Retirement open house set for Sunday
Quest Community Church founding pastor Bill Walker said he received his call to become a pastor while on an Emmaus Walk, and he began four years of seminary as a second career — starting at the age of 44.
After completing his degree at Asbury Theological Seminary near Lexington, Ky., he and his wife, Mary, had to select from among three Church of the Nazarene church plant locations in three Ohio cities. Ultimately, they sensed God leading them to the Logan County area, and they moved to Bellefontaine in the summer of 2006 with their two high school-aged children.
It’s a community that the couple has poured their last 15 years into following Quest’s first service on Dec. 2, 2006. And at the same time, the pastoral pair, with Bill serving as lead pastor and Mary as the executive pastor, said the support from the congregation has helped to uplift them through great difficulties in their lives, including the loss of their college-age son during 2013 and Mary’s recent treatments for an aggressive form of breast cancer.
This weekend, Quest Community Church at 110 South St., West Liberty, is hosting a retirement open house for Pastors Bill and Mary, from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, April 3. The Cincinnati natives are preparing for this next phase of life and an upcoming move to Indiana to be closer to their daughter, Andrea Fisher, son-in-law, Ben, and two granddaughters.
“We are going to miss both of them,” said Quest’s board secretary Leslie Steiner, who has been at the church since its founding.
“Bill and Mary have a wonderful gift of ‘maximizing’ people. They are very good at helping people discover their God-given strengths and talents and then using them in their best capacity.
“I believe we had about 21 people at that first service in 2006 and now we average close to or above 400. As Bill would say, it is not about the numbers. But the numbers do show a growing and thriving church community.”
During its opening days, the church began meeting at the Logan County Friendly Senior Center, 934 S. Main St., Bellefontaine, where it grew to about 80 people. About three years later, it would move to its current West Liberty location.
Pastor Bill, a former Christian high school principal and educator, related that the church was really able to flourish in its new space, formerly in a building occupied by the Vintage Inn. In three month’s time, about 130 people were attending. In November 2011, Quest started a second Sunday service, and in 2013, added a Saturday evening service time as well.
“We began to overwhelm that space, located where Quest Kids is now,” Pastor Mary recalled. “We had about 300 people attending, and we kept needing to add chairs in the back row as people filled in”
To meet those space needs, the church expanded its facility in 2017, adding the current sanctuary, offices and other amenities. More than half of the $1.1 million building addition was raised through donations to the building fund campaign, the Walkers noted.
While their church was growing, Mary was added to the staff during 2010. She previously worked as a realtor in Cincinnati, and also as a director of customer service at a Lexington hospital.
Their family experienced one of their hardest times of their lives in February 2013, when their 21-year-old son, Chris, a student at the University of Cincinnati, was killed by a hit-and-run driver along I-71 in Cincinnati.
Chris had attended Bellefontaine High School from his freshman through senior years, and was very active in student council and athletics, including swimming, cross country and track.
“We had so many people who were so supportive of us throughout that time,” Mary said. “We were so grateful for the hundreds of cards and people who reached out from our church, community and Chris’ friends and former teachers.
“We had contemplated a move a few months prior to this, but I truly don’t know how we would have made it through the loss of our son without this community behind us.”
The following year, the Walkers made headlines around the state when they extended forgiveness in court to the young female driver who struck their pedestrian son — with Bill telling her, “You are totally forgiven. I hope you get married, and have a good, long life.”
Taking that action was a relief for their family as well.
“Holding onto bitterness, that can eat away at you and destroy you,” Bill said this week.
“Extending forgiveness is so freeing for the person giving it as well. The young lady was very remorseful, and had wanted to reach out to us even before the court proceedings.”
“We were able to hug her and her family afterward,” Mary said. “It was very emotional but healing at the same time.”
Steiner related that Pastor Bill is an excellent storyteller, and he weaves these experiences, and also much happier times in his life, into his sermons. He recently shared with his congregation about a verse passed along to him by a fellow pastor following Chris’ death, from Isaiah 43:2.
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
He and Mary also have taken these words to heart during her recent breast cancer treatments following her August 2020 diagnosis. Initially, her doctors thought her cancer had been caught early and a lumpectomy might be the only treatment needed, but soon they discovered that was not the case.
Since then, she has been through two surgeries, two rounds of chemotherapy, along with radiation therapy, at the Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center in Columbus.
While the chemotherapy and radiation was not easy, the couple said keeping on top of a post-surgery draining tubes for seven to eight weeks was perhaps the most taxing of the experience.
“Waiting for those tubes to come out, that was likely the lowest of the low for us, because we would think we were done, and then we would get bad news again and the tubes still had to stay in,” Mary said.
Despite those many hurdles that the couple worked through together, Mary just completed her last chemo treatment on Feb. 14. She will continue to complete oncology check-ups about every three months.
Preparing to retire from Quest and move from their Logan County community is bittersweet for the Walkers, who said there are many experiences that they will treasure, including the West Liberty Ice Cream Social hosted last summer to benefit Mary’s medical expenses.
“That was so humbling, and in a big city, that does not happen,” Mary said. “I will miss being in a small town and running into people at the store that I know.”
“We’ll miss the people and the relationships more than anything,” Bill said. “It has been such a privilege to watch people’s lives change as they accept Christ and grow in Him.”
The congregation is looking forward to honoring the couple’s dedication this weekend. An interim pastor, Rev. Doug Boquist from Lima, will filling in during the upcoming months as Quest continues to look for its new lead pastor.
“It has certainly been a great adventure,” Steiner said, recalling back to first days of the church. “The connection we have felt went above and beyond expectations.
“I am really happy for the Walkers to get to move on to their next adventure. It just goes to show that it’s hard to say good-bye to great people.”
