Guests Rob and Stephanie Green and Brent and Janet Aucoin join us this week for the Guam Marriage and Family Biblical Counseling Training Conference.
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Episode transcript:
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor at Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these 25 minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We’d like to invite you to join us at Harvest Baptist Church this week for one of our two services. We have the first one at 8:45 AM, the second at 10:45 AM.
There is Spanish translation offered during the 8:45 AM service, Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45 AM service, and that’s also when we live stream athbcguam.org.hbcguam.org. This week, Just Keep Walking, How to Live a Refreshing Christian Life. Let’s begin today’s harvest time by welcoming pastor Gary Walton. Hi, pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey. Hafa adai, Chris. Yeah. We’re actually beginning a new series this Sunday. It’ll go through the end of May, talking about actually some of my favorite texts out of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians that deal very specifically with spiritual growth and how to live the Christian life.
Just some very practical teaching that Paul has for the churches across that whole region. This Sunday, we’re going to be in a pretty familiar text if you have been around the Bible much, but Galatians chapter 5 is the text that’s talking about the fruit of the spirit. And within that text, we’re going to look at verses 16 through 26, Galatians 5 16 through 26 this Sunday. Verse 16 says, this I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Verse 25 says, if you live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.
And so that theme of walking in the spirit, living the Christian life, wanting that to be refreshing to our souls. We’re just gonna carry that through a few of the really important texts that come up in these books where Paul is trying to explain and teach that early Christian church and those early believers what does it mean to live by the spirit. How do we overcome sin in our life and walk in the way that Jesus would have us to walk. So I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s gonna be a helpful, biblical understanding of what it does what does it mean to live a life for Jesus by walking in his word and in his will.
So we’d like to invite you to come for these next few weeks. We’re just coming off a week where we had a team of, counselor training and trainers with us, in the ministry Friday night, Saturday night, and even into Sunday. While they were here, we did an interview with, the 4 people that were here from Faith Church in Lafayette, Indiana. Pastor Rob Green and his wife Stephanie, Pastor Brent Ocwen and his wife Janet. And, they were here to lead us as a church, as a ministry.
Actually, we had ministry leaders from around the island that joined us together, pastors and other church leaders. We really had a fantastic time with them. And while they’re here, we invited them up to the studio just to talk with them about life, about God’s work in their life, and about the counseling These two couples are from Faith Church Lafayette, Indiana in Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries. They had a fantastic ministry with us, and we’re happy this weekend to be able to share, you know, this interview that we recorded last week. It’s good to have, Rob and Stephanie Green, pastor Rob and Stephanie Green.
Rob is the pastor of counseling and seminary ministries, Faith in Lafayette. Stephanie is a homemaker involved in mentoring women, registered nurse in the background as well. So first of all, welcome to you guys.
Rob Green: Thank you so much for allowing us to be here.
Gary Walton: And then we have, pastor, Brent and Janet Oquinn as well. Pastor, Brent is pastor of the Seminary and Soul Care. Janet’s director of women’s ministries at Faith. So a lot of things going on with you guys too. So welcome as well.
Brent Aucoin: Thank you, pastor Gary.
Gary Walton: And I think it’s your first time for all of you on Guam. Is that right?
Brent Aucoin: Yes. It is.
Gary Walton: So, we’ve talked a little bit. The flight is a long one, And, you’re still feeling a little bit of the jet lag.
Brent Aucoin: Absolutely.
Gary Walton: Could you tell us, Brent or or, Rob, tell us about Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries, Faith Church, and then, and then the connection with Harvest.
Rob Green: Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries began in the early seventies. Pastor Bill Goode and doctor Bob Smith got together and said, you know, we love what’s happening on Sunday, but we have to find ways of helping and encouraging people who are hurting on other days too. And so they sought training from Jay Adams and ultimately brought that ministry to faith in Lafayette. So for the past 45, getting close to 50 years now, we’ve had the privilege of offering counseling training and then offering counseling on a weekly basis to those both in our church and in our community. And it’s been a great joy to be a part of it and to see that as part of our life work.
And then, I think the connection to Harvest came through a former counselee of yours Mhmm. Who is now a pastor at our church, Dustin Folden. You’re involved in he and Trish’s wedding and premarital counseling, and then you 2 have stayed in touch over the years. And that’s been an opportunity for us then to partner with you and to encourage you, your church family, as well as those that you’re connected with.
