LakePointe combats addiction through Hope Movement

Everyone has been touched by addiction in some way, whether through a friend, family member, or co-worker. Addiction is everywhere, and four years ago LakePointe Church set out to combat it by starting a women's ministry called the Hope Movement.

The Hope Movement is a post-rehab recovery program for women. Greg Bearss, lead pastor of LakePointe, said the problem, especially with women struggling with addiction, is that once they get off drugs and graduate from their rehab program they have no place to live, no job and no life skills to successfully integrate themselves back into the community. As a result, they usually end up falling back into the same lifestyle that they fought so hard to break free from.

"What we saw is, they would show up to our church and they would write on their connection card, you know, that lets us know they're there, and they would say, 'Hey, pray for me, I've got 41 days clean,' or, 'Pray for me, I'm still struggling with addiction,' and we would connect with these women after they got out of rehab and we would give them a mentor, somebody in our church that has a history of addiction that's been clean for several years, and they would help try to mentor them and we would see them at church a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, and then they would completely fall off the grid," he said.

After trying to locate the women, Bearss said it was discovered that they had gone back to their addiction, the biggest factor in that being that they didn't have a safe place to live.

The church also found that another leading cause of returning to addiction was because the women couldn't find a job.

"So, we saw those are two key things, and then we also realized they didn't have life skills. A lot of their kids have been taken away from them because they didn't have any parenting skills -- they themselves were never parented much, they're a product of their parents and poor decisions and so they're passing on this generational issue of just not knowing how to raise a child and not knowing how to deal with finances, not knowing how to take care of a house.

"We realized we needed to circle the wagons around these women and we needed to help them become fully devoted followers of Jesus, but we also needed to find them a safe place to live, we needed to help them find a job, we needed to help them in various ways with a lot of things that they were struggling with besides just staying clean from drugs."

An anonymous donation of $150,000 to the Hope Movement enabled LakePointe to purchase a home to house the women in the program.

"We're getting the house ready now and that's really where we want the community to help and rally around," Bearss said. "We're looking for people to get behind it, to pray for it, to sponsor a room, maybe help with some of the labors, if there are skilled plumbers or whatever their trade may be. We're really looking for this community to step in and help us complete the home and get it ready for the women that will begin living there."

He added that interior designer Sandy Sutton, Bob Geer Construction and Windows and More have all offered to do pro bono work on the house.

An open house will be held Oct. 22 at 302 Lary St. From 10-11:30 a.m., the house will be open for all faith-based groups, churches and organizations, and from 2-4 p.m. they will open the house to the general public and civic and government leaders.

Bearss said their goal is to have one of the eight rooms completed by the day of the open house to show those in attendance what the rest of the house will look like upon completion.

"One of the things we've realized is that addiction doesn't show discrimination. It doesn't care if you're black or white, it doesn't care if you have money, it doesn't care what your last name is. Addiction has touched our whole community, so it's a community issue that we want to step into the community to help fix and that's really the heartbeat behind the Hope Movement, to bring hope to these women who have never had hope before," Bearss said.

Women in need of assistance through the Hope Movement can visit the church at 1343 Albert Pike to apply.

Local on 09/25/2016

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