09/05/2026
I can't stand it when people introduce somebody by their struggle.
I was born in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. My dad was Air Force, avionics on the B1 bomber, and we moved around a lot when I was young. I don't remember much of Alaska. What I know of it is mostly pictures I've seen. Most of my life happened in Rapid City, South Dakota.
My dad never went to church. My mom was the church secretary, so we were there every time the doors were open. But that was a version of me. I played church. Outside of it I was someone else. I didn't accept Christ until I was sixteen.
I met Toni in the 10th grade. I wasn't a good student. It took me five years to graduate high school.
As my parents got older they wanted to be closer to their families. They drove through Lebanon once and my mom said, "this will work." So they moved to Missouri while I was still finishing high school. They tried to get me to move with them but I didn't want to leave Toni.
I stayed behind. I bounced around. I lived with my brother for a while until we about killed each other.
I stayed in Rapid City, graduated, and then Toni and I went to Southwest Baptist together.
I don't know how I even got in. I applied and they took me. I think it was just a God thing, honestly. But when I got there, I decided I was going to take it serious. I wanted to learn. I wanted something different than what I'd been doing.
I was pursuing a ministry degree at SBU when a friend told me they needed someone to do Bible studies at the juvenile detention facility in Bolivar. I went once a week and started falling in love with it. I built relationships with the staff and with the kids.
I've always had a heart for people who are hurting, broken. I don't know why. It's just how God wired me.
They offered me a job while I was still in school full time. It was my favorite job I ever had. Half that facility was kids who'd run away or foster kids in transition, kids who just needed somewhere safe. The other half was locked down. A lot of those kids had never seen anything different. Dad's in prison, mom's in prison, an uncle too. It's just life to them.
I wanted to show them that they get to write their own story.
From Bolivar I transferred to the detention center in Camdenton. I was a supervisor there for several years, and then I moved into the field as a juvenile officer, working the delinquent side. I carried a caseload of eighty kids. I'd go into the schools. I'd meet with families.
That job is what brought us to Lebanon. We started going to church at Heritage, and Toni and I began volunteering in the youth ministry. Six months later the youth pastor resigned, and they asked if we'd fill in.
We fell in love with it. Then they talked me into leaving my state job, my retirement, everything. I was three years from being able to retire. It's nuts when I think about it now. But it was clear. It was God.
I did student ministry for thirteen or fourteen years. When I stepped out of it, Toni was already leading Celebrate Recovery at Heritage on Thursday nights. I stepped into it with her, and then she went back to work when our girls got to school age. So I took it over.
When my oldest daughter, Sam, was getting ready to start attending youth ministry, our youth pastor left. I wanted my girls to have the best youth group experience, so I stepped back into it. I was good at it. I loved it. I poured my life into it, and Toni did too.
But I had a gap in my spirit. Something in me kept saying, this isn't where you're supposed to be.
I was coming home from a mission trip in Africa, sitting in an airport in Brussels, talking to Kevin, one of our other pastors. I told him I thought I needed to step back into recovery work. When we stopped doing CR at Heritage, some of those people didn't go anywhere else. That had been their church. We stopped it, and their community was just gone. It had been keeping me up at night.
Years earlier, I'd met John McGinnis. An intimidating man, all tatted up, leathered up, rode in on a Harley. Came into church and sat in the back. Didn't talk to anybody. I decided that guy's gonna like me.
He was guarded with me at first. Then one day he just asked if we could grab coffee. He'd just lost his son to an overdose.
We've had coffee every Monday for seven years now. He's probably my best friend.
When I started praying about what would come next, John was who I talked to. I asked him what was missing. I really believe there's never been more recovery resources in our community than there are right now. Celebrate Recovery at Lifepoint and Harvest Tabernacle, Lane Change, treatment court, Overcomers. It's everywhere.
John said what recovery needed was discipleship. Not only the steps and principles, but somebody setting their life down beside yours. We talk a lot about old man, new man. Old man is easy. That's our nature. New man is foreign. Nobody's shown you how to walk with God every day, how to be a husband, a wife, a dad, a mom, a friend. They've just never seen it.
I wanted a place that's safe, where people can be honest. Where you don't get judged or kicked out for struggling out loud. A refuge, and community, and ultimately, the refuge that's in Christ.
This Sunday, Refuge at Heritage celebrates two years.
We started with twenty five or thirty people. Now we've had nights with two hundred. We're preaching the word of God and trying to love people well.
I believe there's no recovery without Jesus. You can get clean, get sober, work through your struggle. But recovery is different. True freedom is only found in a relationship with Christ.
We serve a meal before the service and groups. We've got six small groups that rotate through, cooking and serving every week out of their own pockets. The church offers to pay for it. Nobody's ever taken them up on it. A restaurant in town donates to-go boxes so everyone can take home leftovers.
I've never struggled with addiction myself. I've got my own junk I've worked through, like we all do, but that's different. I knew that for Refuge to actually reach people, it couldn't just be me. I needed people like John in leadership. Tim and Crystal Owens. Toni. People who could reach the hard to reach in a way I never could.
My dad wasn't a believer for most of my life. In 2023, our church took a trip to Israel, and out of nowhere, my dad asked to go. In the Garden of Gethsemane, they had us spread out to pray on our own. I looked up and saw my dad praying. I'd never once seen that in my life.
Afterward he walked up to me and said, Jason, I want you to know I believe all this is true.
I baptized him when we got home.
I've seen the Lord radically change people.
Our identity is not our struggle. Every person you ever lock eyes with is an image bearer of God. They have value. They matter to the heart of God, and they better matter to us.
Jason Redick, Heritage Baptist Church pastor and Refuge leader