Gary Walton: So, to help people to understand, your church is involved in a lot of community based counseling. So that’s kind of the groundwork. But then training, there’s a big week, you know, every February where a lot of people will come to Lafayette. And then you’re doing some counseling training like this in churches around the nation and even now kind of around the world.
Rob Green: So it it that started in 1985. Pastor Goode and doctor Bob Smith had been traveling to help missionaries who were struggling either in their marriages or were struggling in their ministries helping people deal with the challenges of life. And so they decided, let’s start what was called a missionary conference in 1985. And 42 individuals came. And since that time, the Lord has blessed tremendously and we now have upwards of 2,000 people who come on an annual basis.
We offer a lot more training than we did back in 85. And then the Lord has allowed that to expand to virtual, allowed it to expand to other nations. We were in Bolivia not all that long ago, offering our full track one training. And the same thing has happened across different places in the US. So it’s it’s been a great joy to be a part of it and to see what the Lord has chosen to do with it.
Gary Walton: And actually that part of the connection is the original connection for for me in Faith. Of course, we love Dustin and Tricia. And and that really gave us an opportunity to to maybe request and see if we can make a connection for your team to come out here. So that was that part. But, you know, I actually started receiving some counseling training from Doctor.
Goode when I was back in Bible College and then doctor Goode and doctor Vyers when I was in seminary together. And then Faith and I early in our pastoral ministry started going to this week that you’re talking about this February week in in Lafayette, going and just be being equipped, more fully in biblical counseling. Our church was growing. We’re, you know, seeing a lot of people come to the Lord. We’re very passionate about discipleship and discipleship is connected with people who have struggles that they’re going through, and we want to be better equipped to help people grow in their faith.
And so we found it just so great. Well, great for us in our own marriage, you know, our relationship. Then,
Brent Aucoin: it’s
Gary Walton: I mean, I’ve told you guys this before, but then we went back to our church and God was, you know, building this discipling group of people and just started talking about what we’re learning. And the next year, we had a van that came down with us. And the next year, we actually rented a bus and brought a, you know, group of people, down to Lafayette. And we were talking earlier. So that’s when, you know, you guys, Brent, Janet, and Rob, you guys were just very young, still kinda getting your feet wet in the ministry there.
And now, man,
Brent Aucoin: get What are you saying, pastor Gibson? We’re old now?
Rob Green: Well, I don’t know.
Gary Walton: I don’t know what it says about me too. So but that was a great connection for us since it’s been really ministry shaping for us in many ways and I’m so thrilled to be able to allow that kind of training to happen right here on Guam. Very difficult for us to get our our staff, our people from here to Lafayette and you guys have been so incredibly gracious to say hey we could come there And so we want to thank you for that. Brent, tell us about, you know, you and Janet, your connections with faith and and then the counseling ministry and the parts you’re involved in.
Brent Aucoin: Sure thing. I came to, Purdue University in 1991. And I came there because not because of a counseling ministry or anything religious religiously significant. I came there because I wanted to be an astronaut. And Purdue University is there in West Lafayette.
And if you want to be an astronaut, you go to one of the schools that produce astronauts like Neil Armstrong. And so that’s where I wanted to go because every child in that grew up in the 19 seventies, on the verge of the Space Shuttle space program, Space Shuttle launched in 1980, they seemed to want to be an astronaut and that was me. And, so I was good at math and science and that’s where I found my identity. And so I at first though, I went to Oklahoma State University and got my engineering degree because there’s no like rocket pads or launch pads in Oklahoma where
Stephanie Green: I grew
Brent Aucoin: up. So I was on the path to what I thought would be a hotshot astronaut. And so it took me ultimately to Lafayette, Indiana and my connection to Faith Church and ultimately where I met Janet also was Purdue University. And I got to Purdue University in fall of 1991. And there at Purdue University, I found myself in the midst of a I typically say it this way.
At Oklahoma State University, I was a very big fish in a very little pond. I was a top engineering student and I don’t say that to brag, but I say that to illustrate what’s I’m about to say. At Purdue University, I started struggling with depression because there I was in the midst of all kinds of bigger fish. Mhmm. And, I was not the big fish.
