Interview – GES National Conference 2024 Attendees

SPEAKER 02 : 0:00

The following is a listener-supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:04

This is Grace in Focus, coming to you from the Grace Evangelical Society. The Grace Evangelical Society has a national conference each year, and today we’re going to hear from a participant of last year’s conference. We hope that this will encourage you to be a this year participant with that conference coming up in May, May the 19th through the 22nd. Find out more about it at our website, faithalone.org. And get registered. Early bird registration is still in play for a few more days. And first-timers can register for free. That’s at faithalone.org. And with that interview now, here is Ken Yates.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:44

Here at the National Conference of GES outside of Denton, Texas with one of the folks that are here. And I think I haven’t known you as well as I’ve known or as long as I’ve known some of the other people here. And I’m going to let you introduce yourself.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:01

Okay, well, my name is Katie Walker. I have my husband here, Bill Walker, and my two kids. They’re six and four, almost four. They’re really enjoying the VBS we have here. This is our second year with the GES conference, and we had to come back.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:21

And where are you from? Or where are you living now?

SPEAKER 03 : 1:23

Yeah, everywhere. We’ve done a lot of traveling, but we currently live in Marshall, Texas. So just a few hours drive from here. Not too bad.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:30

Okay. So this is your, did you say your second time here? Yes. Okay. How did you get equated with free grace theology and how did you get equated with GES?

SPEAKER 03 : 1:42

Okay, so when we moved to Marshall, my husband’s an engineer. So after we did all of our traveling, my husband started to work for GE, General Electric. And so we were looking for a house. We found one in Marshall. And we knew we wanted a church home. We knew we wanted roots. And we found Cypress on their website. We love the fact that they had a very clear doctrine, which is hard to find. If you look at church websites, it’s hard to pin it down. And they had an awesome kids program. And so we went, got plugged in immediately, and we never wanted to leave.

SPEAKER 02 : 2:22

Now, when you’re talking about Cyprus, you’re talking about Bob Bryant’s church. I’m sorry.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:25

Cyprus Valley Bible Church, Bob Bryant’s church. We never wanted to leave. I mean, you know, some people church hop before they find a family. We never found a need to check out any place else. So that’s where we got introduced to Free Grace Theology, obviously, because Bob Bryant is awesome with Free Grace Theology. Through that, we found GES. And initially when we heard about GES, we thought because the churches that we had experience with before, these conferences were for titled people. These were for the pastors, the directors or whatever. And so we finally got told, no, you can come. So my husband and I are knowledge sponges. We love to talk. learn, continue to learn. And so we got here and just there again, loved it, loved the camaraderie and the constant learning that’s going on.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:11

Well, one of the things that sticks out in my head when you tell your story about Cypress Valley, you said you really appreciated the doctrinal statement. What was your experience in churches before that? I mean, okay, so you read this doctrinal statement. Did it stand out like Oh, that’s a little bit different. I mean, OK, it’s great. Here’s the doctrinal statement. And that’s great that it’s there. But it was different, as you said, than what you were used to. So what was that like?

SPEAKER 03 : 3:37

So Bill and I were both raised in Methodist churches. Methodist churches are very works based, whether they admit it or not, they are.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:46

And by the way, Bob Bryant came from that background, too.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:49

I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:51

I mean, when he was a kid. Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:53

I’ve known Bob a while. Anyway, so we came from all of that. And to be honest, we kind of left the church to the side for a few years just because we had gotten jaded with things, gotten a little burnt with the way the Methodist churches that we were attending were dealing with things. And so when we decided to hunt down a church, we had both just sort of had these deep conversations of what do we believe? What do we want in a church? What are we supposed to be seeking in a church? And that doctrine checked off all the boxes. And to be honest, there were a few things in there that we were not sure about. But we were willing to explore. And when we got there, some of the doctrine, I mean, I didn’t throw it out. I was just, it was new. And so we were just both open to it. You know, Bill pretty immediately started doing parts in the men’s ministry. He’s up on stage with the music team. And so we were just plugged in and getting questions answered. And the same for me. I was volunteering with the kids. I was in for women’s ministry. And so… I think we were just open and ready, you know, open hearts and just we knew what we knew. It didn’t work. We knew what we didn’t want. And so this free grace theology just that was what we needed.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:09

There you go. So when you’re at Cyprus and you’re coming from this Methodist background, which is a heavy emphasis on works, obviously you can lose your salvation. So what did it strike you or was it just a process where it’s like, oh, wait a second, we’re talking about I have eternal life. I can’t lose it. It’s not by works, you know. And then I know now, you know, works are dealing with rewards and greatness in the kingdom. Was that a process or was there an aha moment when it’s like, oh, wow, you know, this is the first time I’ve heard this first time I’ve understood it. What was that like?

SPEAKER 03 : 5:44

A little bit of both, to be honest. So there was an aha moment or I used to have a friend that said it was like getting hit over the head with a four by four. We were sitting in the women’s Bible study on Wednesday. And of course, Sherry Bryant, Bryant’s wife, mostly leads that up. And she said, oh, when we look at this passage, we have to ask salvation from what? And I went, you’re crazy. Like, what are you talking about? Salvation from what?

SPEAKER 02 : 6:11

There’s only one salvation. What?

SPEAKER 03 : 6:15

And of course, you know, there’s that little sneaking, you know, Holy Spirit tick in the back of your brain, like, uh, keep listening. And I did, I didn’t close anything off. And then I slowly began to realize like, Hey, this, this is right. This isn’t crazy.

