The WCG News
interviewed Richard and Diane Gross of Spencerport, New York, during a visit to
Pasadena. Jesus has given them a growing ministry, and we wanted to share the
scope of that with our readers. Richard and Diane attend the Rochester, New
York, church.
WN: Would you both share an overview of what you do and how the ministry started?
Richard: We both have been privileged to do many things for the church going back several years. We began this ministry in 2000. It is also the year I was healed, our house emptied of our children and the year we organized our companies.
Diane: The ministry takes several forms. Through both of our companies, LifeHouse Beacons, Inc., which is my company, and Let’s Talk Jesus Enterprises, LLC, which is Richard’s, we do growth and development workshops and seminars.
We take people through experiences designed to make plain various ways to live a more confident and peace-filled existence in God. We also seek to raise awareness of the issues that stand in the way of such a life.
Richard:
Let me list the workshops we do at present: The Practical Art of Forgiveness;
Destiny Management—Paths for Women; The Practical Art of Being a Man; Gender
Reconciliation; The Practical Art of Releasing Fear and Anger; Marriage and
Parenting; The Practical Art of Life Success.
Two others are strictly associated with Let’s Talk Jesus Enterprises, because they are overtly Christian in their orientation: The Practical Art of Educating Church Youths and The Practical Art of Discipling Others.
We also provide workshops for teens and youths. We also create and tailor workshops for specific needs. If we feel that we’re not qualified to address a specific area, we’ll help find someone who can.
Richard: LifeHouse Beacons is set up to appeal to the secular, or unchurched, audience, many of whom want nothing to do with “church.” Let’s Talk Jesus is decidedly Christian oriented. Either way, to the believer or the non-believer, we are always dealing with God’s word. One way strengthens Christians in their walk. The other way opens a door to God’s principles to teach a healthier and wiser way of life, and to grace.
WN: How did you come to discern your ministries?
Diane:
In November 2000, we started doing these workshops. I had been experiencing a
leading by God for a while to quit my job and follow a new career that he would
show me.
One day my company decided to send me to a business summit as a representative of the company for two days. I was surprised when the first night of the summit the facilitator stood up in front of 360 business people from all over the world and said: “If you want to be truly successful, then you have to figure out why God put you on this earth, and what he specifically has for you to do. Until you do and get in alignment with what he wants you to do, you can never be truly successful.” This was the theme for the entire weekend.
Through a series of events, God clearly showed me what I needed to do. When I came home and got off the plane I told my husband, “I have to quit my job.” He asked, “Why?” I told him what had happened, and he fully supported me. We have been doing these workshops ever since. This was about a month after Richard’s healing.
Richard spent many years battling mental illness. It almost destroyed our marriage. In 2000, Richard asked for and received a healing. He became a different person. He was no longer in the bonds of fear and discouragement. In that year he formed his company and did things he would never have done.
Richard: I was told that part of the healing was to witness it, and I soon came to realize that all of our experiences were for the benefit of others. Same for Diane, but she had already known it. It was necessary for me to be healed so I could be transparent and vulnerable, placing confidence in the Creator, proclaiming the glory, power and hope of God in every way.
WN: Can you tell me a little about any of the workshops?
Richard: I think the workshop that is closest to my heart is The Practical Art of Being a Man. There is so much misunderstanding about what it means to be a man. Male roles are shifting in society, and have been for a few decades. Some of those shifts are good, some are not so good, but all off them have contributed to muddying the waters regarding what a Christian man is supposed to be.
What the Practical Art of Being a Man deals with is best summed up in the acronym I use for the workshop, C-H-R-I-S-T: Commitment, Happiness, Responsibility, Intimacy, Strength and Trust. It is excellent for beginning, supporting or charging up men’s ministry.
Diane: The Practical Art of Forgiveness leaves me in awe of how God touches people’s hearts. I have seen healing miracles in people’s lives and relationships during this workshop. We seek to help people understand the vital difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, what forgiveness really is, what stands in the way of forgiving. A major part of what we do that many other workshops don’t is provide tools to help people overcome their obstacles and learn how to forgive.
We get frequent comments to that effect. The Forgiveness workshop, by the way, is our contribution to our community, and is given with no fees attached.
Richard: Diane’s Releasing Fear and Anger workshop is great. People learn the God-given purpose of anger and fear and the appropriate, balanced uses of these emotions. They are also shown ways to begin dealing with their own emotions more responsibly, learning ways by which they can begin to walk more fully by faith and not by emotion.
