The results of Freedom That Lasts
Real stories of gospel-centered transformation through addiction ministry.
When the whole church gets behind It
How one Georgia church is building a FTL chapter where everyone has a role to play.
A ministry that changed his entire church
How one church reclaimed discipleship in their addiction ministry.
"I think You got the wrong guy..."
How a self-employed businesman with no pastoral training built one of the most successfull FTL chapters.
From the streets of San Francisco to the pulpit
How a downtown church in one of America's hardest cities is using scripture, patience, and a Friday night meeting to change lives.
Two small churches. One county. Zero programs like it.
How two congregations under 50 members partnered to launch FTL and ended up recognized by local judges and probation officers.
When the whole church gets behind It
Christian Heiss — Crooked Creek Baptist Church, Georgia
Who they are: Christian Heiss is the Chapter Director at Crooked Creek Baptist Church in Georgia. He came to the role not through formal ministry training but through a single Friday night visit to a live FTL chapter — and a conversation on the drive home that changed his direction entirely.
The before: Crooked Creek's senior pastor, Brenson Jennings, carried a growing burden for a ministry that could walk alongside people in their deepest struggles. The problem wasn't a lack of heart — it was a lack of a clear path. There were programs available, but Pastor Phelps was specifically looking for something anchored in the belief that the Bible is sufficient for the psychological needs of people. Finding that was harder than it sounded. The church had no addiction ministry infrastructure, no trained directors, and no clear next step.
What they built:
A Friday night FTL chapter drawing primarily from within the church congregation — believers ready to grow, willing to be honest
A two-caregiver care group structure: one male care group leader, one female care group leader, described by Heiss as "wonderful, excited, faithful, and loving people"
A welcoming community culture specifically designed to let participants "let their hair down" after a hard week
A vision for whole-church ownership — every member having a role, whether cooking a meal, praying, attending, or passing out tracts
The wins:
10–12 people from Crooked Creek made the initial visit to Faith Baptist in Taylors, SC — enough momentum to launch a chapter
Consistent weekly attendance of 5–12 people; current attendance at 8–9
4 men from a local ministry transport group joined and are now regular participants
New members still arriving — including a newcomer the week before the interview
Pastor Jennings has said the testimonies coming out of FTL are the highlight of his Sunday experience
"It's Friday, the week is done and you can just let your hair down and relax and enjoy each other's company and be encouraged." — Christian Heiss
"I'm confident that God is going to accomplish it. Because I just believe and I'm persuaded that God's going to use this ministry — not just in our church, not just for our community, but also through our church." — Christian Heiss
The bigger shift: Christian arrived at FTL as a church member with no counseling background. The ministry gave him a calling. On the drive home from his first FTL visit, he told his pastor he wanted to be trained as a biblical counselor — a direction he is now actively pursuing. His vision for the chapter has expanded from a Friday night group to a whole-church mission: every member of Crooked Creek owning a piece of the ministry together.
A ministry that changed his entire church
Jim Doherty — Northridge Bible Chapel, Raleigh, North Carolina
Who they are: Jim Doherty is the Chapter Director at Northridge Bible Chapel in Raleigh, North Carolina — a church of roughly 150 people, about 40 of them children. By his own description, Jim is not a professional Christian. No pastoral degree, no counseling certification, no background in addiction ministry. A businessman who spent his career starting organizations and applying systematic thinking to problems.
The before: Northridge Bible Chapel spent six to eight months trying to get an FTL chapter off the ground under a different director. When that effort stalled, the original director came to Jim and asked him to take the lead. Jim agreed — and then immediately realized he had a knowledge gap. He didn't understand where the participants were going to come from. An ACBC-certified counselor on the team gave him his answer:work:
"She said, well, in our particular case, we'll fill up the whole room with people from our own little Bible chapel. I said, you can't be kidding me. I had no idea. And it's exactly what happened." — Jim Doherty— Lee Lennox
What they built:
A Friday night FTL chapter relaunched with a six-person founding team, each with a distinct role: Jim directing, his wife Karen handling administration, a former heroin and oxycodone addict leading the men's care group, his wife (a nurse) leading the women's care group, a long-tenured church member teaching every Friday night, and his wife heading hospitality and the after-meeting meal
A one-on-one meeting culture as a cornerstone practice — supplementing group meetings to surface needs the group setting never reaches
A prayer-covered launch process: the leadership team gathered the Wednesday night before their first meeting to pray specifically that someone would show up
The wins:
12 people walked through the door on the very first Friday night
20–25 people now attending weekly, with just under 30 on the rolls
Roughly 20–25% of the adult congregation participating — people already in the church whose struggles had been entirely invisible
Two certified counselors on the leadership team, including one ACBC counselor
A former heroin and oxycodone addict, saved 8 years prior, now serving as men's care group leader
FTL became a catalyst for the entire church — pulling together a multigenerational congregation in ways leadership never anticipated
"He came again this past Friday and everybody just loved on him and welcomed him and made him feel like he's a part of something. To me, that's what FTL is — it is welcoming those people who never get welcomed, who never feel loved, who never feel accepted by a church." — Jim Doherty
"I'd just like to recommend it to anybody. It will pull your church together. And that was never our objective. But we're a family of 140 people in our church — we've got some families here for four generations — and this has really pulled us together. We didn't know we needed to be pulled together, but it really has been a catalyst to grow for just about everybody in the church." — Jim Doherty
The bigger shift: Jim set out to start a ministry that would help people. What he got was a ministry that changed his entire church. The hidden need that had been sitting silently in the pews for years — in a congregation Jim thought he knew — turned out to be larger than anyone realized. The FTL chapter made it visible, gave it a home, and in doing so, made Northridge Bible Chapel more of a church than it had been before.
