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Bringing her Praise and Worship team to minister in a prison or stockade is serious business to Elizabeth Sterbens.  Security issues, procedures, even clothing selection are critical.  As she briefed her team members and crew, it was clear, however, that the Minister of Worship and Arts had concerns beyond even those weighty matters.

“These people [at the jail] know me, I put people in there. It’s my reputation that’s on the line,” she said.

Investigator Beth Sterbens, of the Florida State Attorney General’s office, knows how it feels to walk the fine line required to succeed in both a secular career and a significant ministry commitment.  When asked to teach a gun-handling course to State Attorneys whose lives had been threatened, Beth (a certified firearms instructor) worried about how it would affect her responsibilities as choir director.

When she’s not investigating a crime scene or teaching at the police academy, Beth can be found on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings leading a Praise and Worship team—a musical ensemble, a choir, and a five-piece band—at 500-member Covenant Community Ministries, in Fort Myers, Florida.  Beth succeeded a gifted, full-time Minister of Worship and Arts in early 2002, and admirably fills that position in a church known for its commitment to excellence in music and drama; a congregation quite capable of hiring a full-time staff-person to do what Beth does.  Senior Pastor David Pleasant readily admits that he would be more than happy to pay her to be on staff, “But she has a career.” 

To some, Beth’s law enforcement career appears to be the polar opposite of her Praise and Worship responsibilities.  Beth noted that new acquaintances frequently engage her in a dialogue that goes something like this; “ ‘You’re an investigator with the State Attorney’s Office?’  Well, yeah.  ‘You’re the firearms instructor?’  Well, yeah.  ‘You’re the worship leader at a church?’ ”

Worship Team member, Michael Collins, attests to Beth’s success as a worship leader, “When I think of Beth Sterbens, the one word that comes to mind is passionate. I have been involved in praise and worship services for many years and have yet to see anyone with more passion than Beth to lead others into the presence of God. You can't help but get excited when you experience praise and worship, ‘Sterben’s Style.’ ”

Never the spectator type, Beth’s passionate “style” led her from a police dispatcher’s desk to the city’s streets.  Regarding her nine years in uniform, she noted, “I had unbelievable activity rates.  It was a slow night for me if I didn’t put at least two people in jail.”  For years Beth worked “The Hill,” Fort Myers most dangerous area.  “I [eventually] worked every district, primarily at night—I didn’t like working the day shift because you had to deal with ‘brass’ and they were a pain. Oftentimes I was the acting supervisor.  I enjoyed working the street.”

The fearless style that eventually gained Beth the rank of police sergeant, serves her well in ministry.  Pastor David Pleasant observes; “Beth is a woman very much like Debra in the Bible. She can be fierce and passionate, like a warrior, and at the same time be a vessel God uses to bring life and freedom. She ministers at the stockade with this type of diversity. She has arrested or prosecuted some of the very inmates to whom she brings, with compassion and love, the gospel message of hope. Her life is a complex series of balancing acts. She is, above all, a woman of God. She is a worship leader who has the responsibility to lead us as a corporate body into the presence of God with praise and worship. Then she must be a professional who balances business with her personal life and—she pulls it all off each week to begin again for the next week. She is beautiful, sensitive, tough, and very passionate about everything she does.”

Beth, an animal lover at heart, found it easy to be passionate about the three years she worked with a “K9” partner—an all black German Shepherd named Buddy—saying, “It was probably the most fun I had during my law enforcement career.  In 33 months, I had 33 apprehensions, and eleven of them were ‘physical’ apprehensions, where he actually bit someone.  This dog literally saved my life—twice—in the three years I had him.”

 “One time he rescued me he didn’t even know he was.  We were doing a search—very, very deep in the mangroves.”  Casually Beth adds, “I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the mangroves—but it is very swampy.”  The mangrove swamp led out into a canal, and the suspect they were pursuing jumped into the canal and swam to the mangrove swamp.  Officer Sterbens and Buddy began ‘working” the mangroves. “This was an ‘area’ search . . . the wind [and scent] is coming at you . . . and the dog works the edges of a ‘cone,’ back and forth, to the bad guy.  You ‘read the dog,’ you watch his tail, you watch his reactions . . . and I could always tell when Buddy was getting close to a suspect because he would start bouncing.” 

