Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North & South Carolina, Tennessee) SIM (Serving in Mission)
With an overwhelming entry into redeeming grace in 1977, Steve and Ann Lutz began to experience the wonder of the Lord anchoring their unchurched lives and failed marriage upon Himself. In His all-encompassing redemption, He brought them through their residual heartaches of earlier divorce, added two more children, and steadily established each of their four children’s lives upon sovereign grace as well. Within the context of their home church in Augusta, GA, and its mentoring body life, Steve and Ann grew in example and in faith. Comprehending the Lord’s heart that they be dynamic world Christians, they quickly became involved in the support of individual missionaries through personal fellowship, giving, and prayer. Unsuspecting, 14 years later, the Lord caught them by total surprise once again, calling them out of suburban American life into cross-cultural missions, too! Finding all the grace needed, they were able to trust God for leaving their two oldest sons behind in college, and for loving their two young teens forward into known and unknown ministry with their parents in French-speaking Niger, West Africa.
In Niger, their two teens found every grace for a new life, Steve found the Lord’s vital equipping and gifting of him in helps and wisdom, for broad hands-on administrative duties—as SIM-Niger office manager and team leader of the Services Team, and Ann found the surprise gift of outreach to young African prostitutes, having only just left outreach to young women at an Augusta crisis pregnancy center. In their 2nd and 3rd subsequent terms, Ann moved into full-time evangelization of Muslim university students in the capital, at a pioneering off-campus student center. After 12 years of cross-cultural life and ministry, lymphoma brought Steve and Ann home, to medical care for Ann, to their four married children and seven grandchildren, and to new service…to ‘works which God prepared in advance that they should walk into them’ too.
As SIM’s regional directors for the southeastern States, they enjoy sharing with others the life of grace they’ve known. Wanting to see the Lord made renown in all the earth, they desire to be employed of Him in helping to motivate the hearts of many, that they, too, might find His joy and enabling passion for wider devotion and service, should He so lead.
Please reply to: steve.lutz@sim.org
