Get to Know…
Pastor Beau Walker at Gethsemane Missionary Baptist
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of Q&As getting to know members of places of worship. The series will later expand to city leaders, educators, first responders and more. A new feature will be published each Monday. Some questions and answers have been amended for clarity and brevity.
After living on the streets and being sent to prison, Beau Walker went with his now-wife to church following an invitation from her family.
On that day in July 2011, his heart was softened and opened to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. About a month later, he was saved.
Now, he’s the pastor at Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church and working toward a degree at the Central Arkansas Baptist Institute.
Q: Would you mind starting by telling me where you grew up and if you grew up in faith?
A: I did not grow up in church. We were just a family that didn’t go to church, and as far as I knew, my parents weren’t Christians or anything like that, so I grew up in a different environment than most of your pastors or some of your pastors. I come from kind of a broken background. …
My wife Alecia, we weren’t married, and her mom invited her to come to church and she asked me, “Do you want to go to church?” and I [said], “Absolutely not, I do not want to go to church. I’ve heard war stories and horror stories and I don’t want to go.” She was really upset, she wanted to go.
I had this burning sensation, if you will, in my stomach to just go. I told her, “You know what, we’ll go, we’ll go to church.” I remember, I had my mind made up of what I heard my whole life about Christians just being hypocrites and nasty and mean, and that’s just what I had been indoctrinated with. I told her, “If they judge us by the way we look or the way we talk, or my tattoos or anything, we’re leaving and never coming back.”
Grace found me that day. I just remember walking into this little church and feeling love that I had never felt. People just coming up to us and so thankful we were there and so welcoming. … I remember the pastor, he sat at the very front of the church, I’ll never forget it…and I didn’t know then, but after him and I built a relationship [he told me] that morning — he had worked all week preparing a sermon to preach — he felt like the Holy Spirit was leading him to tell his testimony. He didn’t want to because he had been the pastor there for 15 years and all the people there knew his testimony and he didn’t want it to be about him, he wanted it to be about the Lord. But he said he felt very convicted of sharing his testimony. My heart was very hardened, I come from a very hard life, in and out of jail, living on the streets, the street life, all those things that go with it, but this man walked into the
pulpit and he began to speak his testimony and he was speaking my life. His past life was my present life and I was hanging on every thread. What he didn’t know, and what I didn’t know, is that the Holy Spirit was actually softening my heart and letting me know, “Hey, I can forgive you if you ask for it.” I saw this guy that used to be an alcoholic and a womanizer and a drug user and all these things that the Lord had forgiven and was using, and I was on the edge of the pew. I was hung on every word. I remember him, after he was finished, he preached the gospel of Jesus Christ and I was rocked in such a way. I knew that I was lost and that I was just a sinner, but at the same time I knew that this God that I was always curious about, that I had always heard people bash and beat up really loved me, and he wanted to forgive me and he wanted to adopt me into his family. I just remember I went home and I was rocked and I kicked people out of my house. The next week I was asking my wife, “Hey, do you want to go to church? Let’s go to church.”
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About 2013, I felt what I know now is the call to preach. I didn’t know what was going on yet because I was such a new Christian. I didn’t know those things, I didn’t understand. Most people, most men surrender to the ministry at 16, 17, 18 years old, and here I was — I was 30. I remember saying, “no, you’ve got this wrong. I’m an excon, I’m an ex-user, I’m an ex-all these things, I’m so worldly, I’m covered in tattoos. No, you’ve got this wrong.” That’s what we do, right? We tell God that he’s wrong, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. For about six months I ran from that calling and it got to the point, and I know this is crazy, some people know what I’m saying and some people [are doubtful], but it got to the point where the calling in my life was so loud, it was so present that everything else was muffled around me. I remember I was sitting at the pew one Sunday morning and I was looking at my wife and I said, “I’m supposed to preach, I’m supposed to preach the Gospel. I’m going to surrender to the ministry,” and she goes, “I know.” I went, “Come on, you didn’t know.” But I do believe that she knew, I believe God prepared her heart because…I’ll speak for me and every pastor you ever talk to. God has to prepare that woman’s heart. She’s vital to my ministry, to my marriage. I know other pastors will say the same, “she knew.” I got up before the church and I surrendered to the ministry to preach and immediately started preaching. I would go to jails and I would go to rehabs and adult and teen challenges. Still to this day, I do a lot of revivals and testimonials and preaching. … Anywhere God opens the door.
Q: What’s it like to look back nine years removed from where you were? And how often do you share your journey?
A: My testimony, I’m very open with my testimony, my children know my testimony. They’re ah uge part of my testimony. When I came here nine months ago and came here for a view a call..we had a Q&A type thing, but I also shared my testimony. I was very open with my testimony, my street life, in and out of jail and those sorts of things and how God had been so good to me. What I’ve learned in these nine years of Christianity, what I’ve learned in this nine years of this Christian walk, are there are so many people ethat won’t come to church because they think they’re going to be judged for what they went through. Look, Jesus left Heaven for sinners. We should be able to leave this church house to go and reach sinners, and that’s what this church wants to do. I’m a sinner, we’re all sinners, and we’re just saved by grace and I’m thankful for that. I just want people to know that there is a place to come. I didn’t make this saying up…but we don’t embrace the sin, we embrace the sinner, just like God doesn’t embrace sin, God doesn’t like sin, but God does embrace the sinner. I’m very open with my testimony. With people I’m a pretty open book. I had to get to a place where I was comfortable in my own skin after salvation. I was very intimidated. I was very concerned and worried about how people were going to accept me covered in tattoos. … Nine out of 10 times, it was me instead of them. What are they going to say, what are they going to think, are they going to accept me? Are they really going to believe that God’s called me to be a pastor because I’m covered in tattoos. Although I’m not worthy of anything God’s given me, what I will tell you is He has opened the door and allowed me to go to places to preach the gospel that maybe some other people couldn’t go because the people wouldn’t relate to them.
I’ve gotten to go into prisons and preach the gospel and these men see my covered in tattoos and go, “Woah, wait a minute. There is hope. I don’t have to get out of prison and stay in the monotony of my life. I don’t have to stay in this sinful life. I can get out, God will use me, God does love me.” So over the last nine months, God really cultivated my whole outlook of, “Don’t’ hide what I’ve forgiven,” because that’s what I was doing — I was hiding what he had already forgiven. What’s happened is I get to relate with people and their life and people come to life and say, “Well preacher you don’t how it is to live this way,” and I can say, “Yes I can, but I know who can free you from those chains and bondage.”
Q: What have been some of the greatest lessons you’ve learned from reading the Bible, preaching, yourself and other people?
A: That’s a packed question. I’ll try and hit that on every spectrum. What I’ve learned from the Bible, believing in Jesus and knowing that he’s the only way to heaven and accepting Him as my savior; that I have to do what the Bible tells us to do, and that’s to lay down our lives, pick up the cross and follow Him. That’s an everyday thing. … Be transparent with everyone but especially the lost because they’re looking for you to be real. They don’t want you to sugar-coat things, and that’s one thing that I’ve learned in my journey. Being open when I go to these rehabilitations centers or prisons or even the pulpit on Sunday mornings and Sunday night, just to be transparent and know that if there’s someone out there in the audience or the rehab or in the prison that is going through the same thing I went through, just like my very first pastor… he was very transparent in his testimony, he didn’t sugar-coat anything, and what that did was soften my heart to understand that God is in the saving business, and He didn’t come for the righteous, He came for the hurting and the lost and the sick. Being transparent, being very open, never embracing sin, but always embracing the sinner. Never make someone think that living in sin is OK, but love them.