A Life Well Lived: DEL STEELE

Hi Friends --I am both saddened yet joyful this morning as I type...I just received word through an email(mass email)from my former pastor in Texas of a beloved church member, and long time elder who yesterday went home to be with Jesus:

Dear church family,

Our beloved prayer warrior and chairman of our elders, Del Steele, went home to his Lord on Wednesday around midday. He was one week shy of his 76th birthday.

I loved this man. For years before I came to pastor here, he and a few others would gather in a room at our Highland Village campus and pray for God to do a mighty work in the life of the church. The goodness and favor of God that we enjoy now can be directly attributed to this man's prayers. He never stopped praying, and he never stopped believing that God would do a great work here. I know he's in a much, much greater place now, but I will miss Del Steele.

If you knew him, you knew his gentleness and his unselfishness. He often told me he didn't quite like the way we did music, that it was too loud and that he would prefer more of the old hymns. But, he said, as long as people's lives are being changed and as long as people are falling in love with Jesus and getting baptized, he would put up with any kind of music.

And in true Del fashion, he requested that instead of flowers, donations be given to the church he loved for the Flower Mound Expansion purpose.

I thought it was fitting that the Lord took him home on a Wednesday, which traditionally has been a day of prayer for churches. In recent months and days, Del suffered painfully from the cancer he was stricken with, but now the prayer warrior has finally gone home to rest and to praise our mighty King.

Goodbye Del. We'll see you soon, brother.


Matt Chandler
Lead Pastor


Though I did not know this man very well, only through passing a few times, I definitely knew of his service and sacrifice that he made toward our beloved church home...to which I was a grateful recipient. Many a day I would have to run by the church for this or that, and I would walk into the sanctuary and find that man on his face beseeching our Sweet Lord...that image of Him praying will be ingrained in my memory, I hope for eternity. They don't make men like Del Steele these days...A man who put others needs and preferences before his own for the sake of the GREATER good. This Man truly got it! What an example he was to me and to all of us of a life well lived through joy,pain,suffering,health,sickness he did it ALL to the GLORY of God! I am thankful to Christ for DEL because I KNOW that if it were not for the blood,sweat and tears of him and others like him --I WOULD NOT know JESUS and LOVE Him like I do today. I wanted to share an excerpt from Dr. Piper when he had a dear saint pass on:

"Psalm 116:15, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Another meaning of the Hebrew word behind "precious" is "costly." Both are true. To us, so costly. To God, so precious."

This morning as I think of Del I imagine him face down,as I first encountered him, praising and kissing His beloved SAVIOUR's feet saying "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME"

Thanks Del for showing us first hand that ""To live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).

You will be missed.