SPEAKER 01 : 6:31

Please plan to join us at Camp Copas in Denton, Texas. The Grace Evangelical Society’s 2025 National Conference is May 19th through 22nd. Good fun, wonderful fellowship, recreational opportunities for the younger ones and the older ones, great teaching. Our theme this year is dispensationalism and rewards. VBS for kids, too. More information and early bird registration now at faithalone.org slash events. That’s faithalone.org slash events. Please come and join us.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:06

I believed at a young age. I believed at eight years old, but I had issues later because I had doctrinal craziness going on in my life. My father was never a believer that I know of, broken home and the whole deal. And my mom was trying to find a good solid spot for us. I can tell you, we went to lots of different churches, heard lots of different doctrines. And I think my mom just thought she was putting us in a good environment, a godly environment. But the problem was that resulted with me having this weird mishmash of doctrinal line items that didn’t mash up. They didn’t work. So when we found Cyprus, there’s that clear gospel message. And I was able to sort of slough off the junk over the years that we’ve been there. Now, my husband grew up in the Methodist church, but he’ll tell you he wasn’t a believer. He was a churchgoer. He was a pew warmer, if you will. And he went because he was made to go.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:08

By his parents.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:09

By his parents. You just don’t do anything else. I don’t care what else you do during the week, but your butt’s in church on Sunday. Too bad. Sure. And so over a lot of, just a lot of terrible life experiences as he got older, he at some point decided he didn’t want anything to do with God. I’ve lost too many people in my life. If this is how God is, too bad. I don’t want him. He actually went into his profession of nuclear engineering because he wanted to prove God didn’t exist. Now, we can laugh at that now. We can awe at that. But that’s what he wanted to do because he felt that if he got down to the protons and the quarks, and I don’t even know all of the stuff. I’m not an engineer. But he felt if he got down far enough, he could find that chaotic resemblance of evolution. And on the contrary, he found more and more structure the further he went down. And finally, he concluded, I can be mad at God or not, but he’s there. So we have two very different. We started in the same place, diverged and came back to Cyprus. And that’s the cool thing about Free Grace is it met both of us where we needed to be.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:16

What a great story. It’s amazing how the Lord works in all of our lives to bring us the truth, to reveal the truth to us if we’re open to it, if we’re willing, as John 5 says, to see the evidence and believe. Now, another thing you’re doing with GES, I know this because I graded some of her stuff. He graded my final exam. No bias there. You’re involved in the seminary. So first of all, what classes have you been taking and what’s that been like?

SPEAKER 03 : 9:49

Well, I’ve got a little bit of a different spin on that because I cannot get up and present a paper like a lot of the seminary students because I’ve been taking Greek with, of course, you and Tony Badger. So my husband, after he had this change of heart, a change of theology, he went to a seminary. He has an MDiv. He’s taken Greek, and so we would do joint Bible studies together, and I feel like I’m very well, not super well-versed, but relatively well-versed in the Bible and able to have good theological conversations. And he would just make these references to these Greek words or these Greek rules, and I’m like, honey, no, I don’t remember that because I’ve never learned it. So this was my Achilles heel. So really, I wanted to bone up on Greek because I felt like that was a hole. And so, you know, I’m not trying to be any kind of a pastor or anything. That’s just what I wanted to do. I felt a need there. It’s Greek is a difficult language. It just is. It’s, it’s painfully specific, but it’s, it’s a challenge for me and I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy learning. And it’s amazing to be able to open the Bible up or even just to audibly listen to all the things here because everybody else is referencing Greek, too. And I can look at that and go, oh, I know what that is now. I know what that actually translates to.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:12

And for the final here, I’ll just tell you, she had to translate 11 verses there in Matthew 13. And it’s the parable of the sower.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:21

Yeah, Matthew, right? You picked Matthew.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:24

Well, no, I didn’t. Tony did. Tony did. Normally, she’s kind of laughing. Normally, in Greek, first year Greek, we pick John because John’s the easier Greek. But Tony, he’s hardcore. You know, he said, let’s go with Matthew. And the reason why it was in the workbook. Yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:42

Yeah, well, don’t let that, if you’re listening to this and thinking that you might want to take Greek, don’t let that scare you off. Tony is the biggest sweetheart ever. He really is. He’s awesome. It’s just, Tony, if you’re going to learn it, he wants to make sure that you learn it to the nth degree. He wants to give you all the information.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:58

Well, and I will tell you, all the students were able to translate the 11 verses too. It was great. It was just wonderful.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:04

Well, that’s a good testament to the teaching.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:06

There you go. So it was good. Well, Katie, thanks for sharing your story with us. We’re excited that you and your family are here. Thank you for supporting GES coming to these conferences, the seminary. Your story is going to be an encouragement to a lot of people.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:20

Y’all are awesome. We love y’all. It’s amazing. It’s been a blessing.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:24

Well, it was great seeing you. We’re going to finish up the rest of the conference here. Katie and I and all of us, in the meantime, keep grace in focus.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:36

And how many times a week you listen. Thank you. You will be helping us with our stewardship. Send it to radio at faithalone.org. That’s radio at faithalone.org. We are so thankful for our financial partners who keep us on the air. Every gift is tax deductible and very much appreciated. If you’d like to find out how you can give, go to faithalone.org. On our website, we have a church tracker. It’s an easy-to-use map that will help you locate those other free grace churches that might be in your area. So come visit us at the website and take advantage of our free church tracker. It’s at faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. We hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy some time fellowshipping with other believers. Join us again on Monday for another episode. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:45

The preceding has been a listener supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.