It has been Pastor Steve’s joy to serve as Bethel Church’s senior pastor since 1997. His primary responsibilities are teaching at our weekend services, shepherding the people, leading the staff, serving as an Elder, and providing overall vision for the church.
Steve’s passions include expository preaching, the doctrines of grace, helping the church engage its culture, and the beauty of God. He often speaks in contexts outside Bethel and enjoys traveling as a part of Bethel’s global mission efforts.
In addition to weekends at Bethel, Steve’s teaching ministry can be heard through Bethel’s media ministry The Journey. This program airs on Moody Radio FM Chicago with a half hour program each Sunday morning at 11:00. A short format can also be heard on Moody radio each weekday morning.
Steve released his first authored book in 2012 entitled Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything.
A graduate of Cornerstone University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, Steve’s interests include sports of all kinds, rooting for University of Iowa teams, books, and travel. You are likely to run into him at a golf course near you.
After serving as a single pastor for many years, Steve was married to Jennifer in August of 2012. They rejoiced at the birth of their daughters Kiralee in 2013 and Madeline in 2015. The DeWitts live in Crown Point.
Steve it was good to finally meet you and put a name with the face.
Hey there! We found your blog and have been enjoying reading some of the latest posts and looking at pictures. Aidan was impressed with the fish picture of you with your Dad. He wants to know how big the fish is and what kind it is? Aidan also wanted to tell you that he caught a 28″ Northern at the cabin last week. He reeled it in all by himself. We will try to post pictures on Facebook soon. Can’t wait to make the strawberry pie but it would be more fun eating it with you and the Sorcis again. 🙂
I was looking for a sermon on redemption and by God’s grace I come across yours. It was powerful and groly be to God who gave it to you. Your comparison and aplication of Jesus christ and Boaz is wonderful. I will be sharing on redemption next sunday but one at our chuch christian chuch international muruka(kenya)
Love Jesus and want to live the life of Jesus.
You are an amazing Pastor!!!!
Northwest Indiana is lucky to have you.
Hey there! We found your blog and have been enjoying reading some of the latest posts and looking at pictures. Aidan was impressed with the fish picture of you with your Dad. He wants to know how big the fish is and what kind it is? Aidan also wanted to tell you that he caught a 28″ Northern at the cabin last week. He reeled it in all by himself. We will try to post pictures on Facebook soon. Can’t wait to make the strawberry pie but it would be more fun eating it with you and the Sorcis again.
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Dear Paster Steve,
Hope you are doing well. God Bless you!
Dear Pastor Steve, Your messages have truly blessed my self and my family. I always look forward with excitement and joy to hear more and I can’t help but get excited in my relationship with the Lord. Thank you
Hey there! We found your blog and have been enjoying reading some of the latest posts and looking at pictures. Aidan was impressed with the fish picture of you with your Dad. He wants to know how big the fish is and what kind it is? Aidan also wanted to tell you that he caught a 28″ Northern at the cabin last week. He reeled it in all by himself. We will try to post pictures on Facebook soon. Can’t wait to make the strawberry pie but it would be more fun eating it with you and the Sorcis again. +1
+1
STEVE,
HARD TO BELIEVE ALL THESE YEARS HAVE GONE BY. EVERYTHING IS WELL HERE.
REMEMBER THE TIME YOU TOOK MY GIRLS TO THE HOLY LAND? YOU ARE A SPECIAL MAN, A GREAT PASTOR AND MY FRIEND. MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS YOU AND BETHEL FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.
