Couple follows God’s call across the globe, from Hungary to Canada

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the fall 2025 issue of Southwestern News.

Steve and Susan Maxwell Booth grew up in South Carolina and met and fell in love in college. Both felt a call to missions and followed that calling to Budapest, Hungary, before settling in at a Canadian seminary where they prepare students to answer their own callings to share the Gospel.

Both Steve and Susan were raised in families of faith—she in Greenville, he farther south in Orangeburg. Susan says she accepted Christ at age 6 and felt the call to missions when she was 12.

Steve says his family was part of a conservative Methodist denomination. “I became Southern Baptist through my connection with Susan,” he adds with a smile. He recalls coming to faith around age 10 at a kids’ camp and growing in his faith until surrendering to Christ as a young teenager.

They met as freshmen at Clemson University at a Campus Crusade (now Cru) meeting. Steve later became the leader of the men’s group and Susan led the women’s group, so they frequently worked together on projects—including a mission trip to the Philippines during summer 1980.

“I think that’s where the Lord really touched my heart about the need around the world for the Gospel and my willingness to say, ‘Well, whatever, whenever, however,’” Steve recalls. “I was willing to follow the Lord and to serve Him.”

He also began to sense God leading them together as a couple during that time, but Susan sees it a bit differently.

“I probably fell in love first, and I knew it early on, maybe after a year or so. But it took him another year or so to come around,” she says, teasing her husband.

Susan had course credits from high school and graduated a semester early, going on to earn a Master of English Education degree from the University of Georgia in Athens in 1981. Steve took an extra semester before graduating, so they were apart for a year.

“I think that time of separation, that was a period where the Lord gave me clarity, saying, ‘This is the one I have chosen for you, and you better grab her quick, because you can’t do it without her,” Steve says as both he and Susan laugh.

A ‘calling’ to Southwestern

They married in 1982. Susan taught school for the first year of their marriage, while Steve, with a degree in engineering analysis, worked as an engineer. Both felt called to international missions, though, and began planning to attend seminary.

“I thought I would put Steve through seminary, like so many of the wives do, and just teach English in the high school to do that,” Susan says. Her parents had another suggestion.

Susan says they told her they’d been praying and thinking about it, noting that she had always wanted to go to seminary, “‘and it would be a shame to be there right on campus and miss out on that opportunity.’ So they wanted to be able to help us financially so that I could go, too. So of course we jumped at that opportunity.”

Since he didn’t come from a Southern Baptist background, Steve says, they had to decide together where they would go and what ministry organization they would join. “And I think the Lord opened the doors and made it clear for both of us that we wanted to go with the Foreign Mission Board [now the International Mission Board, or IMB] and go to seminary to prepare for that,” he says as Susan nods in agreement.

They decided to visit each of the Southern Baptist Convention seminaries and pray about which one they should attend. Southwestern was first on their list.

“Roy Fish’s evangelism class was one of the courses that we heard him speak in, and I think we came away with a sense that this is where God was calling us,” Steve says.

Both Steve and Susan pursued Master of Divinity (MDiv) degrees and had most of their classes together at Southwestern. Both had David Garland for Hebrew and Old Testament classes, Steve says, adding, “I think starting seminary, the beginning of the Bible, with a man of God like Dr. Garland, that was really, really a blessing.”

Bruce Corley and Justice Anderson also were influential, with Steve noting that he served as Corley’s teaching assistant while in the doctoral program, “and he became like a mentor to me.”

Pastoring, teaching in Weatherford

The couple attended Greenwood Baptist Church in Weatherford while both were in the MDiv program at Southwestern. Doyle Young, a professor of church history at the seminary, was the church’s pastor at that time.

“We moved to Weatherford, actually, just for me to be a pastoral intern as a volunteer with him, because I was beginning to sense that I needed some pastoral ministry experience before going to the mission field,” Steve says. When Young stepped down as pastor, Steve became interim pastor at the church.

“And then after they looked for about six months, they gave up and said, ‘Hey, would you be our pastor,’” he says with a grin.

Both Steve and Susan earned their MDiv degrees in 1986, and Steve started the Doctor of Philosophy program in New Testament the following semester. Susan gave birth to their two sons during their time in Weatherford.

One day, Steve got a call about teaching an Old Testament/New Testament survey course at Weatherford College. The new course was being sponsored by the junior college’s Baptist Student Union.

As a full-time PhD student and full-time pastor, Steve didn’t feel he had time for the role but realized it was something Susan could do.          

“They asked me to do it, and I loved it,” she says. “I just felt like, wow, I’ve discovered I love teaching, especially teaching Bible. … I did that for a few years while our kids were really small and Steve was still in school.”

Steve earned his PhD in 1991 and continued to pastor at Greenwood. Susan says they had been in contact with the IMB about where they would be sent, adding, “we didn’t have a real strong geographical calling and just thought, ‘We’ll wait and see what’s open when we get there.’”

A request from Hungary

After more than a year, a request came from Hungary.

Steve notes that “as the Iron Curtain had come down and relationships were opening back up in the east, the IMB … made contact with the Baptist Union in Hungary and they put in probably three requests initially. One was for a New Testament teacher [at the Hungarian Baptist Seminary in Budapest], and that’s the one we applied for and were appointed to go fill.” He taught at the seminary from 1992 to 1999.

Because their sons were young and in public school, Susan’s time was spent “just getting to know the other kids’ moms, and just getting along in the culture, getting to know our neighbors, and starting a Bible study with some of my friends. … And then I guess we both did some writing.”

