New Caney pastor killed helping motorist
In what would be his final sermon, John Powell preached on Psalm 72 and prayed that “in the poor man’s distress, Christians might be there.”
“How,” he asked his small New Caney congregation, “could we pray that God would have compassion on those that need it while not having compassion on them ourselves? It would be like praying for someone who got robbed and beaten and thrown into a ditch alive while we pass on our way to wherever we’re going.”
He died 13 days later, having refused to pass by the distressed en route to where he was going.
According to police, Powell and a friend were driving on a stretch of highway in Sherman in North Texas on Saturday night when they came upon a car that had been in a small wreck and was catching fire. Powell, a well-known handyman who was always prepared for worst-case scenarios, immediately pulled over, grabbed his safety kit and went to help.
Soon after, the brakes of an ap
proaching semitruck stalled and, with the vehicle hurtling toward the group, Powell pushed at least one person out of the way, likely saving their life. He died at the scene and was roughly the 1,840th person to be killed on Texas highways this year. Police said the incident remains under investigation.
Powell was 38. He had four children with his wife, Katherine, whom he married in 2006. He’d been pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in New Caney since 2017.
His death sent shock waves through the Southern Baptist Convention.
“John Powell died exactly how he lived: sacrificing himself for the sake of others, just like Jesus called us to do,” said Phillip Bethancourt, pastor of Central Church in Bryan.
The way he died was “absolutely devastating, but absolutely unsurprising to anyone who knew and loved him,” said Daniel Patterson, vice president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Other well-known SBC figures also reflected on his life and ministry and, as of Monday afternoon, a GoFundMe for his family had raised more than $130,000.
Russell Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called him “one of the best men I’ve ever known.”
Albert Mohler, the longtime president of Southern Seminary, called Powell “bright, passionate, warmhearted.”
“It is impossible to imagine the heartbreak of this young family in the death of their husband and father and of this church in losing their pastor,” Mohler wrote on Twitter. “But John Powell loved Christ, preached Christ, trusted Christ. Our hearts break for them. This is why we sing that all we have is Christ.”
‘Remarkably gifted’
Powell grew up in Kansas City, Mo. He realized he wanted to be a minister at 14 and eventually enrolled at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
Patterson was a 20-yearold newcomer to the school and knew almost no one when the two met. He still remembers watching Powell lead worship at a homeless shelter and the time he helped repair a roof for a widow from their church.
“John had the capacity to make nothing about himself,” Patterson said. “He was always interested in other people and was a remarkably gifted guy who drew no
attention to himself. I’ve never known a person quite like him.”
Patterson and others said that Powell had the charisma and connections to do anything after graduation, including land a coveted job at one of the faith group’s entities or seminaries.
Instead, in 2012, he was called to pastor a Baptist church in the tiny, West Texas town of Hamlin.
It was a difficult assignment that almost drove him out of ministry, Powell would later say. He used it as a learning opportunity.
“My paradigm for success has had to become sanctified,” Powell said in 2015. “I had to realize success was not more people, it may mean less people. Success was not more money, it may mean less money . ... Success is faithfulness, even when it’s hard, even when you want to give up.”
In 2016, he moved his family to New Caney in Montgomery County to plant a church on behalf of Northeast Houston Baptist Church.
That, too, was a difficult task — establishing new churches is hard enough on its own. Doing so as a relative stranger in a small town is even tougher.
Yet Powell remained committed to Emmanuel Baptist Church and its 140 or so members.
“He could have probably been very successful anywhere he wanted to be, but he felt called by God to be a pastor and, in his mind, there is a shortage of real gospel-centered churches here,” said Christian Abernatha, associate pastor at Emmanuel. “He was laserfocused.”
Laying out a mission
On Sunday, as news of his death spread across the Southern Baptist world, the church had its first in-person meeting since COVID-19 shut down most of Texas.
The virus had already strained the church’s tight budget, and Abernatha said it would be “crippling” for most churches to lose their pastor amid so much uncertainty. But he’s confident that the church will recover.
“There is a lot of grief, frustration, confusion,” he said. “But Pastor John laid out the vision for what this church was supposed to be, and (members) know what that mission is.”
Powell would have wanted that work to continue. He said as much during his final sermon.
“As we pray for perfect justice, we work for that perfect justice,” he said. “As we long for righteous rulers and the flourishing of the righteous, we work toward righteous rulers and the flourishing of the righteous.
“And we bring those who need refuge under the protective wings of Christ.”