DENNIS
Praise God for knowing a man of God who is firm in his faith, standing in what he believes God wants for him. I have seen one of your posts which really encouraged me, your belief about leading the church and blessed singleness is awesome! May God continue to bless the ministry which He has given you!:-)
WHAT a delight to listen to your interview tonight via the link from Desiring God’s blog, the interview about your book Eyes Wide Open. Have ordered it and cannot wait to read it. What you write describes in part my conversion in 2005. I was depressed for 24 years from my early 30s on, chemically so and off and on taking Zoloft. I was apart from God (the ultimate definition of depression), carrying the burden of shame and guilt of 53 years of sin, carrying other burdens like the sudden death of a brother at 23 years of age and the lost of a child in the womb at 5 months, with no Savior to lean on in those difficult times nor to give over my sin and burdens to, nearly non-functional in those last five years, barely with a range of emotion, things looked gray to me. And then that glorious morning that I came into God’s marvelous Light, on January 8, 2005, sitting in one of the bedrooms of my home, alone except with the Lord’s Spirit and with the word of God open to the book of James, and God brought me to Himself that morning, transferred out of the realm of darkness into the Kingdom of His Beloved Son. MANY things I understood that morning with my new vision in Christ… like WHY I needed a Savior (James is helpful in understanding sin and that I was a sinner). Previously believing the stories in the Bible were to illustrate points only (not that the the word of God was inerrant, certainly not believing God had parted the Red Sea or that Jonah had been in the belly of a fish). Then suddenly I knew that morning that the Bible was God’s word from “In the beginning God” to “Come, Lord Jesus, come!” Previously a feminist, pro-choice, and then changed by God to one who knew that life began at conception and no one had the right to take that life from the womb but God Himself. The darkness of my depression was GONE! Filled with the love, hope, joy, peace, and light of Christ!
And among other things that radically changed that day, I remember looking out the window, and suddenly thinking I’m seeing in Technicolor. EVERYTHING looked brighter and more beautiful through my new lens in Christ. The greens of the evergreen trees were greener, the blue of the sky was bluer, everything was more glorious. And the full range of my emotions were restored. I could laugh and cry and rejoice and be glad. There was a healing that day, the Sun of Righteousness had risen with healing in His wings and I was indeed skipping about like a calf in the stall. Healed on many levels, certainly spiritually, no longer dead in my trespasses and sins, the burden of so many years of sin lifted, alive in Christ, but also healing emotionally and physically. Unable to sleep more than a few hours a night withoutr Ambien and under the care of a sleep specialist for 11 years for insomnia, I suddenly had the peace that surpasses ALL understanding in Christ. Slept like a log that night, in perfect rest in the Savior. It was a new birth in Christ. And the beauty of the world astounded me. “This is our Father’s world: I rest me in the thought, of rocks and trees of skies and seas, His hands the wonders wrought!”
This world is beautiful because He is beautiful. And one must have the eyes of Christ to see that more clearly. Can’t wait to read your book and rejoice in the truth that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are lovely beyond our wildest imagination.
Steve,
I just listened to your podcast interview with the folks over at Desiring God. I was reading Jonathan Edwards’ “Religious Affections” a few years ago and found myself stumbling on a thorough understanding of “the beauty of Christ”.
Intellectually, I understand it. But this “beauty of Christ” doesn’t impact my heart like a beautiful sunset over the Grand Canyon might. I’m aware that this is my loss, and I intend to purchase your book to see if your insights might point me in the right direction.
In the “for what it’s worth” department, we publish what just might be the preeminent online travel resource for the baby boomer traveler. We love travel and the baby boomer traveling audience is 80 million strong.
With that responsibility, I’ve been asking God, “how might I best display your glory to the world through our Roaming Boomer efforts?”
We’re clearly showing, as you say, the beauty of the reflecting moon, but we desire to find an authentic way, in a secular setting, to help people understand that the moon is beautiful because of the source: the sun. Or, more properly, the Son.
You might also be interested in a blog I was writing in a few years ago (www.boomerinthepew.com), as we were walking through the dark days of “early retirement” and the stock market crash of 2008.
I’ll read your book and pop back and let you know what I’ve learned. Thanks!
[…] Steve Dewitt, author of the Challies recommended, Eyes Wide Open, with some excellent thoughts on propitiation. He concludes: […]