Phifer, Steve: - Steve Phifer is a third generation Assemblies of God minister with family roots going back to the founding decade of the Pentecostal movement. At age 15, he felt a call to a life in music and at age 17 received a call to preach. He abandoned a life in music and made plans to train to be a pastor. The Lord had other plans for him. Through miraculous circumstances and through open and closed doors, Steve decided that both calls were valid and he accepted music scholarships at Arkansas A&M College in the fall of 1967. In the summer of 1968, he applied for and received his initial ministerial recognition with the Arkansas Assemblies of God. After graduation with a BME in June of 1971, he accepted a band director position at his hometown high school. Steve and his parents also began a traveling preaching and singing ministry as, "The Phifers." It was through this ministry that Steve met Freeda Woolf, a music major at the University of Central Arkansas. They married in June of 1974 and began full time ministry in June of 1975. They moved quickly up the ranks (Camden, North Little Rock) of leadership in church music in Arkansas and in Kansas. In 1980, after 9 years of teaching and music ministry leadership, Steve became the principle worship leader for Bethel Life Center in Wichita, KS. While serving there, Steve began work on a Masters of Music Education at Wichita State University. In 1984 they moved to Winston-Salem to served as Worship Pastor at First Assembly of God in that city. He finished his masters in 1986 and found himself deep in the biblical study of Worship. That work eventually became his book, "Worship that Pleases God: the Passion and Reason of True Worship." His work in his 30s and early 40s consumed most of his creative energy because of the tremendous move of God at that church. In 1993, Steve was tapped as Field Representative for Worship Arts for the Assemblies of God and in 1995 he answered the call to join the music faculty of Southeastern Assemblies of God College in Lakeland, FL. Soon, he felt the call back into local church leadership for another 10 years. He earned the Doctor of Worship Studies degree from The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies in 2004. He was the first Classical Pentecostal to finish this degree. In 2008, 40 years after becoming a credential minister, Steve retired from church staff ministry to write and teach biblical concepts of worship and worship leading. He formed The Worship Renewal