Jasmine Lovelace hadn’t seen her partner for a week. “He is out using (drugs) somewhere,” said Lovelace, a phlebotomist, recovered methamphetamine user and mother of five in Ocala, Florida. “He relapsed previously,” she revealed. “Without the faith that I have now, I would just be falling apart.”
Lovelace finds strength through her community at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Ocala. The church played and still plays a large role in her deliverance from addiction and loneliness.
“We’re in an anti-membership, anti-joiner kind of society,” said the Rev. Michael Adam Beck, co-pastor with his wife, the Rev. Jill Beck, at St. Mark’s. He is also director of Fresh Expressions for The United Methodist Church and author of “Never Alone: Sharing the Gift of Community in a Lonely World.”
Reaching folks like Lovelace is his mission.
In “Never Alone,” Beck claims that the old ways of recruiting people to attend church are increasingly out of touch, and even the goal of getting them to a church may be a problem. Read More Here
