Mike Couick
Over this past year, I’ve been writing on the theme of “shepherds in a world of change,” profiling people who help others through the challenges in life. Considering how important they are to the fabric of our society, I wanted to understand more about what, exactly, makes someone become a shepherd.
The work of shepherding others is never easy. But the desire to help is a uniquely human trait that has a positive impact on the receiver, and the giver. Social scientists have noted that human nature is generally hardwired for kindness and empathy. In order to survive, people are designed to cooperate and share knowledge in community with one another. Sometimes, however, life circumstances deaden those impulses and lead people to look out only for their own survival.
Steve Ware has lived on both sides of the equation. As the founder of River’s Edge Retreat, Steve works to provide enrichment programs and camps for underserved youth in the Midlands. As a child, however, Steve went through 30 different foster homes—including 14 homes in one year—before he ended up, at the age of 14, in the Greenville Rescue Mission.
“I was scared. Lonely. I was at the end of the rope, holding onto the knot, trying to figure out where I was going to land,” he says. He held on there for six months, living among grown homeless men until a coach and youth pastor noticed him, believed in him, mentored him, and got him into a good school.
As Steve sees it: “One person made a difference in my life. One person stepped in where others had failed.”
Steve has ultimately followed that example, working, in turn, to mentor the next generation. But his path to becoming a shepherd was not a straight or simple one.
After his experience with homelessness, Steve’s story took a happier turn. He settled into a new family home, found academic success, and went to college on a basketball scholarship. After graduating, Steve discovered a natural talent for business. At one point, he owned three car dealerships, a mortgage company, a clothing store and commercial real estate holding company. He set a personal goal to become a millionaire by age 30, missing the mark by only one year.
“My whole identity was wrapped around the things I owned,” explains Steve. “I had a big, fancy house that looked like Al Capone lived there. I was making $80,000 a month, but I was miserable. Everything was about the next conquest. If there was an apple in the middle of the table, my response for most of my life was: ‘If I don’t grab that apple, you’re going to get it, so I have to get it.’”
Anxiety-ridden despite his success, Steve’s next step was a surprising one. In 2008, he purchased the Gardendale Tennis and Swim Club just outside of Columbia, renovated it and reopened the property in 2010 as a nonprofit summer camp called River’s Edge Retreat.
“When I saw that piece of property, I thought, ‘Maybe if I take my eyes off myself and start helping other people, maybe then I’ll become healthy.’ And that’s exactly what happened,” Steve says. “When you start doing good, then you run into other people who are doing good and they inspire you.”
“I want to live with the mindset of ‘Let me push that apple to you and God will provide for me—as he always does.’ So now my first response is not to grab the apple. My first response is to help feed other people’s kids, knowing God will make sure there’s still a piece for me and my family,” he says.
“Ultimately, I want to help kids like me know there are people who genuinely care about them and that they don’t have to rely on the outward surface stuff for a good life.”
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For more on Steve Ware and his work at River’s Edge Retreat, visit riversedgeretreat.org.