Anderson University is welcoming Becky Walker as the new associate campus minister for women’s ministry and outreach for the upcoming academic year. Walker is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University and Southwestern Baptist Seminary.
Becky WalkerWalker comes to AU after serving in many different areas, including the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, and several state Baptist conventions.
Originally from Hamlet, N.C., Walker became a Christian at the age of 11. That same year, she began learning sign language from the deaf people in her church.
Since that time, she has worked extensively with deaf individuals. Walker said she felt God calling her to serve him when she was in college working with a revival team.
“I served on revival teams that specifically targeted deaf people and their spiritual needs,” Walker said. “I then realized the spiritual deficits in persons who were not only deaf but hearing also.”
In 1985, Walker was working with the Greenville Baptist Association surveying the deaf so that a deaf church could be organized. “I am much honored that the Lord has seen fit for that church to be alive and effective in serving deaf people today,” she said.
During her summers in college, Walker served as a summer missionary to the deaf as a consultant and assistant minister in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
Walker has served the deaf community internationally as a missionary in the Middle East. The region where she worked had about 19,000 deaf individuals.
While in the Middle East with her husband and two children, Walker served as a sign language consultant in a deaf school where she trained deaf people to teach their own language. She also taught parents of deaf children how to communicate with their children.
Walker was instrumental in assisting with starting a club designed for the Middle Eastern deaf men and women to communicate and come into contact with others who knew how to sign.
Since being deaf leaves many women shunned, they face a difficult life and will never marry or have children because the people in this region fear that it will further spread deafness. To allow these women to earn an income, Walker worked to create vocational programs that allow these women to make cross-stitched items that are sold around the world.
After being an instrumental tool to the deaf, Walker is now changing gears to be just as instrumental as she serves the women at AU. She says she would like to see herself as the “encourager to the women at Anderson University” as she oversees the spiritual needs of the women on the campus.
“I believe that young women do need other women to come alongside them and assist them in their walk with God,” Walker said. “I believe that women’s ministries can bridge young women and godly women together, much like Ruth and Naomi, in order to glean truths, to learn from one another, and to lean on one another.”
Walker says her goal for this year is to get to know “each and every woman on campus” so that she can express her “joy that they are vessels to be used by God.”
“I hope that their time here will weave threads of strength, endurance, and vision into the purpose that God has for them,” Walker said. “It is my vision that they will look at their own tapestry of life and see the brightest of colors shining through during their years here at Anderson University.”