From Missouri Farm Fields to Williams: The Early Journey of Steven Nelson

In this episode of the Lifework Podcast, host Dr. Stan Norman welcomes Steven Nelson, Director of Housing and Intramural Sports at Williams Baptist University, to share how a boy from rural Missouri found his way into shaping campus life at WBU. 

Steven reflects on growing up in a large farming family, learning perseverance in the fields and factories, and navigating complex family dynamics that forged his character and faith. He introduces how those early experiences prepared him not only for future ministry training at Spurgeon College and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but also for his calling to invest in students’ lives through housing, intramurals, and teaching. 

Stay tuned through the end of this conversation as Steven begins to wrestle with God’s call on his life and the tension between an engineering path and ministry, setting up part two of his story coming next week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Life Work Podcast. My name is Stan Norman. I'm your host, and today we are joined by Steven Nelson. Welcome, sir. Glad to be here. Glad to have you on here. So uh you are just finishing up your first year here at Williams Baptist University. What is your job title? What do you do here?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Uh that's kind of difficult for me because there's a lot of things I do. Uh I think my official title is director of housing and uh recreational sports or intramural sports. Uh I added the adjunct professor this last semester and continuing into the next semester. So uh sometimes I feel like I do a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Well, I hope you feel that those are meaningful things for you. Okay. So um I think we'll get into how did you get here part of our discussion a little later. Okay. First thing I want to tackle is where are you from? Where'd you grow up? What's home for you?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Uh so it just kind of depends. Uh my family all are from a small town of Bunston, Missouri.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Bunston?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Bunston. Uh, if you know where Boonville, Missouri's at, just south or Tipton. Uh I lived there until after fourth grade and moved to Columbia to live with my mother in fifth grade.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Bunston. Is that north, south, east, west, central Missouri.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

It's about 30 minutes towards Kansas City on I-70, just south of I-70.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Is that a farming community, a suburb community, or it's not a suburb. Okay. Columbia's, you know, currently about 120,000. They were more 90,000 back in the day. Um, and Bunston, a little bit of farming. Uh, a lot of them commute into Boonville for factory work or into Columbia for more professional work. And there is farms. I come from a farm farming family. Grandfather up until uh the pork uh prices dropped, owned probably about 1,500 acres. My other grandfather owned about a thousand acres, and then my stepfather owned uh 2,800 acres. So I grew up around farming most of my life.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So did you grow up doing farming or just around farming?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Doing it. Okay. Uh bucking hay bales. Uh, we owned horses, um, cattle, hogs. I am trying to think of anything else, mostly soybean and corn, a little bit of Milo, but that really wasn't something we got into. Cleaning grain bins was one of my favorite tasks, and there's a little sarcasm in that.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, I picked up on that. Yeah. I can't imagine how you would enjoy that in any world.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

It uh it was needed to be done. Right. Um, and uh that's a lot of farming, right? Do what needs to get done, just get it done. Right. And uh if you can't do it, you find a friend who can, and he shows you how to do it so next time you don't have to ask for help. So siblings? I'm one of seven.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Where in the picking order do you fall? Right in the middle. One of seven.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

One of seven. My parents were divorced when I was one.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Um, or I don't know when the divorce was finalized, but I know they separated when I was one.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Uh, and so my mother and my biological father had a daughter who was my sister. Okay. And then I was born. Uh, when they separated, my mother ended up with uh uh who ended up being my stepfather, and so he already had two children from his first marriage. They're about 10, 12 years older than me. And then my mother and my stepfather had another daughter who is a couple years younger than me, and then my dad about three years later remarried and had two children, another daughter and son.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So it's a little everybody's it just puts them together.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Okay, okay. So growing up in that environment, talk a little about your parents working. Did they both work on the farm? Did your mom work on the farm? How did that work?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Um, so dad was a tool and dye worker, but also had a passion for bird dog training. And uh, and so he worked on the farm, but uh also worked in a factory to make ends meet. And eventually, while I was somewhere around 11, 12, he got a job training bird dogs full-time in Oklahoma. Went down there for a couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

You can do that full time.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Uh no. Okay, it didn't work out well. Uh the first year, uh, the guy that had hired him paid him well, and then it kind of fell apart after the second year because there's not a lot of money in it. And if the market's not right, it's really somebody's hobby that they were paying him to do for them. And at times we'd have 50 bird dogs on our property, and uh was my job to clean pens, feed, water, all that other stuff. Uh, so that was a lot of fun. My mother, when she remarried again, yeah, it's a lot of fun. A little bit of sarcasm. Yeah, I uh that's probably gonna be common.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So just I understand the ground rules now.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah. Um, my mother remarried and he had quite a few acres and he did farming, but he also owned uh service stations. And so she worked in the service stations, usually Monday through Friday, uh, sometimes even weekends. Um, and so they sold all those when I was 17 years old. I always thought I'd get free gas, but no, they sold all those and uh they had at one point, I think, five service stations in Columbia.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

