During Step Morgan’s five-year tenure as the director of admissions at Reformed Theological Seminary Jackson, he was also earning his master of divinity degree and raising five children with his wife, Jessica. If that weren’t enough, Morgan served area churches on the RTS student preaching circuit, delivering more than 100 sermons before he graduated. 

“He was a student preacher who was held in very high esteem by the churches in our area,” says Charlie Wingard, professor of pastoral theology at RTS Jackson who oversaw the student preaching circuit and worked alongside Morgan on the admissions committee. “He was incredibly industrious.”  

With such a heavy load, Morgan found an avenue for keeping himself mentally and physically healthy: mountain biking. During the 2020 pandemic, just as he was finishing his degree, this hobby became a lifeline. 

Pursuing his hobby put Morgan on a trail that led to loss, suffering, and a greater appreciation for the church’s ministry and God’s mercy. 

“As I was struggling to finish seminary while working full-time and preaching three out of four Sundays, I found that mountain biking was a great way to get some exercise and have some stress relief,” Morgan says. 

He developed a community with the other riders at Ridgeland Trails, north of Jackson, Mississippi, and the riding group built two wooden drops for the trail. To Morgan, the larger drop seemed risky.

“I was afraid of the big one,” he says. “I’ve got a family, and I’ve got a job, and what would it be like if I got hurt and had to be in the hospital?” 

So he worked on mastering the drop from the smaller platform first. 

By the time he set out for a sunset ride on Friday, October 23, 2020, Morgan had practiced the shorter drop more than 100 times and could take it with great speed and control. But all that practice had worn out a safety mechanism on his pedals, and when his bike left the platform, his body left the bike. 

“My left leg was the first thing to strike the ground, and it broke my tibia at an angle, and one of those pieces became a knife which cut the popliteal artery, the main artery feeding the lower leg, and punctured the back of my leg,” he said. 

After his chest hit the tree in front of him, he lay for moments, trying to catch his breath, and when he did, he called for help. 

Despite the darkness, the trail had plenty of riders who immediately rushed to his side, calling EMS and Morgan’s wife, and applying a tourniquet to his leg. As soon as Jessica Morgan received the call, she headed to the trail and hiked in to be by her husband’s side in the woods as they waited an hour for the ambulance to arrive. 

More than 40 miles away at a high school football game, Wingard and his wife, Lynne, received the news of Morgan’s accident and headed straight for Jackson.

Because of the hospital’s COVID restrictions, the Wingards were not permitted in the hospital. And if Jessica exited the hospital, she could not reenter. 

“Jessica met us at the sliding doors of the ER,” Wingard says. “She was on one side of the sliding door, and we were on the other, and we prayed there.”

As the news of Morgan’s accident spread throughout the RTS community and the Morgans’ church, Pear Orchard Presbyterian, the fervent prayers of loved ones and strangers took hold. 

“Over the course of my time in the hospital . . . I would feel this deep impression of how powerfully God was blessing the prayers of his people,” Morgan says.

When Morgan arrived at the hospital, surgeons performed what became the first of 10 surgeries: the first five to try saving his leg, the sixth to amputate it, and the next four to spare the remaining limb from infection. 

The surgeons wanted to keep Morgan’s knee intact. Jessica feared how much his quality of life would diminish if the doctors amputated above his knee. But Morgan saw the situation differently.

“I said to her something like, ‘Sweetheart, if this is the means that God has to use to further his work in me, it would be better that I lose my whole leg.’” 

But Morgan’s team of surgeons, led by Matt Graves, a ruling elder at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, maintained all that was necessary to effectively fit a prosthesis below Morgan’s knee.

During Morgan’s 15-day hospital stay, as Jessica stayed by his side, their 17-year-old son, Samuel, took care of his four younger siblings. 

Jessica said, “I would come home every couple of days, and Samuel . . . had to become the third adult in our home.” 

The members of Pear Orchard initiated a meal schedule for the Morgans, cleaned the house, shopped for groceries, arranged rides, and helped with yard work. 

“A lot of times when we see people suffering significantly, we don’t know what to do because we can’t fix it,” Jessica says. “It’s not that we don’t love them, but we’re uncomfortable that they’re hurting and so we back up.” 

But the Pear Orchard community leaned in. Their care for the Morgan family taught Jessica a new way to see the church, her role in it, and suffering. Pear Orchard, along with other churches in Mississippi, continued to surround the Morgans with prayers and encouragement after Step returned home. 

“For months afterwards, I would be somewhere around town . . . and people would come to me and say, ‘Are you Step Morgan?’ I would say ‘yes,’ and they said, ‘We’ve been praying for you,” he says. “There were lots of hard moments, but there was also an unusual sense of peace, especially in those early days. I think that was largely the fruit of God’s people praying for us and praying for me.’” 

Just six months after his accident, Morgan learned to mountain bike with his new prosthesis. 

“Ironically mountain biking was the thing that felt most normal during my recovery because walking was different; running wasn’t even possible at first; everything was different, but mountain biking felt the same.” 

Five years later, he continues to ride, but now in Tennessee, where he pastors Grace Presbyterian Church in Cookeville. 

“The first year after my crash was very largely about recovery — recovering my strength, learning how to get around again, returning to work. Eventually, it would include returning to riding, returning to running.”

On the first anniversary of Morgan’s crash, he was visiting Cookeville to meet the congregation for the first time. It would take another year or two before the weight of what the family had experienced set in, and Morgan could articulate how hard the journey had been. 

Processing the trauma of his accident and amputation has impacted Morgan’s pastoral work. 

“One of the privileges of being a pastor is you’re invited into very intimate moments in people’s lives, and so you’re walking closely with them in very painful things,” he says. “I’m far more sensitive to suffering than I was before.”

But more than a testimony of suffering, healing, or resilience, Morgan says his experience is “the story of how God cares for his people.”