Pastor Steve Craft

I was born in Connersville, Indiana to a father who was an engineer for Philco/Ford and a mother who was a registered nurse. At the time of my birth my father was not a Christian. When I was two months old, I had a health scare that nearly cost me my life. It was at this time that my father made a commitment to the Lord that he would follow him if God would spare my life. Sometime after that my father gave his life to Jesus and later surrendered to become a pastor. Now being raised in a Christian home, I was saved at the age of six years old and have never doubted my salvation since then.

God used the example of my father and mother in the ministry to put a desire into me to respond to a call to ministry myself. At the age of 16, God very clearly called me to serve him in a full-time capacity.

After graduating from high school in 1980, I attended the Baptist Bible College in Springfield Missouri. During this time, I also met and married my wife Brenda. Since our marriage in 1982, God has blessed us with three wonderful children and currently nine grandkids!

After graduating from Baptist Bible College in 1984, Brenda and I both moved to Cincinnati Ohio where I served as an assistant pastor to two different churches for a total of 14 years. In 1998 God called us to plant the heritage Baptist Church in Lebanon Ohio. During our 12 years of ministry there, God took the 17 people that we started with and grew a church of nearly 600 members. It was at this time in my life that I also graduated from Liberty University with two different master’s degrees.

In 2010, I became the pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Maryville Tennessee.