But you grew up on a farm?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

On and around, as my wife makes me say. Okay, because she grew up living right in the middle of the farm. Uh, there were times we lived on the farm, uh, a lot of times we lived in town but worked the farm.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Okay, so you were a commuter farmer?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Somewhat. Okay. Yeah, just depending on what part of my life.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Okay. Well, trying to bring a little interpretive coherence to all of that, looking back on the working part of your family life, what are some vivid memories or impressions that still are embedded as you embedded in your thinking, embedded in your memory as you reflect back upon that growing up experience?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

So as a a younger kid, probably my ages from you're you're gonna think it's crazy, but three or four years old, probably until I went to live with my mother. Um, and um every summer my great-grandmother would buy us all passes to uh the local swimming pool. But we were required to work on the farm in the morning. Yeah, if we didn't work, we couldn't go to the swimming pool. And it was ingrained into us that we could go and have some fun, but we had to work hard to be able to earn that right. And still, even with my own children, I was like, you know, we can go us have some fun, but we have responsibilities. Uh, they didn't go pick green beans and do whatever work was needed cleaning out uh different uh, you know, different stall horse stalls or whatever was needed on the farm, but they had responsibilities around the house, in the yard, everything like that. And if they weren't able to do that, then then it didn't get go play and have fun. And so that was really ingrained to me. We have a lot of fun. My wife and I, we travel, we we enjoy traveling, but we work hard to be able to take that time and go and have some fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Okay, so growing up on the farm, I'm I'm gonna ask one more question related to that before I pivot. Um, a lot of adults that I meet now that grew up in a farming context, one way or the other, it's made such an impression upon them, and for many of them, a negative impression that they move away, that they don't want to do that anymore, that it was a hard life, they didn't like it, and so they get to be adults and they move away from it and they want nothing to do with it. Was and I'm not making a judgment about that one way or the other. Is that good or is that bad? That's just their life experience. As you reflect on on your upbringing and growing up in that context, um, as you got older, was your thoughts, I'm getting out of here, I don't want to do this anymore, I want the farm in my rearview mirror, or I would be open, however, my life unfolded to eventually coming back and doing that if that were the pathway the Lord wanted me to walk.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

I never saw God calling me to work full-time on the farm. I'd love to own um 10 to 15 acres, but that's not a farm. You can't survive on 10 to 15 acres. And and what my parents could have survived on, generations today cannot survive on that much land. They need more and more land to be just to be able to survive. Um, I felt God calling me into ministry uh probably around the age of 14. And so I knew then I was not going to work on the farm. And um, as much as I enjoyed aspects of it, uh, I've done two archaeological digs in Israel. I loved the physical labor, but I also loved the lectures in the evening that had the knowledge that I was gaining. And so putting those two together is something I've always enjoyed. And uh to be honest with you, I never saw myself as a farmer. I remember telling my dad, probably around the age of eight or nine, I'm not gonna be a farmer. And of course, he he didn't really like that answer, but that's I just knew that was not where I was headed. It it's not because it was negative, it was tough at times. Uh some of the work was really hard. Digging post holes is something I I don't ever want to do again. Yeah, not by hand. Yeah. Uh, but there's something rewarding when you've fixed a fence, when you've uh raised an animal, and and yes, you send it to slaughter, but you know you've invested in that. There's something rewarding about that. So I'd I'd love to have, like I said, 10, 15 acres, uh, maybe a horse, though that's a lot of money I don't really want to spend. Just something to kind of look out on and enjoy. But other than that, I've never felt like I want to own a couple thousand acres, plant, you know, crops, raise cattle. It's just not something that I feel like God has ever called me to doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

You mentioned sharing about a call to ministry about age 14. Did you grow up in a believing family? Did you grow up going to church?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Um, my mother and stepfather would say they were believers, but I never saw it. My father, I saw it for a period of time. That time in Oklahoma, I saw him walk closely with the Lord. It was my grandparents. My grandparents were my parents. Because of the nature of the split family, I spent a lot of time on the farm working for my grandfathers and my grandmothers, working alongside of them. I can remember waking up in the morning, seeing them do devotionals, them taking us to church when my father stopped going to church. I don't remember my mother ever being regularly in church. It was my grandparents. Both my grandfathers were deacons in the church, both Southern Baptists. And I saw their time in his word. I saw their lives, not that it was perfect, not that they were perfect individuals, but they were my parents. I looked to them for answers. I'd had those conversations, spiritual conversations, conversations that I've had with my aunt and uncles, uh, because my father's passed away. And I'm like, I had that conversation with my grandfather, and they're like, they he never would have talked to me about it. I was like, I just asked. He would talk to me about what it means to be a Christ-like man, what it means to follow Jesus and to live for him daily. And if you met him just briefly, you may not see that. But some of the conversations we had while we were in a truck going and checking on fences or whatever, we had a lot of those conversations.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

