Texas Pastor Killed While Helping Stranded Driver

Southern Baptist leaders mourn the sudden death of the 38-year-old church planter.

John Powell, a church planter outside Houston and a former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary staff member, was killed in a highway accident over the weekend. He was helping a driver who had stopped in traffic.

The Houston Chronicle reported that in Powell’s final sermon to his congregation, Emmanuel Baptist Church in New Caney, Texas, he “preached on Psalm 72 and prayed that ‘in the poor man’s distress, Christians might be there.’”

Less than two weeks later, on Saturday, July 18, Powell and another man pulled over to assist a car that had caught fire after hitting a truck. Powell, 38, was struck by a semi and killed, according to a report from the Sherman, Texas, police department. The driver of the car that was on fire survived.

News of Powell’s death was shared on social media by Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore was a friend and former professor of Powell’s.

“I am shocked and shaken and grieving this morning, beyond what I can say,” Moore wrote on Twitter. “My former student John Powell was killed last night, hit by an eighteen wheeler while helping stranded motorists off of a highway.”

Nathan Lino, one of Powell's closest friends in the ministry and the pastor of Northeast Houston Baptist Church, which sponsors Powell's church plant, told Baptist Press that “planting a church is extraordinarily difficult, and so I got to see John under enormous stress and at all times he wanted to know and do the will of Christ. He loved the local church. As much as John loved to preach, and he did, he ...