It was a huge pond and I was the little fish there. And if you find your identity in what you do or, who you are in that respect, what the world values. And you’re you don’t find yourself being living and for well, I was living for the accolades of man. And I didn’t find that there, Purdue, because it was very difficult. And eventually, as I began to struggle with depression, somebody suggested Faith Church in Lafayette, Indiana.
And there, I began to go to that church that fall of 1991. And I heard the scriptures taught like I had never heard before. Now I had grown up in a, church environment that taught the gospel. But I’m gonna say it in this way. There was I didn’t know that there was life after salvation, meaning that God had answers for you in all ways through the scriptures.
He had practical answers for all of life and godliness. And there at Faith Church, when pastor Goode was a senior pastor, pastor Vires had came on staff as the associate pastor, I began to hear truth in such practical ways that I had never heard before. And I actually began to apply those to my own personal life and I started growing like never before. And through that time, I began to want to build people and not rockets anymore.
Gary Walton: Wow. Yeah.
Brent Aucoin: And at the same time, my wife had come. And then she wasn’t my wife, but my now wife had come to, Lafayette, Indiana because she also wanted to, receive counseling training, and she can tell you a little bit about that story. But there we met as well. And eventually, the desire for building people and not rockets overcame me, and I wanted to be in pastoral ministry teaching people what I had not known before about the sufficiency of the word of God and the superiority of Jesus Christ for all of life’s answers.
Gary Walton: I wanna come back to that in a minute to, you know, the whole group. My my outside observations of 2 things that hit home for us that, you know, I saw right away at Faith Church but was the sufficiency of the scripture. So the scripture was so central to everything that was happening and being taught. And then I was, just really energized by inspired in some way or at least it connected with my heart anyway, but just the community connection and community involvement of the ministry. I wanna ask you both about that at the end because that’s right in the heart of, you know, some critical pieces of harvest too.
I think it’s a connection between our churches. Janet, can you pick up the story? So how did you get connected
Janet Aucoin: a part of, we went to a church down there and, a family that I got very close to had a daughter and son-in-law on staff at Faith in Lafayette. So I didn’t really have a desire to go up there but I was growing, I was learning and I started teaching, high school girls Sunday school and it became evident that I really didn’t know practically how to help those girls. Like there was one sweet girl that got saved about every 3 weeks.
Brent Aucoin: Mhmm.
Janet Aucoin: Because she would struggle with sin and think I must not be saved. And all I could think is, well, if you’re not, we need to make sure you are. So we would pray and then we’d do it again and and I thought, I don’t I don’t I don’t know what’s happening but I don’t know how to help her. And so in the process of that and talking to this family’s daughter who was up at Faith Lafayette, I was single. I had some options.
And so I quit my job and moved up to Lafayette to get a job. Ultimately, I worked at Purdue and went to faith, and got counseling training thinking I’d then go back to Florida. But it was probably a year I came a year before Brent, so a year or so after I was there, Brent came and then my trajectory changed as well.
Gary Walton: Yeah. God had it. Something in store for all of that. Yes.
Janet Aucoin: Yes. So we haven’t left yet.
Gary Walton: Pastor Rob, Stephanie, you also have an engineering background as well and how did that connect you to, you know, ministry? Where do you how do you go from, you know, chasing engineering to chasing ministry and pastoral?
Rob Green: I didn’t have a desire for ministry, growing up. It just wasn’t on the radar. And so I attended, a school close to my home, for engineering. And, between my sophomore and junior years of college, the Lord, convicted me of some idolatry of my own heart and, just the the concern that he had, that is the Lord had, that I was putting 1 foot in the world and 1 foot in the church and, that needed to change. And so I repented of all of that in between my sophomore and junior year.
Actually, went and talked to my pastor and said, hey. I’m ready to quit school and go to Bible College. And his attitude was, I think that’s a bad idea. You’ve had an emotional experience, a very challenging time. The Lord has done something wonderful.
Now what you need to do is finish what you started and then get plugged in. And he began discipling me and gave me opportunities to serve and it was through that that it became clear that the Lord was gonna have me in vocational ministry. And so that was the starting point.
Gary Walton: How did you end up, you know, at Faith Church and what was the direction there?
