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Minister with lofty goal will pull unusual stunt
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG -- To raise $23,000 for Christian missions, youth minister Steve Coad plans to live perched on a billboard 26 feet above the ground as long as necessary. That's about $1,000 per foot of altitude. Coad, the 24-year-old youth pastor at Suncoast Cathedral Assemblies of God, climbs aboard his 7-foot-wide platform Monday morning. For safety's sake, he will wear a harness at all times. He will have a small tent, portable potty, chair, cooler, large straw hat, sleeping bag and a cell phone "for interviews." Food will come up in a bucket. Coad's sleeping and toilet quarters will be hidden from public view on a platform the billboard company has built between Coad's youth group's billboard and an adjacent one touting Harley-Davidson rentals. The youth pastor's view from nearly 9 yards above 34th Street and 62nd Avenue N will take in an adult video rental store and a Vietnamese restaurant in a nearby strip mall. He will sit in front of the billboard that will say, in part, "Please help us. I can't come down until we meet the goal." A gauge of some sort will let passers-by know how the fundraising is progressing. Down below, members of his church youth group will stand at street corners pleading for money to get him down. This all makes perfect sense to Coad. "You really can't get $23,000 doing car washes," he said late last week. "The reason I am doing this is because I believe in my kids, and if they feel God has told them that they can do something, I'm going to do all in my power to make sure it happens." Coad, who is in his first full-time position as a youth pastor, has never pulled a stunt like this before. In fact, he discovered it wasn't easy to persuade a billboard company to let him go through with it. A company that has supported similar fundraising efforts in the past agreed, but with conditions. "We just wanted to make sure that it was physically feasible for him to go to that board and that his insurance was intact," said Jim Maskas, vice president and general manager for LaMar Outdoor Advertising in Lakeland. "I have to be harnessed in the whole time," Coad added. He said the Suncoast Cathedral youth group, ONE Student Ministries, spent the past seven months preparing for the billboard project. Members raised about $4,000 to finance the effort and will pay $1,700 to LaMar. "If you want big money, you've got to spend big money," Coad said. But, he added: "LaMar gave us a good deal. They just charged us for the art." "They provided the artwork and we formatted it to the dimensions of the board," Maskas said. "We are going to put it up and we built a platform ... and we are going to run an electrical outlet." The church group will not have to pay to rent the billboard, which usually is available only for yearlong contracts at about $1,000 a month, Maskas said. The son of missionaries who have worked in the Dominican Republic since he was in the fifth grade, Coad has been youth pastor at Suncoast Cathedral, 2300 62nd Ave. N, for about eight months. The youth group has about 140 members, he said, adding that his focus is teaching the word of God. "We're not about entertaining them," said Coad, who graduated from Southeastern College in Lakeland two years ago with a degree in youth ministry. The youth group's billboard project will raise money for Speed the Light, an Assemblies of God youth ministry that provides transportation and communications equipment to missionaries. While Coad sits suspended above the city, members of his youth group will collect donations below. "We are going to have kids on all the street corners with signs saying, 'Bring us back our youth pastor. We miss him,' " Coad said, adding that they will carry empty KFC buckets for donations and give away sandwich coupons from Chick-fil-A. The youth pastor is steeling himself to spend Thanksgiving on his perch. "It looks like it, because $23,000 is a lot of money. It will make my mama really sad," he said, laughing during a phone interview. By Thursday, only about $1,500 had been pledged to the cause. Coad's girlfriend, Kristin Appel, 22, is both supportive and amused, but she is planning a traditional Thanksgiving -- without him. "I'm going to North Florida. I can't help it," she said, giggling. "I have to go up with my family. Hopefully, they will raise the money before Thanksgiving." If not, how long can drivers along 34th Street and 62nd Avenue expect to see Coad in his skybox? "Till it's raised," he said. "I'm pretty stubborn."
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