OUR STORY
Grace Network International was created in 1986 by Cash Lowe in order to serve the hurting and the broken. A few years later Curt Floski joined Cash and they began to focus on helping organizations serve vulnerable people adopt a more relationally-based, grace-filled approach to healing and transformation. However, long before they started GNI, both Curt and Cash lived and experienced the work of transformative grace by serving at local rescue missions, building relationships with people experiencing addiction, homelessness, and mental health issues.
In 1990, while Curt was serving as the director of a rescue mission in the San Francisco Bay area (where Cash was volunteering while finishing his Master’s degree), they began to notice that a lot of the ways they’d been taught to “help” people weren’t actually helping. So they decided to try a different approach. Instead of the rigid rules and shame-based approach most rescue missions used at the time, they decided to invite people into healing by creating an environment of radical grace and unconditional belonging rooted in personal relationships and authentic connection. It was a model that had helped Curt and Cash find healing in their own personal lives, and they wanted to extend that kind of grace to others.
At first, people in leadership were skeptical of the new approach. But it didn’t take long for the stories of relief, healing, and lasting change to prove the model.
News of Curt and Cash’s grace-filled approach to healing and transformation (and its effectiveness) spread like wildfire. They began getting requests for teaching and training to help people replicate the environment and the results in their organizations. Initially, it was primarily leaders from other rescue missions, but as the message travelled, it became clear the core of what they were teaching resonated with a much broader audience.
Curt and Cash branched out on their own and began consulting for other ministries in response to the demand for the message. Over the next decade, Cash and his family spent chunks of time in various countries around Africa, building relationships and spreading this message of grace there while Curt and his family stayed State-side to teach, train, and build relationships in the U.S.
In 2011, they were asked to take over leadership of the Shepherd’s House in Bend, Oregon. They spent the next 9 years developing a grace-based environment there, transforming it into a healing community that serves people who are vulnerable, hungry, and homeless in Central Oregon. At the same time, the demand for Curt and Cash’s message far outpaced their ability to deliver it, so Brian Gatley also came on in 2011 to help run the organizational side of things.
Now, with Brian’s help, Curt and Cash are delivering their message to a new generation of leaders in the hope of walking alongside them as they build more communities of grace, connection, healing, and belonging.
Our Team
Curt's Story
Since 1985, Curt and his wife have loved and walked with hurting and struggling people, offering grace, love, and honest relationship to those on the edges of society.
Curt’s passion is to help people create as many grace-filled spaces in the world as possible—spaces where pain is impacted by grace in a way that brings hope and opens the door to healing and transformation. Training leaders to create these kinds of grace-filled environments has been Curt’s primary goal for the last 35 years.
After many years of serving homeless, addicted, and struggling people in the inner-city both on an individual level and through program-design, Curt and his family moved to Central Oregon in 2000 to continue their work locally, nationally, and internationally.
For the last 10-15 years, Curt and his family have experienced the power and necessity of grace-filled spaces on a personal level as they’ve fought various battles with cancer. That journey has driven home the truth that everyone needs a place of unconditional belonging where they can struggle without judgement and live with nothing hidden and know they will always be met with grace.
The Floskis have three children and enjoy the outdoors, hanging out with family and friends, and admiring cool sunsets.
Curt received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and his Master’s Degree from Emmanuel Christian Seminary. Curt is trained in both Reality Therapy through the William Glasser Institute and Relapse Prevention. Curt is also an active presenter at Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (AGRM) conferences.
The Floski family raises support in order to walk with the struggling and brokenhearted of this world full time.
Cash's Story
Cash first volunteered at a small rescue mission in downtown Seattle 1979 as a freshman in college. That experience set him on a journey, and he has spent the next 40+ years walking alongside the hurting and broken in full time mission work.
However, it was his own transformative experience with grace in 1990—and its sustaining power in his life over the 30 years since—that fuels his passion for creating grace-filled spaces.