"I think You got the wrong guy..."
Keith Lynam — Valley Forge Baptist Community Church, Pennsylvania
Who they are: Keith Lynam is the Chapter Director at Valley Forge Baptist Community Church in Pennsylvania. By his own description: no college degree, no pastoral training, no seminary. A self-employed businessman who spent decades running his own company — far more comfortable talking shop than teaching Scripture.
The before: Valley Forge Baptist had run a Reformers Unanimous program for years. When circumstances required a change, the leadership evaluated their options seriously. The decision came down to theological and philosophical alignment. Both FTL and the church's leadership were deeply connected to ACBC — the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. The theology matched. The philosophy matched. The commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture matched. Keith had already been filling the director role in the preceding year, so the switch to FTL didn't disrupt momentum — it deepened it. When Keith first stepped into the director role, he was direct about his reservations:
"I don't have any official pastoral training, I don't have a college degree, and now I've got a pair of lessons and a handout that people can read." — Keith Lynam
What they built:
A Friday night FTL chapter that replaced a long-running Reformers Unanimous program with no loss of momentum
A community outreach system: flyers on bulletin boards, community outreach events, an electronic sign running 18 hours a day, and letters going out to like-minded churches in the surrounding area
A teaching practice — Keith began preparing and delivering his own lessons from Scripture, slowly at first, then nearly every week, sometimes twice
A discipleship pipeline that produced not just changed participants but formed new leaders — people who walked in broken and stayed to lead
A multi-church outreach posture: not harvesting other churches' people, but serving the surrounding community and welcoming anyone whose church couldn't meet their need
The wins:
17 years of sustained ministry through addiction recovery and discipleship
5–6 marriages that began in the Freedom That Lasts room
Averaging 30+ attendees on Friday nights — up from the high teens and low 20s just six months prior
Half the current group comes from other churches in the area
Families described as "totally devastated by addiction" restored; faith recovered; salvations happening on a regular basis
A director who once said "you got the wrong guy" now teaches from Scripture nearly every week — sometimes twice
"This program is an addictions recovery ministry. And that's how we disguise our discipleship program." — Keith Lynam
"Along with the more people that come who are in need, also more leaders magically show up." — Keith Lynam
"Put the thing in place and God will bless it and take it from there." — Keith Lynam
The bigger shift: Keith came in as a businessman filling a role. Seventeen years later he is a teacher, a discipler, and a ministry builder whose chapter has produced marriages, salvations, restored families, and a steady stream of new leaders. The man who said "you got the wrong guy" became exactly the right guy — because Freedom That Lasts is designed to work through ordinary people who show up consistently for broken people and trust the Word to do what no program can do on its own.
From the streets of San Francisco to the pulpit
Dan Pelletier — Hamilton Square Baptist Church, San Francisco, California
Who they are: Dan Pelletier is the Chapter Director and Pastor of Hamilton Square Baptist Church, located in downtown San Francisco — not on the outskirts of the city, but in the middle of it. Strip clubs down the street. Homeless encampments around the corner. Drug addiction and alcohol dependency woven into the fabric of the neighborhood.
The before: Dan had the burden before he had the tool. What he needed was something anchored in Scripture, requiring genuine accountability, that didn't just gather people and call it help. When he reviewed the FTL materials, the decision was immediate:
"When I got the materials, I saw that it was biblically-based, and there was some discipline involved, required if you're going to move forward. And I think that's a lot of what the people who are on the streets and have addictions have problems with — just accountability and being pointed to the scriptures and doing the work." — Dan Pelletier
He signed up in approximately 10 minutes. Credit card in hand.