Diane: The women’s workshop (Destiny Management—Paths for Women) is basically to help women assess where they are in their lives—what’s working and what’s not working, and why. This involves areas where they may be stuck. We then go through a process that helps each woman crystallize for themselves where they would like to be in order to truly live the lives God has called them to. Then we discuss what needs to happen for them to get from point A to point B.
WN: What experiences or training prepared you for this ministry?
Richard: Educationally, I have a bachelor of art’s degree in education and English literature. My first master’s is in education, and I just received my master of divinity degree. Added on, over the course of my career, are numerous workshops and additional courses in education, psychology, suicide prevention and intervention, counseling, supervision and much independent research and study.
Experientially, I have taught high school for nearly 30 years. In the course of that time, I have worked with parents and students, supervised staff, created programs, written curricula, linked with agencies, sat on boards, and have just been involved in a broad array of activities working with people.
I am a hospice chaplain. Ministering to dying individuals is an incredible spiritual and educational experience. I also work in job development with disabled individuals.
I’ve had my share of traumatic life experiences. For my 18th birthday, a number of my dorm mates burst into my room and sexually gang-assaulted me. The experience stayed buried in me for more than 30 years until it fully surfaced at a workshop and retreat a couple of years ago.
A year after that sexual assault, my brother was killed in Vietnam. I can’t begin to tell you the trauma of losing him. He was my closest friend and like a surrogate father. About a year after that, I was assaulted, nearly losing an eye. I have also had my portion of the usual, and not so usual, issues such as rejections, disappointments, estrangements and conflicts.
Much time has been invested deconstructing and understanding my issues. God has truly created a new person, but the memories of my former life can still serve others. Our experiences are worthless unless we share them for the benefit of others. We are too often afraid to be vulnerable and transparent, especially as men. Yet, in vulnerability and transparency there is strength. Diane and I both know the pain people suffer.
Diane: I grew up with a terrible home life. I experienced sexual, physical and emotional abuse. I was even a teen runaway, living on the streets of Los Angeles for a while. I took drugs and lived a pretty wild life.
After I came into the WCG my life-style calmed down, but I was still scarred and devastated emotionally. My daily life was a wreck even though Jesus was now part of my life. I became anorexic and developed obsessive compulsive disorder. Plus my husband was bi-polar, clinically depressed and on his own emotional roller-coaster.
Life was not fun. God is faithful, though. Even when I felt he wasn’t with me, Jesus was guiding me. He was preparing me for the work he had planned for me. I have been a business executive and presently do communications and conflict resolution consulting work in addition to the workshops.
The Lord was teaching me how to cooperate with his healing work in my life. I am convinced that Jesus desires to heal all of us, but sometimes we do things that block that healing. Lack of forgiveness is a good example. It is impossible to heal when we harbor unforgiveness in our heart.
It is my passion to share with others the things I have learned as the Lord has healed my soul. I believe it is his desire that we never waste an experience, but that we use every experience to help edify the Body and all humanity and give glory to God.
WN: Could you summarize the core of the concepts you put forth in your workshops?
Richard: We have a life that Jesus has laid before us, and if we don’t commit to it, it is meaningless. It is our personal responsibility to surrender to Jesus. I can’t tell you how short I feel our perspectives often are on what it means to commit.
Also, we need to stop looking at other people, organizations, circumstances, past history, traumas and even Satan, and blaming them for what we are. We have been given grace and have been made new. We no longer need to live under the influence, under the bondage, of the past. The acceptance of personal responsibility for my actions has been the most freeing experience of my life.
Diane: Personal responsibility, accountability and the application of true love are how I summarize the general thrust of most of our workshops. The important key, though, is that all the workshops are not merely theoretical or abstract in nature. They are designed to allow people to begin actually applying the principles to their own lives with greater success, right in the workshop.
WN: What makes your workshops special? Why should anyone want your workshops?
Diane: Because God “breathes” on the workshops and touches people’s hearts. We know it is God and no other. There is no way we, as humans, can reach people at the depths that are plumbed and the levels that are reached.
Richard: I believe God has gifted us, individually and especially together. Our workshops are penetrating, exciting, fun for us and the participants, creative and practical. Participants leave changed, and that is a gift, too. Our workshops are a safe place to change. When one tries change in the world, they often pay a much higher price. And we care very much about people. We have many comments to read on our web sites.
WN: How does someone get in contact with you?
Diane: My web site is www.LifeHouseBeacons.com. You can telephone me toll free at 1-866 LifeHouse (543-3468) or send e-mail to me at info@LifeHouseBeacons.com. Richard’s web site is www.LetsTalkJesus.com. You can call him toll free at 1-866 Why Jesus (949-5378) or send e-mail to him at info@Lets TalkJesus.com or richard.gross@ wcg.org.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2004