Rob Green: Well, ultimately you just have to say that’s God’s sovereign hand. Yeah. But it has a bit of a story to it. My mom and my dad attended Faith’s Conference in, let’s say, the late nineties. 98, 99, somewhere in there.
And when they left, my mom said, I’m gonna pray that Rob gets an internship here and ends up serving here. And so she just started doing that. She didn’t tell me about it. And then I was in seminary at the time. And so in 2001, I was done and it was time to look for a place and my, adviser at school said, hey, you have an opportunity to look for yourself.
You have 2 months and if you don’t find something then we’ll we’ll place you. And, I went back to my pastor and said, okay, this is the deal. And he ultimately said, I want you to go to faith church in Lafayette, Indiana. And I said, why the Lord do I wanna go to faith church in Lafayette, Indiana? And, he said, because I think this would be really good for you.
It’s a good place. I think you’ll learn something. And by God’s grace, that’s exactly what happened.
Gary Walton: Okay. Great. Stephanie, how about you? What’s your story? How did you end up in Lafayette?
And how did you and Rob get together?
Stephanie Green: Oh, okay. Well, when we were, in junior high school together
Gary Walton: Okay.
Stephanie Green: Our families moved to the same church. We didn’t really know each other at that time. The Lord really needed to work on each of us individually before he brought us together.
Rob Green: But
Stephanie Green: then our church had a campus ministry at Ohio State University. And, we were both a part of that ministry. We were part of Awana Ministries together. So the Lord had us probably 4 nights out of the week at the same place at the same time. So naturally, we just started talking
Rob Green: and and
Stephanie Green: one thing led to another. And we got married in September of 93. And then we both were in school finishing our degrees. And there came a point in 1997, we were both done with our degrees. We had worked for a couple of years and we just said, okay, it’s time.
It’s time to quit our jobs. It’s time to go to seminary. And that’s what we did. And we had a blast. And then as Rob shared, that’s how we ended up in Lafayette, Indiana.
Gary Walton: You have a background in nursing.
Stephanie Green: I do.
Brent Aucoin: Right?
Janet Aucoin: Yes.
Gary Walton: Okay. Yep. In what specific areas?
Stephanie Green: I’ve done several things. Okay. I’ve worked extended care. I’ve worked OB and then, pediatrics. And right now, I’m a school nurse at our school at Faith Christian.
Gary Walton: Okay. Awesome.
Stephanie Green: Yeah.
Gary Walton: I was just noticed noting in a couple notes that I received that you’ve been part. I know all you guys have done a lot of speaking and writing. But, Stephanie, you in particular both authored and co authored a couple books. 1, small books, one specifically on miscarriage, Mini book, Miscarriage You Are Not Alone.
Rob Green: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Stephanie Green: Sure. When we were in seminary, our second child, we had lost to a miscarriage. And one thing that I had noticed, during our miscarriage is that it was something that wasn’t talked about a whole lot.
Gary Walton: Right.
Stephanie Green: Just nobody wanted to talk about it. Made people very uncomfortable. And while at the time, I didn’t really realize why the Lord had that for our path, I just remember committing to the Lord, say, you know what? I wanna change things. I wanna make people comfortable about talking about this subject because the stats show that a lot of people have miscarriages and most of us never know it.
We’re rubbing shoulders every day with people who are really suffering the heartache of miscarriage and they’re suffering alone. And I just didn’t want that for people. So, the opportunity came for me to write a booklet and I I wouldn’t consider myself a writer, but I thought this is one opportunity that I can have and take that will get the word out there because I want people to, be encouraged, be filled with hope from God’s word that they can get through this.
Gary Walton: It’s really powerful. And anybody that’s a password knows the need there in particular. We were talking earlier. You’ve done some teaching on this as well. In fact, there’s a podcast.
Could you reference that for us if somebody’s listening? Like, man, I’d I’d like to hear more. This actually could be a whole another, you know, just interview, but can you give us a a resource for us?
Stephanie Green: Yeah. I had the privilege of doing a 2 part series on Joyful Journey podcast. You can go faithlafayette.org and pull it up from there or just joyful journey joyfuljourneypod.com.
Gary Walton: Okay. So you just track in joyful journey and it’ll be be able to get there. Maybe Chris can give us the details at the end. So can I come back to you guys just for a second? Maybe it’s the thing that I reference.