 That kind of tracking was extremely physical—Buddy weighed eighty-five pounds and Beth only one hundred thirty.  As they got close to the suspect, Buddy jumped into the canal.  “He begins to sink, because the muck and mud is sucking him down.”  Going into the canal after him, Officer Sterbens is quickly “up to my waist in water, and up to my knees in muck.  I grabbed him by the back of his halter and I threw him toward the bank, and when I did that, it sunk me further into the muck and I was sinking.  The water was up to my face and the muck was up to my waist.  I’m wearing eighteen pounds [dry weight] of apparatus—boots, gunbelt, vest . . . all of this is sinking . . . and I cannot move my legs.  I wrapped the [harness] lead around my hand, and because Buddy was pulling towards the bad guy he pulled me out.”   At the other end of the twenty-foot lead, Buddy had already (to put it nicely) attached himself to the “bad guy,” and Officer Sterbens completed the arrest.

Beth (apparently not listening to what she just described), went on to say, “I really enjoyed that—I enjoyed him [Buddy], he was intense, he was ‘hard’—he was a really cool dog.”  For all that “fun,” however, Beth’s voice paid a price, as she now has scar tissue on her vocal cords from shouting commands to the dog.  “On any Sunday (given the condition of my voice), I don’t know if I will end up singing the lead or the tenor part.”

Though she has loved Jesus for as long as she can remember, Beth’s childhood was anything but “storybook.”  In a voice quieter than usual, Beth recalled a father who spent years in the grip of alcoholism, “four major encounters,” where she was sexually assaulted by men, (including a rape at the age of eight by two young men) and ongoing sexual abuse by “an older gentlemen” before she was a teenager.  In the honest manner of one who may never have all the answers, Beth continued, “I don’t know what the deal was, but I didn’t trust men.”  As a young girl, she came to one conclusion about men and another about herself, “That [sex] was their only agenda,” and “I didn’t feel pretty—if I had been pretty, they wouldn’t have treated me that way.”  Even the strong can have self-image problems.

In 1993 Beth’s life seemed to come crashing down around her.  Her police dog was taken away from her, and her oldest brother, Tim, became fatally ill with AIDS.  In addition, “My grandmother died in my arms, and my best friend shot herself (that tormented me).”   Shaken to the core, Beth related, “I was angry—I was very angry.”

After all the funerals, a broken engagement, and subsequent unsuccessful relationships, “I was through with God, I was through with men . . . I was just . . . through.  There didn’t seem to be any future.”  This desperate, downward spiral culminated one Sunday morning in May; “I went out to the back of my pasture (where we had just buried one of my horses) . . . and I had my gun in my hand.  I don’t know what made me come back from out there.” Speaking very softly, Beth continued, “Yes, I do—it was God.  I walked back in my house and I put the gun away.  Mom was praying for me—my entire family was praying for me.  If you talk to Mom, she will tell you there were points where she wouldn’t sleep for nights at a time—praying.  She sensed death . . . hovering.”

According to Beth, the healings of body and spirit that she needed occurred, “. . . not when God showed up and knocked the pulpit over,” but through “simple acts of obedience.”  “The healings and the blessings that have been bestowed upon me have been because I was obedient, or I forgave, or I trusted God.” 

A further breakthrough occurred in Beth’s life during an intense study of Isaiah 61 (her “anthem of praise”).  The fourth verse sprang to life for her with compelling force (“They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.”).  “That was when I realized the power of God and what He could do in my life.  It’s about having a relationship with God!  I talk to Him, like I talk to you; I make myself do that.”  As yet, unmarried, Beth emphasized that she leans heavily upon that relationship to sustain her. 

Leaning forward and gesturing with her sturdy hands, Beth, who recently turned 40, spoke passionately about the “single life,” “It’s not a matter of, ‘Once I get married I’ll be complete.’  I believe that there is someone out there for me, but that is not what I live for.  That is not my focus.  I don’t get up in the morning thinking about it.  I have too much to do; I have to be about my Father’s business.”  Beth feels that many Christian singles get “distracted” searching for a partner, and fail to realize that any earthly (horizontal) relationship can only be as strong as one’s spiritual (vertical) relationship with God.  While recognizing the “companionship” blessing of marriage, Beth (a country girl at heart) sums up her take on the advantages of matrimony, “If it’s a matter of pulling a wagon, one horse will get it done, but two horses can do it better.”

The initial prospect of a worship ministry at the jail challenged Beth to merge her law enforcement world with her ministry world in a new, even threatening, way.  “I wouldn’t be going in as a police officer, I’d be going in as a minister, and I’m not familiar with going in there as a minister.” 

Because of her obedience in this area, a dawning realization brought a new “wholeness” to Beth’s life.  “I became aware that I don’t live in two different worlds.  There are not two different worlds anymore—there is one world—and it’s God’s.  I’m not this rough-and-tumble police officer over here, and then this really sweet person who smiles and cries and leads people in praise and worship.  The bottom line is, ‘It is in Him that I live and move and have my being.’ There is nothing else.”