Steven's Story

I’m Steven, and this company started in a mountain cabin.

My family and I were living at the family cabin, working out whether we wanted to stay there for good or move somewhere new for the next chapter of our lives. We loved how God surrounded us with His creation up there — you could feel Him in every season and every storm. And I’d spent weeks turning an idea over and over: a premium coffee company that existed to fund the Gospel and say so out loud, rather than just move bags of beans. I prayed about it there. I hiked the trails looking for signs. I wasn’t sure I was the man for the job, and I said so, more than once.

Then a tree came down.

It was a big one and it came through the cabin, close enough that I still think about how close. It destroyed a great deal. It didn’t destroy us. And what kept running through my head afterward was the hymn I’d been singing to myself all season without quite knowing why:

After that afternoon, the name wasn’t a decision anymore. It was just the truth, and I only had to write it down.

Not long after, I had a minor stroke. Minor is the word they use; there is nothing minor about it when you’re the one finding your way back. Recovery was slow, and my family and my God carried me through every part of it — the same family and the same God that carry this company now. I’ve come to believe grace usually arrives wearing the face of somebody who loves you, and sometimes the face of a Good Samaritan you never see again.

That cabin taught me things I could not have learned any other way. That life turns in an instant, and that it is shorter than any of us plan for. That grace holds you up when you have nothing left of your own to stand on. That it can’t be earned — you can’t work your way up to it, and Ephesians 2:8–9 says so plainly: it is a gift, never a wage. And that it runs deeper than anything a man has done wrong, which is the part I needed most.

We’ve moved into Knoxville now, and we’re staying. East Tennessee is the right place to build something like this: mountain country, church country, the kind of place where people still hold the door, care about their neighbors, and look you in the eye. Every bag we sell is sealed, prayed over, and packed by hand right here. Our family has always had a heart for kids in distressed situations, and that has become the mission of this company. This Tennessee community has a great deal to do with why.

I know what a bag of coffee is. It isn’t much. But it’s bought and sold every single morning in this country, and if a portion of that can go to a child who has nobody, then the morning cup is doing more than waking somebody up.

Thank you for being part of it. Pouring a cup can lift somebody up. So slow down, love Jesus, love your family, love your neighbor, and let’s tell the Good News and help kids together.

— Steven Fowler, founder · Amazing Grace Coffee Co. · Knoxville, Tennessee