• ‘Calling refreshed’ for new pastor of local church
By Julie Dockstader Heaps SVI Media
The Reverend Stephen J. Bibb was happy in retirement. In fact, he’d already retired twice. “Rev. Steve” — as he prefers to be called — was content living in Denver with his wife, The Reverend Linda Bibb. Together, they “ministered” where they lived and frequently saw their six children, 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
They were, in Rev. Steve’s words, “living retired, but I couldn’t figure [retirement] out,” he said, chuckling.
In fact, as he describes it, “It was one of those things where God’s hand is in this.”
It was early 2023, and they were on vacation visiting a United Methodist Church in a small community on the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “The pastor there preached on Lazarus coming out [of the tomb]. It just went ‘pow,’” Rev. Steve recalled, pointing his hand at his heart. “The expression I used was, ‘My calling was being refreshed.’”
How a minister in Colorado, having spiritual enlightenment in New England, came to serve at the pulpit of a church in Star Valley is another story — one that SVI Media is telling.
This reporter met last month with the Rev. Steve and his wife, Linda, also an ordained pastor, to learn how God’s hand directed their lives — how they chose Star Valley United Church from pastoral possibilities from Massachusetts to Montana. As Rev. Steve puts it: “God has had His hand in my life for a long time. Those are the little things now that I tell people, ‘Well, God’s hand is in it.’”
Seventy-nine years old, Rev. Steve is 6-foot-2, with thick white hair and a prophetic bearing. His low, booming voice carries well over the pulpit of the rock-faced, steepled church at 606 North Main in Thayne that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. His mother once said of her two sons — one a minister who married a minister and the other a teacher who married a teacher — “I got two teachers and two preachers, so I must have done something okay.”
Well, Nip Bibb and her husband, Lyle, did more than okay. Raising their two sons, Dave and Stephen, in Peoria, Illinois, they took the family each week to worship services at the Madison Avenue Methodist Church. “We went to Sunday School every Sunday and church in a little church that was about a block away from our house. My dad was the chair of the trustees for years, and my mother was on every committee there was. She was lifetime president of the UMW (United Methodist Women).
“They helped me understand that church was just a part of life. It was what we did, not just on Sunday. It was how we lived,” Rev. Steve related.
For the young man who was in school plays and on the speech and basketball teams, that upbringing had an early impact. One evening, he and his best friend, Nick, headed to a park where other youth were gathering for a party. But when they drove up, they could see “kids were opening up the trunks and getting out their beer and so forth. We looked around and said, ‘This is not what we want to do.’”
Rev. Steve then laughed as he described the police arriving as he and his friend exited the park.
However, as to his own faith in God, “I never did have a lightning bolt experience.” His faith was just part of who he was. So, after high school, he enrolled in a summer course at Illinois Wesleyan University to become a licensed local “lay” preacher. But he didn’t start down the seminary path until much later.
“I went to Western Illinois University. I didn’t want to go to a church school. I wanted to test my resolve, my understanding of myself becoming a pastor.”
“In my freshman year, I started a minor in philosophy,” he recalled. “None of the great philosophers could say that there wasn’t a God. It, in fact, strengthened my understanding of God. I could not look at the world around me and say, ‘This was an accident,’ and I still can’t.”
However, in his junior year, Rev. Steve married his first wife and afterward, they started a family. He was also drafted into the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York. He later worked for 17 years in radio in Quincy, Illinois. During this time, he and his first wife divorced. She later passed away, and he had full custody of their five children.
It was about then, Rev. Steve decided to become, as he calls it, “an informed ecclesiastic.” In 1987, he was accepted into the seminary at the University of Dubuque in Iowa. He was ordained in the United Methodist Church in 1992.
It was also there he met a young woman in a church history class. “There’s a story to this,” he told SVI, smiling. He got to class early and picked a seat, setting his books on the seat next to him. “This beautiful woman came and stood in the door and was looking for a place to sit, so I kind of went [making the motion of moving his books].”
They quickly developed a habit of sitting next to one another and were soon married, combining a family of six.
Over the years, Rev. Steve has pastored at some 18 churches — many as an interim minister resolving conflicts and unifying congregations. Sometimes, he and Rev. Linda “co-pastored.” He first retired in 2011 and she in 2012. They have three children living in Iowa, two in California and one in Colorado. Rev. Steve and Rev. Linda were living back in Denver.
Twice, they came out of retirement and twice returned. Then, after the “Lazarus, Come Out” experience at Cape Cod, they found the Star Valley United Church in need of a pastor and drove out to Star Valley. They’ve been pastoring here, with Rev. Steve as the sitting minister for the combined Lutheran/Presbyterian congregation, for about six months. A trained musician and opera singer — having performed in Germany and France — Rev. Linda adds her talents to the music ministry.
Rev. Steve’s ministering philosophy is simple. “Love is the guiding principle. And I take seriously that I’m supposed to love everybody. I do it to the best of my ability, which is how we love God, too, to the best of our ability.”
Editors Note: Rev. Steve preaches weekly at the regular Sunday morning service at 10:30 a.m. Services are also online at https://www.facebook.com/