When do you think you were born again? When did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Uh, I actually gave my life to Christ while I was in Oklahoma. I went and visited my father. Like I said, I my father was walking close with the Lord then. And I was, he was very uh involved in a church. And so that whole summer that I spent with him, uh, I was going every Wednesday, every Sunday. And it's kind of one of those stories that I look at and go, okay, I might not have approached it the way this teacher did. But as I was leaving, I was getting ready to get on a plane and fly back to Missouri. And she looked at me and said, If that plane doesn't make it tomorrow, are you going to heaven? Now, I'm a 12-year-old kid at the time. Maybe not the best way, but uh I responded, I don't know. And so she shared the gospel with me, then asked me if I'd like to give my life to Christ. I said, no, and I walked out of the classroom. On the way from that class to the sanctuary, I was going down some stairs. There was a landing, and something just came over me. I truly believed it was God just speaking to me, and I knew at that moment I couldn't go another step, and I gave my life to Christ right there on those stairs. Uh, shared that with my father and stepmother that afternoon. Uh, went forward that night, flew back the next day, and a couple weeks later uh later, I was baptized in Columbia, Missouri at a church.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

How old were you? 12. Okay. So from that point on, what did your spiritual life look like? And and I'm and I don't mean to say what I'm about to say in a derogatory way. It sounded like there's just there was a lot of uh unsettleness or uncertainty relationally growing up in your family. Yes. Um and and then trying to live out a newfound faith in that environment. I'm sure there were a lot of uh ups and downs.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Oh yeah. Uh the next two years I walked really closely with the Lord. Now remember, I'm living with my mother who I I've never seen faith within her. Um so my neighbors took me to church. I went with them every single Sunday. And their diligence of waking, making sure I was awake on Sunday morning, taking me, those two years, I was really close with the Lord. Um, I whenever I was with my grandparents during the summers, they I'd go to church with them. But it really was those neighbors who made sure that I during the school year I was in church. And it wasn't until uh around the age of 14 I I I don't know how to explain the feeling I got when I first felt called to ministry. Uh, but I was sitting in an ag class in middle, uh well, junior high, it's now middle school, but um, and I felt like the Lord saying, You should be a pastor. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And I didn't really understand it at the time. But God knew what it meant. And in my opinion, the devil knew what it meant too, because probably within three weeks of that, I all of a sudden had this new friend who's not a believer. And for the next few years, with the influence of that friend and my choice to kind of go a different direction, I did not live for the Lord. Uh, did some things that I I regret today, um, drank. I mean, I I I'm beginning stages of high school and and doing that. I I kind of ran around, uh, did a bunch of different stuff that I shouldn't be doing. And it wasn't until my senior of high school that the Lord started bringing me back. And uh that was through my dad's second divorce. And I went back to help with him and my grandparents, started going to church with them regularly, and started feeling after I rededicated my life to Christ, and almost immediately I started feeling that call to ministry again. And uh really started, I I I ran off to go study electrical engineering, knew the entire time I was there, was not supposed to be there. Uh, but God used uh a few different individuals to make sure that I still felt that call and eventually dropped all my classes, went and worked in a factory, saved up money, and went to Bible college.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

What did your parents think about Stephen being involved in church, Stephen in, out, in out, Stephen wrestling with a call to ministry. What what were your parents thinking about all this if they ever shared anything with you about that?

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Very negative.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Really?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah. Um they didn't mind me going to church. That was that was fine with them. But ministry, no, they didn't want me doing that. They wanted me to be an electrical engineer. And uh would I've been able to do it? I don't know. Um I didn't have the support system at home. But when I talked to them about going to ministry, because before I graduated high school, right as I was about to, I said, I feel called, I need to go to Bible college. I I feel called a ministry, and both of them talked me out of doing it. And so um they saw ministry as a hard life, uh, not rewarding. They neither of them were living for the Lord, obviously, my mother not. Uh, my father, since his second divorce, had not lived for the Lord for a few years and just really um was against it.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Well, you know, that's a good place maybe to put a pen in this conversation because I do want to get into the calling part of your life and vocational expression of that calling. Um but I do want to ask one final question. And I've asked this with several of our guests over the year. Um, sometimes ask it in the first episode or the second episode, but I think this is a good place where you are today, reflecting back upon who you were as a 12, 13, 14-year-old boy, what would this Stephen tell that Stephen about life, about faith, about the Lord? What advice would you give that you think you needed most at that time in your life?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

If we're talking about right at the age of 12, when I gave my life to Christ, um, I'd probably speak to him of God is faithful and he's gonna take care of you. It's not always gonna be easy, uh, but trust in him. Probably the same message for the 14-year-old, but but I I'd have a different conversation with him because as 14, right after feeling called to ministry and all of a sudden starting to go a different direction. And maybe that was just some fear in that calling and not knowing what that was. But I I I'd have a long conversation about focus and separating my life from the life that it ended up being, of trying not to kind of go down that path and understanding that those that I place around me are going to influence my actions. Um God has blessed me in so many different ways. And sometimes I don't realize it till years later. I have a wonderful wife. Um when she's as we talked about before this, she's up helping out with her parents right now. She's been gone for two weeks. I miss her. I miss her every time she's not there at night. It's it's kind of boring in a house, to be honest with you. Um, I'd probably share with him, I was like, God has a wonderful woman for you who will stand by you and raising your kids. And uh ministry that you're going to be serving in will not always be easy, but you will see the results of God working through you.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

That's a good place to stop. Thank you, sir.