Testimony + Call To Ministry: Steve Brown
Steve Brown
To the brothers and sisters at Vintage Faith Church,
With the upcoming ordination service on June 29th, I wanted to share with you the story of my testimony and my call to ministry. It is my hope and prayer that in this story you do not see myself glorified, but Christ and His work. I pray that you would see God’s preparation of leadership for His people, and the gift that that is (Ephesians 4:11).
I am grateful and humbled to this calling, it is an honor to shepherd you.
My journey of faith started a long long time ago, so long ago that I honestly don’t really remember exactly when I came to faith. I certainly don’t have a day or hour that I can look back and point at. I know I was young - very young, and I know that as far back as I can remember, my family and I - we were Christians.
I grew up in a Christian home, Sundays for us were worship service in the morning and family time in the afternoons. I went to schools in churches from Preschool through 3rd grade. Let’s just say, my sister and I spent a lot of time at Vacation Bible School and watched a lot of veggietales.
All jokes aside, my faith was formed early on by the world I found myself in on account of my parents. My grandparents on my father’s side were “church people,” through and through. So much so, that my grandfather had helped many churches get off the ground (including Cicero Center Baptist Church [The church that Vintage Faith merged with in 2014]).
It is my understanding that their faith was passed down to my father, and when he met my mother, my grandmother went out of her way to evangelize my mom.
While my father was and certainly is an example of someone with a faithful relationship to the Lord, my mother really was the one raising my sister and I in the faith in a “boots on the ground” sort of way.
My mom was always praying with us, reading us bible stories, encouraging us to participate in church events, and singing and listening to worship songs in the house and car.
On account of my profession of faith, I was baptized by Pastor Ken Salisbury at Calvary Baptist Church when I was a young boy.
This was the foundation that was laid, it was quite an amazing start! But it wasn’t until later that it felt like my faith became my own. Up until this point maybe it was a family affair.
Skipping ahead a few years, it would be around 2007 or 2008 when Vintage was meeting in the Cicero Sports Center. I had just started learning guitar and attending the church’s youth group, and I was given an opportunity to play bass guitar on the worship team.
Between the discipleship of our Youth Leader, Ben Tubbs, the bible studies we were having weekly, and seeking God in times of worship on Sunday mornings, it felt like God was doing something. God revealed Himself to me.
Though I already had faith, at this time, it was really truly becoming my own. Jesus for me was already my savior, but it felt like He had become my personal savior. No longer was Christianity just the faith of my mother and father, no more was Christ just a guy in the stories. Jesus had come out of the pages of scripture and had become mine.
Now, I wanted to pray, I wanted to spend time studying the Word, I wanted to praise Him in worship!
I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:3)
God had changed my desires (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Suddenly my old friends didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand them. At this point in time, I no longer feared what others thought on account of Christ.
Over time, around the time of the merger of Vintage Faith Church and Cicero Center Baptist Church (circa 2014), there was a need for someone to lead worship at the church. I admit, I wasn’t really interested because I felt like I should do it or because I belonged in that role, but I was willing to give it a go because there was a need. I mean, I had never sang in public before, and what do I know about public speaking? I’m not trained for this! But God taught me along the way that our offering of service to him is more about the heart than the quality (Mark 12:41-44).
Over the years, I guess I kinda started to get the hang of leading worship and serving in the church. Pastor Ken Salisbury (our planting/founding pastor) was a mentor for me through my teen and college years. As I was now in a leadership role in the church, we would meet weekly to discuss what was going on and work details out for services and new things we were going to do at Vintage.
Little did I know, Ken was slowly developing me as a leader. Later, I even ended up taking college courses from him as my professor in Theology and Hermeneutics.
I’ll never forget, I had confided in Ken around 2020 that after spending lots of time in prayer, it became clear to me that no work I could do on this earth would be significant enough.
The words of CT Studd had unknowingly been ringing in my ear:
“Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
In many ways, before this moment, I had had my dream job. I was an in-house audio engineer at a cushy, multi million dollar recording studio. I had been given opportunities to be creative, work on music and art all the time, and to meet and work with famous people.
In that industry, those jobs are few and far between, and in some ways, in that line of work (that I was really into), I had it made. But it became clear to me that that all really was folly, a chasing after the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:2,14).
I know that if I wanted to serve the Lord - the same Lord that saved me was deserving of service. If I were to work in any way that was of an eternal significance, it needed to be for my Lord Jesus Christ.
Although it was intimidating to leave the comfort of what I had been working towards throughout my twenties, I pivoted. I decided to go self employed with my day job so I could focus more on ministry. It was mentally stressful, but I knew that God was going to provide (Matthew 6:33).
At that point, I went into Elder Training. Although it was a little intimidating, especially at my age, I knew that long term this is where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing.
In August of 2020, I was voted in as an Elder of Vintage Faith Church.
Eventually Ken had moved on from Vintage Faith and along the way came, you guessed it, Anthony Valentine.
Anthony and I had both been mentored by Ken, but surprisingly had spent very little time together.
If you know Anthony (which I know you do), you know that he has a spiritual gift for raising the bar spiritually. Working with Anthony, he exposed me to new, more robust theological education and challenged me to be a stronger leader and Christian, like I know he has for many of you.
In the aftermath of Ken’s departure we did tons of study, between diving deeply into the scriptures and reading books as a resource, we came to the conclusion that an Elder and Pastor are indeed, based on God’s word, the same office (I will not get into that right now, that is another story).
This was different from our previous model for leadership in the church - pre 2020, an Elder at Vintage Faith was more like a board member on an advisory team.
But from that point on, it became clear that I was in this office already and although it wasn’t what I had originally signed up for necessarily, it was what I had aspired to be and do.
Maybe the office was less about fine tuning every little detail of day to day church operations and more about loving Christ’s people the way that he loves them (John 21:15–17).
Maybe the office was less about planning events and more about protecting the doctrines of the church (1 Timothy 3:15) - protecting the sheep from wolves (Acts 20:28–30).
Maybe the office was less about meetings and budgets and more about equipping and mobilizing God’s people (Ephesians 4:11-12).
So for the past 4 years, I have tried my absolute best to serve you, Vintage Faith, pastorally. How could I be a sheepdog, shepherding the flock of God (1 Peter 5:2-3) for Christ, the great shepherd?
In 2020, I was brought in as your Elder, maybe with a little less clarity of what that meant at the time, but this month - June 29th, 2025, you are ordaining me as a Pastor of Vintage Faith Church.
I am thankful for your recognition, love, and support in this and I look forward to years of ministry with you.
Conclusion
So mine isn’t really a story of a prodigal son, to some it might even be seen as a “weak” testimony. I never had any wild come to Jesus moment, I never had a seriously crazy past that turned into sainthood. But have you ever heard the term “Grace Story” to refer to one’s story of faith?
I think that mine is a “Grace Story” just as much as any. God has had Grace on me and shown himself to me in ways that I wouldn’t find on my own. He has taken me out of the darkness, into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). My story is a testament to God’s faithfulness through generations (Deuteronomy 7:9). When he makes promises, He is trustworthy:
Proverbs 22:6 (ESV): Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Praise God for the saving work that he has done in me, and I pray that this might inspire those of you especially with young children to continue raising your children in the faith and evangelizing them. Maybe theirs will be the same story.
All Glory Be To God
Pastor Steve Brown