Spotlight: Steve Clifford - With Like Minds & a Common Heart
Steve and his wife Dana have ministered in the Bay Area for thirty years, ten years at Santa Cruz Bible Church and then at Westgate Church, but ministry was not on the radar for this former high school teacher and football coach; “The last thing Dana and I thought was that we’d be working at a church,” Steve recalls. “I had a Master’s in education and thought I’d work in schools for the rest of my life, but when I turned thirty, we sensed that God was asking us to do something else.”
It wasn’t clear what that something else would be until a friend asked Steve to help him with a church in their native Texas. “I didn’t go to church until I was 23,” says Steve. “I’m not really a typical church person, but I told my buddy we’d help him for a couple of years and that was 34 years ago.”
When the Cliffords moved to San Jose it was not yet the hub of technology it is today, but the former farming community was quickly growing and transforming. “I love doing ministry here. With the diversity and the challenge of the cultural mindset, it’s a really fun place to be.”
Building relationships in Silicon Valley
San Jose is the 10th largest city in the U.S. with a population of just over one million people. “It’s very transient here. People come in, work hard, accomplish something, make money, and then leave. That means we work hard to build relationships quickly. The on-ramp for people to get to know us is pretty short.”
Steve realized soon after arriving in 2001 that one church could not make a major impact alone.
“No one church is really going to change the city. There are too many issues, too many people to reach, and too much to do.”
Even though it was challenging, Steve began building a network of pastors. “Very early on I started taking a lunch hour a week to meet with the pastors of other churches. After you do that for a while you find that there’s a network.”
Over the years Steve has built out the network, joining with other local churches on such initiatives as Beautiful Day, an annual service project to Santa Clara County. “The church in Silicon Valley is never going to conform to where we look alike; nor should we. But there can be amazing unity around the Good News about Jesus.”
Approximately sixty pastors are now members of the South Bay Network. After fourteen months of weekly Zoom calls, the group is starting to meet in person monthly once again. “We use a simple outline every time we gather and answer the questions: what are we learning? Where are we struggling? How can we pray?”
Scaling up through TBC
In addition to leading the South Bay Pastors Network, Steve is a TBC founding Board member. “I could barely get my hands around Santa Clara County, but TBC wanted to bring the churches together on a Bay Area scale. That’s a beautiful thing I’d been invited to be part of.”
As one of the two pastors on the Board, Steve is in a unique role; “I serve as a liaison to represent the thoughts and concerns of the local church.”
Passing on 20 years of lessons learned
“I would like to keep doing more of what I get the awesome privilege of doing now,” says Steve. “I’ve endured 20 years in the Bay area. Maybe some of the things I’ve learned along the way I can share with other folks here.
“If there’s a willingness to share the burden with people of like mind and common heart, we could shock the Bay Area out of complacency. The deep conviction that inspires me and fills me with the courage and motivation to keep moving is my deep belief that God is crazy in love with every single person in the Bay Area.”