact that my church family didn’t judge me, they made me feel welcome, I finally got involved more with the church, because I finally realized that when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior at the age of 12, Christ didn’t turn his back on me. I turned my back on Him but He  still loved me and welcomed me back after all that I had done. I finally realized that His love was more genuine, sincere and real than any other love that I’ve ever experienced in life and just had to have more of it. I got a call one day to see if I would consider helping out in running the sound during church services and it was kind of weird because I’d been sitting at my table talking to God and asking Him how I might become more involved with the church, when I received this call (aren’t prayers crazy but wonderful). I immediate accepted the invite to help. After getting more involved with the church, I finally got the courage up to sing special music at a service and 15 years after my son gave me the tape to practice, I finally was able to perform it in church but not without choking some tears back. All I could see when singing that song was all the mistakes I’d made in my life, the continual forgiveness and unconditional love in my childrens eyes and a little boy that crawled up in my lap 25 years ago and said, “Daddy, I love you so-o-o-o-o much! When I grow up, I want to be just like you.!” When I chose to not take that incredible musical opportunity 15 years ago, I also said I was all done playing music in a band and I told God that I would never play music in a band again, however, God has such an incredible sense of humor (little did I know when I was going through all those challenges years ago, God was preparing me for a special purpose for His will). I was sitting in church one Sunday and someone told me we were going to have special music in church today. I said really who’s doing the special music? They said, “Fishers of Men.” Well, I’d never heard the name of the band before but at a distance I thought I recognized some of the band members. After hearing their music, I said to myself, “This is what contemporary Christian music sounds like? This is pretty cool!” I didn’t know that there were Christian radio stations out there playing music like this so I went up to the band after the service and complemented them. I told them that I didn’t know Christian music could sound like that and have so much energy. One of the band members then gave me a few channels to check out. I went home and all it took was 10 minutes of listening to some music that was clean, had a positive message, good energy and a beat and I was hooked forever!!!A few months after hearing “Fishers of Men” at church, they returned to our church for another concert and after the service I went up again to talk to the guys in the band and they invited me to jam with them that week but I remembered my stupid promise to never play in a band again and I used every excuse in the book not to come. I hadn’t played my guitar in years!!! They would not take no for an answer so to keep them quiet I thought I’d say, “We’ll see.” I thought I’d leave, they’d forget and it would be all over and done with. But no! “Fishers of Men” are men of their word…darn it! They sent a member of the band over to my house to pick me up on their practice night. I still tried to weasel out but Stew, again, wouldn’t take “no” for an answer so I went to the “supposed jam”. We prayed before practicing. Boy! That was different from any of my secular bands I was ever in. In my secular bands we drank before, during and for quite sometime after all practices and gigs! I said to myself, “Man these guys are the real McCoy! They’re serious about their commitment to serving the Lord!”Well, we got through the “supposed jam” and Glen said, “Steve, you did awesome! How’d you like jamming? Did you enjoy it?” I told them, “It was more fun than I thought it was going to be,” and Glen said, “Good! We’ll see you next Thursday then.”My jaw dropped and I said, “What do you mean you’ll see me next Thursday?”They said, “The band prayed about it. We’d like to have you in the band. So see you next Thursday.” Before I could say anything, they were packed up and out of there. It was like I had leprosy! No one would discuss the subject. I didn’t have a chance to refute or argue the point at all. On the way home, I gave Stew every excuse in the book as to why I couldn’t be in the band so he probably figured out I wouldn’t show up Thursday. So what do you think happens on Thursday? I deliberately worked an hour later so I would miss any chance to make practice but guess who was still waiting for me nearly an hour later in my driveway, good ole Stew. Guess who ended up going to practice? Yup! Steve. It didn’t take me long to feel welcomed and to get comfortably settled in (though they do “Steve Me” from time to time but that’s another story), anyways, because of their genuineness and sincerity for the Lord, it didn’t take me long to get hooked and want to be a part of this incredible ministry for Jesus. I didn’t know this but “Fishers of Men” had been praying about finding an extra band member since before they saw me the first time in church. I was adamant about never playing again but these guys take their praying seriously and if you want to make God laugh, tell Him what you’ll never do (remember Jonah). The rest is history. I’m so-o-o-o-o blessed to be a part this ministry! It is nothing short of a miracle (thank you God) that I’m able to still use my musical gifts that God gave me! If I had listened to the “know it all” doctors, instead of turning to God, I would not be talking, singing or playing guitar because of health reasons but “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Phil. 4:13. Please understand that a big part of our ministry is done before and after the music and testimonies so just because the concert is over please don’t be shy about coming down if you need prayer about anything. We are always happy to pray right on the spot. I currently still run my DJ business “The Music Maker”. I also do child mentoring and I’m a Behavior Health Professional for the Charlotte White Center and help children with behavioral and social challenges. I also use some of my former teaching skills by subbing in several of the local schools and when I have a few free minutes I enjoy tuning pianos and carving wood but mostly I enjoy time with my wife, our children and I definitely love blessing (it’s not called spoiling at my house) our 3 grand-daughters. God has truly blessed my broken roads and led me to a wonderful, loving wife and best friend, Debbie, who without her support in letting me participate in the band’s ministry and without her understanding of how passionate I am to serving the Lord and with the gift of music that He’s given me, my ministering would be so much less effective. I’m so thankful that God led me to her and our wonderfully blended family of 4 children Steve Jr., Mandi, Mike and Matt. We live in Dexter, Maine with our newest addition to our family, our black lab puppy Ruby.