What they built:
A downtown San Francisco FTL chapter drawing participants from the streets, the homeless community, and within the church congregation
An adapted curriculum deployment using Dr. Berg's virtue video series — cycled through the material four complete times with continued growth from each pass
A Freedom Bucks reward system redeemable in the church bookstore for A.W. Tozer books, journals, and discipleship resources — adapted from FTL's standard ribbon and pin system to fit the local context
A discipleship pipeline: identifying, training, and preparing a formerly homeless participant (Will Shermer) to take over the FTL ministry entirely
The wins:
6 young men baptized in one Sunday evening service, with 2 young ladies baptized three weeks prior
Will Shermer — homeless when he first arrived, wearing a rough T-shirt — is now preaching sermons, scoring in the 90th percentile or better in Faith Baptist Bible College online coursework, and being prepared to take over the FTL ministry
Dan's wife, a long-time believer, is halfway through the second FTL book and the most consistently progressed participant in the group
Participants with anxiety, phone addiction, and relational brokenness — not only substance struggles — finding consistent help through the curriculum
A social worker who visited observed a live meeting and said: "I really like this."
The virtue video series has been cycled through four complete times with participants still growing from each pass
"I've got one guy who was homeless when he showed up here in a T-shirt looking rough, and now he's preaching sermons for me." — Dan Pelletier
"I dump myself into other people who dump themselves into other people. I call that the ripple effect. And who knows how far that ripple is going to go." — Dan Pelletier
The bigger shift: Hamilton Square's FTL story is not a large-group success story. Dan is honest about that. It is a depth story — a formerly homeless man who showed up broken and is now being shaped into a minister who will carry the ministry further than Dan has had the bandwidth to take it alone. The ripple is already moving. The chapter proved that in one of the hardest ministry contexts in America, consistent curriculum and radical patience with broken people produces transformation that no clinical framework can replicate.
Two small churches. One county. Zero programs like it.
Lee Lennox — First Baptist Church of Reed City, Michigan
Who they are: Lee Lennox is the Chapter Director and Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Reed City, Michigan — a town of 2,500 people with 12 churches and, until FTL arrived, zero addiction discipleship ministries in the entire county. Lee is also FTL's Director of Chapter Development and an ACBC-certified biblical counselor with a D.Min. from Bob Jones Seminary.
The before: Reed City had a visible and unaddressed addiction problem. Lee had a personal conviction that existing programs got something fundamentally wrong — the way they asked people to identify themselves. He could not, in good conscience, run a program built on that framework:
"I've never been able to say, 'Hi, my name is Lee and I'm an alcoholic.' I identify as a Christian who struggles with sin — because that's not who I am. I am a child of God."
— Lee Lennox
First Baptist had roughly 50 members. Liberty Baptist, another church in town, had a similar number. Neither had the volunteers or financial resources to launch something alone. Lee called Pastor Trevor at Liberty Baptist, sat down with him, and discovered they shared the same theology, the same goals, and the same heart for their community.
What they built:
A co-launched FTL chapter between First Baptist and Liberty Baptist — two churches that combined represented fewer than 100 members
A four-person founding leadership team: Lee and his wife Melissa leading from First Baptist, Pastor Trevor and his wife Liz from Liberty Baptist
Split teaching duties and separate male and female care groups across the two church teams
A cooperative coverage model — leaders filled in for each other during vacations and family needs
A community outreach presence that attracted referrals from local judges and probation officers
The wins:
Sole county resource — the only ministry of its kind in the county, recognized and referred to by local judges and probation officers
The presiding judge, after hearing Lee explain the ministry in open court, said: "Thank you for doing what you're doing. You're the only ones in the county doing this" — and sanctioned the chapter as an outpatient intensive rehab resource
Multiple probation officers now actively send participants to the chapter
Low recidivism — most participants, including many told they would never complete probation, have not returned to the system
Growth from 1 to 40 participants in 7 months in a town of 2,500 with no marketing budget
3 deacons, 2 trustees, and the church youth leader are now all part of Lee's small group — a direct result of the chapter's discipleship impact inside the church
The church voted to fund the chapter from its missions budget — elevating it from a side ministry to a church priority
"When I saw that first guy get a ribbon, he was just overwhelmed — and I was crying a little on the outside, a lot on the inside. It's totally worth it." — Lee Lennox
The bigger shift: What began as a practical solution to a resource problem — two small churches combining because neither could do it alone — became a model for what FTL can accomplish at the smallest scale. Reed City proved that size is not the barrier. A burden, a partner, and the willingness to start with one person showing up is enough. The county noticed. The court system noticed. And the church that launched it was changed from the inside out.
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