Following God’s call

Thomas Baldwin meets Steven McLeish, the new Scotland Head of Leprosy Mission.

“THE more I listened, the more I thought this has been my whole message, for those who are overlooked, who are marginalised, who are outcast. This is the whole mission that God has been placing in me.”

Steven McLeish is explaining how he came to be Scotland Head for Leprosy Mission. It may seem a surprising move for a man whose CV includes youth pastor, church planter, mental health and dyslexia advocate, and spoken word poet who has appeared on the BBC and STV. But as he tells it, it is perfectly consistent with a life spent following God’s call into unexpected places.

“The more I studied leprosy, the more it touched my heart, and I just felt God’s hand on it,” he says. “I’m just really honoured and privileged. It’s a unique job and I feel like I am wired to do it.”

Raised in a happy family in the east end of Glasgow and then Kilwinning in Ayrshire, Steven came to faith aged about 15 through a local youth group. “I thought, like a gym membership, I’ll try Jesus for a while and if I don’t like it I’ll cancel the membership,” he laughs. “But I’ve not gone back. I’ve seen enough of God to know that it’s real.”

Not that he initially considered ministry. “I wanted to be an actor, so that’s what I studied in college, and I toured around the UK with a production company for a year doing short films, and just trying to break into the industry.

“But then, when I finished that, I felt God calling me into ministry. So I had a bit of a choice to make because it wasn’t like I had any opportunities lined up. It was like ‘okay God, I believe you’re calling me to do this, so I will’.”

Moving back to Scotland, he began volunteering at his local church, doing everything from janitorial work to helping out with the youth group, and then got a job working as a youth worker/evangelist in a charity formed by a group of local churches. It was there, he says that he ‘found (his) niche’: “I saw God moving amazingly.”

It was during this period that he met his wife, Charis, through the youth group. “It was a really cool wedding,” he says. “We invited the whole youth group, but told them they had to wear Converse (trainers), so we’ve got pictures of the youth group all wearing Converse with their kilts and dresses.” They’ve been married 13 years, and have a three-year-old son.

It was also at this time that Steven began to get asked to speak to youth groups, and that he began to write his poetry. “I was like ‘OK God, I’ll try this’, and He just seemed to multiply and expand it. I didn’t really know what I was doing.” His first poetry video on TV was about dyslexia, which Steven had struggled with since childhood. “I thought I was stupid. But then I started watching TED Talks online – which is the ideal way to teach people with dyslexia – and they have so much about it which is a positive spin, all about how it can be a gift rather than a disadvantage, and that seemed to be my life story, with God using my weaknesses for His glory.

“I remember lying in bed at the time and writing this poem about dyslexia being a gift. And I thought I’ll film it and that’ll maybe get the message a bit out there. It was in the local paper, and then STV called and said can we put the video on.”

One of the things he is most proud of from his dyslexia advocacy is developing a dyslexia-friendly font for the Life.Church Bible App.

During this period, he also had to come to terms with his own mental health struggles. Two years after getting married he started to suffer anxiety and panic attacks, isolating himself from people and, at its worst, having suicidal thoughts. Charis persuaded him to talk to the GP, and ultimately he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“I felt my whole world was over, God would never use me, no-one would trust me. So I held it and didn’t tell anyone for at least a couple of years.

“The more I listened, the more I thought this has been my whole message, for those who are overlooked, who are marginalised, who are outcast. This is the whole mission that God has been placing in me.

“And then one night at church I was asked to speak. I had this personal poem that was all about bipolar and God’s grace, and I started to read. I was shaking, my head was down the whole time, and you could hear a pin drop in the room. And then I looked up, and people started to clap and cry. And at least 40 per cent of that church came up to me and said they were going through something similar, but they didn’t know they could talk about it in church.

“And that led to me travelling around the whole of Scotland sharing my story, really advocating for people to get the help they need.”

With demands for his services taking off, he and Charis started a ministry called MJF (Make Jesus Famous). They worked for a time with a Nashville-based ministry (although they stayed in Scotland), and were youth pastors for Destiny Church in Glasgow, expanding into helping churches throughout Scotland.

In 2019, they felt called to plant a church in Kilmarnock, which they launched in December that year and sustained through lockdown. “Our hope was to reach people who didn’t know Jesus, but God had other plans,” says Steven. “What we found was that we were getting a load of people who had been to church when they were young, but lost their faith. And what we found was that we were bringing them back in, so they were going back to their old churches, which was a great thing in terms of the Kingdom, that God used us in a small way to get people back.”

That church came to a natural end and there followed a period when Steven was ‘at a bit of a loss’. He took a job as a youth pastor/evangelist at what is now Irvine United Church of Scotland, but says he never though of it as a long-term thing. He even flirted with the idea of Ministry of Word and Sacrament, ‘but in a couple of months it was clear it wasn’t for me’.

That period came to an end with his appointment at Leprosy Mission, which he began in January. Much of the job involves speaking in churches, and he will incorporate his poetry into his talks, something he describes as ‘a real joy’. “I know it’s not going to be a bed of roses,” he says, “But I have this sense of absolute calling, that I’m definitely in the right place at the right time.” ¤

For more information on the Leprosy Mission, visit www.leprosymission.org.uk. Contact Steven on stevenm@lm.org.uk Steven’s spoken word videos for the BBC are at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06ys6lrand his book, The Dyslexic Poet, is available in paperback.