I I mean, faith churches, there’s a lot of things happening. Those two areas, again, that’s from my outsider perspective, just seem foundational. The centrality of the word and then the real desire, intentional desire for the ministry to impact our community. Either one of you wanna say a little bit of how God did that or maybe some of the themes that are important to Faith Church?
Rob Green: Well, the counseling ministry has been an outreach from the beginning and in fact for a very long time it was the number one way that people were evangelized through faith. Now there’s a lot of community ministry that has developed over the last 15, 20 years, but at least prior to that, number one way that you would find people in the baptistery of faith was through the counseling ministry. So evangelism has always been a heartbeat for that. It’s also been a heartbeat that there are a lot of there weren’t very many places where you could receive biblical help. And then when it came to the authority of the scripture, that really has to do with what are we using as our source of truth.
And every counseling system has 1. It’s just a matter of what it is. And we’ve said from the beginning that we’re not going to counsel simply out of experience. We’re not gonna counsel out of, you know, what we have done or what we think is the the greatest idea, we’re gonna counsel based on the authority of the word.
Gary Walton: I love that, Rob. I haven’t heard it said in that way. That was really, really great. We would resonate for sure with that. And then Brent, you’re involved in the seminary.
I know you’re involved in a lot of things. Soul care, which is a lot of things across the church, but seminary part, so equipping people, you know, for ministry in the world. Yeah.
Brent Aucoin: Well, Pastor Gary, let me say also this. Last night, one of your staff members was showing us around your campus and the ministry going on Wednesday night. And, I was just thinking, there are kindred spirits here in regard to wanting to use our facilities as much as possible, just not filling them up on a Sunday for half a day. But as I was looking around at all the kids that were filling the the rooms of and and you were teaching a class last night also about sharing your faith. And so it it hearkened back to what our senior pastor has led Faith Church to do to make sure that the church is not just trying to preach the word on Sunday, but live it out and use what God has given us in our facilities Yeah.
All week long. So I wanna just thank you for giving that illustration and being a kindred spirit in that kind of endeavor. And we wanna train people, train men, to be those kinds of shepherds. And a while back ago in 2,000 and, around 2,007 and 8, we started a seminary in order to train men for ministry. And we tried to do it at a different in a different model than the traditional seminary because there were challenges with cost and other difficulties.
And we brought seminary training back to the local church at a substantially lower cost to train men in the sufficiency of scripture and community based outreach kind of ministries. And alongside that particular degree, that was the MDiv, the pastoral training degree program for men. We also created something at the graduate level for a master of arts in biblical counseling to train men or women to just continue to at a graduate level become more proficient and skilled administering our savior sufficient word to people in the community because that’s what they need to hear. And if you want to more information about us, our seminary, you can go to www.fbs.edu. Okay.
Gary Walton: So thankful for the ministry of faith, the impact that it’s had, you know, significant influence worldwide, literally, and thousands and thousands of people have been trained in the sufficiency of the scripture and and its practicality for real life. And so, thank you for that. Thank you for your willingness to come and help us. We’ve said this before, but we’re thankful for Faith Church just in general and the partnership. You guys have done some generous things.
This will resonate with our island family. But after Marwar, as we’re doing some recovery here, your church is really unsolicited, reached out and said, how can we help? Said a very significant check, to us to say, hey, can we be a part of this? So we feel the partnership together. We do feel a kindred, spirit in many ways.
And the sacrifice that the church has made in in coming now the second time and helping equip people here for ministry, we’re really thankful. And then you just your personal sacrifice. I mean, we hope you love, the trip here. Absolutely. But it is a long old flight and I know you got other things going on there.
So thank you for coming. We’re looking forward to this weekend and what God’s gonna do.
Rob Green: Thank you.
Brent Aucoin: Thanks very much.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. We just want to personally invite you again to services this week at Harvest Baptist Church. There are 2 services, the first at 8:45 AM, the second at 10:45 AM. We have Spanish translation during that 8:45 AM service, and Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45 AM service, and we bring you the 10:45 AM service live here on 88.1 FM and khmg.org. If you’re interested in the resources mentioned in today’s pro, If you’re interested in the resources mentioned earlier in this program, you can visit joyfuljourneypod.com, joyfuljourneypod.com.
We hope to see you this Sunday. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.