Shortly after he and Lisa got married, Cash went to graduate school to get a Master’s Degree in Ministry and was required to attend a series of group therapy sessions as a part of his counseling module. During one of the sessions, Cash found himself unexpectedly opening up and telling the group about some incredibly painful experiences that he’d had as a child—experiences that he had never told anyone, not even Lisa. But the idea of telling his new wife about those experiences filled him with angst, fear, anxiety, and shame. He didn’t know how she would respond.
Lisa was a flight attendant at the time and was away for a couple days, but as soon as she walked in the door, Cash worked up the courage to say he needed to talk to her. They sat down and despite his fear and anxiety, Cash told his story.
When he was done speaking, Lisa took Cash’s face in her hands, looked into his eyes with tears in her own, and simply said, “That just helps me know how to love you more.”
In that moment and in that space, Cash experienced grace-filled love in a way that he never had before… and it changed him forever. His shame and fear and pain were overtaken by hope, and a door to healing was opened.
In the years and decades since that moment, Cash has sought to help other people find that same sense of healing from fear, shame, and pain he’d experienced. Because no matter if they live on the streets of an American city, in a village in Botswana, or in a small mountain town in Oregon, everyone is seeking a place of grace, belonging, and love. Cash and his family seek to create those places.
Cash and his wife Lisa have four children and live in Redmond, Oregon. Cash received his undergraduate degree from Puget Sound Christian College and a Master’s Degree in Ministry from Hope International University.
The Lowe family raises support in order to walk with the struggling and brokenhearted of this world full time.
Brian's Story
Brian Gatley joined Grace Network International in 2011 after it became clear that the demand for GNI’s message of Grace outpaced Curt and Cash’s ability to deliver it. Serving as the Director of Operations, Brian provides “back office” responsibilities while also assisting with discussions and conversations for creating healing, grace-filled environments.
From 2011 to 2017 Brian also served as the Director of Operations at Shepherd’s House Ministries in Bend, OR.
Brian and his wife of 30 years, Beth, have 4 children. They currently live in Redmond, Oregon and enjoy family activities throughout beautiful Central Oregon.
OUR WHY
The foundation of why we do what we do is fairly simple: We want to live and love like Jesus Christ. He is our model.
Jesus was a grace-filled person who created environments of grace everywhere he went.
The way Jesus interacted with homeless, poor, marginalized, and addicted people in his community perfectly describes relationships based in grace. Jesus truly saw people for who they were—in all their pain, shame, and struggle—and still He loved them deeply. This led to deep, lasting healing and transformation in those people’s lives.
From the woman at the well (John 4:4-42) and blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52), to the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) and the criminal on the cross (Luke 23:39-43) and so many others, Jesus had a pattern of establishing grace-filled places and relationships for people who have been judged and rejected by everyone else. He held space for them (often silencing the people who condemned them) , spoke grace into their situation, and in doing so opened the door to hope and healing for them.
Rather than leading from his authority, Jesus led with humility and service. This approach drew broken and shame-filled people to Him like a magnet. Jesus made those people feel safe rather than making them want to hide their pain, as so often happens with people in power.
Struggling people flocked to him because He responded to their pain and shame by sitting with them, eating with them, drinking with them and listening to them. His response to their brokenness was to get to know them and to touch their pain and shame with the healing power of grace. He knew people deeply and truly and still He loved them. Which is precisely why they were drawn to Him and the environments of grace He created.
It is also only by being truly known and accepted as we are, that we can drop our masks, stop hiding, and live fully and freely. In that way, following Jesus’ example of grace is also the model for the “abundant life” he came to give us (John 10:10).
Jesus is the perfect combination of grace and truth
To us, grace and truth are not theological concepts… they are the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:14).
We believe deeply in the idea of grace, but we are also convinced that in order for it to be transformative and healing, it must be coupled with truth.
That’s because…
Grace without truth = Leniency
Truth without grace = Legalism
Our concept of grace-filled environments is not to be confused with license. Instead, it is protective love that seeks your eternal best-interest and calls you back to health and wellbeing when you lose your way.
We speak truth to our struggling friends and want what’s best for them, not because we have all the answers, but because we love our friends and recognize their struggle! None of us are without pain or brokenness or struggle. But when grace is combined with truth, we are seen, loved unconditionally, and then called into hope, healing, and transformation.