Steve explains that “[As] part of the strategy for trying to help reach Eastern Europeans before missionaries could get in, our region developed a ‘theological education by extension’ program, and so we wrote curriculum for that.”

The couple thought they were settled in Hungary, but Steve says things were changing in Eastern Europe in the late 1990s. Strategies were changing and people were being moved around, “and we had a sense that probably we might not be able to stay doing what we were doing in Hungary,”

An email from Canada

Steve was surprised to receive an email from Richard Blackaby, whom he had known at Southwestern. Blackaby, who earned both an MDiv and a PhD from Southwestern, had returned to his native Canada and was serving as president of a new seminary, the Canadian Baptist Theological Seminary and College in the province of Alberta. He invited Steve and Susan to join him at the seminary, but they declined.

Steve and Blackaby stayed in touch, however, “and he’s pretty insistent. People tease Richard with the saying, ‘God loves you and Richard has a wonderful plan for your life,’” he says with a laugh.

Steve agreed to at least pray about it. After some time, he says, “there was a request on the IMB’s books for a teacher in Canada because of the special partnership that Southern Baptists had with Canada.” The IMB had been providing the faculty for the school since its inception in the mid-1980s and would assign career missionaries to fill any faculty vacancies. Today, when IMB personnel retire or resign, the school hires the replacements, Steve notes.

“One of the attractive things was, I could stay with the Mission Board, I could stay in theological education, and I wouldn’t have to learn another foreign language,” Steve quips. He originally served as a professor of New Testament and Greek and oversaw the school’s distance education program. Five years later, the academic dean resigned and recommended Steve as his replacement.

“And no one else was willing to take the job, I guess,” he says with a laugh. “I accepted that, and so I’ve had a kind of a dual role of leadership and administration, along with continuing to teach in the field of New Testament.”

Susan initially wasn’t sure what her role would be, calling it “definitely a step of faith” to leave, expressing concern about the call to missions she had held as a young girl as well as the great need in Eastern Europe. She and Steve prayed through it, however, and felt it was the direction the Lord was leading.

When they arrived, she says, Richard Blackaby asked if she would be willing to teach English at the college level. More courses were added to her teaching load over time, then a couple of years after Steve became the dean, he asked if she would be willing to teach the college evangelism course.

“I just loved it, and it was exciting to me to take students who maybe were hesitant or reluctant to share their faith and give them really practical tools,” she says.

Susan realized the seminary needed someone on campus who could fill that role full time instead of bringing someone in for a week at a time. She began praying, asking the Lord to raise up someone who could do that for the seminary.

“I think sometimes God says, ‘Okay, you’re the answer to your own prayer,’” she says with a laugh, adding that Steve asked her to consider getting a PhD so she could teach at the seminary level as well. She earned her PhD in applied theology from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2013.

Susan says she loves teaching students about the Bible and seeing the difference it makes in their lives and in the lives of the community around them. She adds that “to get to, in some sense, multiply yourself by teaching class after class of students that are out there on the front lines being used by God to share the Gospel is just a joy. An absolute joy.”

Steve says though he didn’t expect to become the academic dean when they came to the seminary, he has enjoyed the leadership role. He also took on the role of interim president when Richard Blackaby left in 2006. Rob Blackaby, Richard’s cousin and a fellow Southwesterner, has served as president since April 2007.

“When we came, [the seminary] was very much kind of in its embryonic stages and growing,” Steve says, recalling challenges of limited resources and seeing “God’s faithful provision, year by year, just overcome those challenges.”

For Susan, the greatest challenge has been being far away from their families. One son is teaching at a Christian university in Ohio and the other son teaches at a seminary in Belfast, Ireland.

“When you’ve lived that and taught them to live that way, then you follow God’s call wherever that leads, but that does mean that sometimes you’re far away from the people you love the most,” Susan says. “But it’s a gift to be able to give that back to the Lord.”

Steve and  Susan have four grandchildren—three boys in Ireland and a girl in Ohio. Their granddaughter and youngest grandson both were born this year, only a week apart.

“So that’s been fun, but, you know, they feel a long way away. But we’ve [been able] to visit with both of them, which has been sweet,” Susan says.

Both sons attended Union University when David S. Dockery was president there. Through their involvement with the school, Steve and Susan met and developed an enduring friendship with Dockery, now president of Southwestern Seminary.

“Susan and I were missionaries-in-residence on campus the year that the tornado hit the campus at Jackson, Tennessee, and we had the privilege of helping them recover and do disaster relief at Union and got to know Dr. Dockery and Lanese,” Steve says.

Susan adds that they have enjoyed returning to the Southwestern campus during the last few years and are excited about the trajectory of the seminary under Dockery’s leadership.

Dockery expressed his own admiration for the couple, saying, “What a joy it has been over the years to observe the ministries of Steve and Susan Booth!” He notes they were sources of encouragement to many students, staff, and faculty in their roles at Union University.

“I have also been privileged to observe their important leadership and teaching roles at Canadian Baptist Seminary on the occasions that I have spoken on that campus,” Dockery adds. “I have eaten meals in their home and have watched their deep investment in the lives of students and colleagues. I have also worked with them as partners in publishing projects. We celebrate being able to call them ‘Southwesterners,’ and we offer thanks to God for their ongoing friendship to and support for Southwestern, as well as for the many ways they make a difference in the work of God’s Kingdom.”

Looking back, Susan says they owe it all to God.

“I would just say, through all of it, the Lord has been so faithful,” she says. “He’s the one that’s kept us and provided opportunities. And yeah, we’re just very grateful. … it’s amazing that we get to do what we do and that we get to do it together. [It’s] just always been such a blessing, and Southwestern was pivotal.”