SPRINGFIELD – A Missouri-based ministry aimed at reaching the hard-to-reach in society, from the homeless to drug addicts to ex-convicts, continues to gain ground across the nation and around the globe.
Freeway Ministries, co-founded in 2011 by John Stroup, Mike Aye and Rick Lechner of Crossway Baptist Church here, exists to help churches expand ministry into their communities, taking the gospel to the hard-to-reach so that they themselves will multiply disciples.
“God is doing it,” Stroup, the ministry’s executive director, said in 2014. “He is turning convicts into preachers. He is turning drug addicts into missionaries.”
Freeway Ministries Executive Director John Stroup, with his wife, Sharla
Indeed, through its Timothy Project, the ministry is now sending Freeway missionaries throughout the nation.
The Timothy Project, according to the ministry’s website, is an “internship program” that gives “training and hands-on experience to those who are called to serve in Freeway’s Missions.”
The goal is that some Timothy Project graduates will carry on the mission by starting other Freeway Programs at churches around the nation.
“Our strategy,” Stroup said, “is to send out 10 missionaries a year, to start 10 Freeways a year to multiply the ministry.
“We have 12 Freeways on the ground right now,” he added, “and before the end of the year we’ll have two (new Freeways) in Florida. We just planted one in West Texas. We have one in Tennessee. We’re in South Dakota. And so it’s really starting to spread, it’s really taking off and multiplying.”
Already, in years past, the ministry has worked with churches across Missouri and has even been established in Cape Town, South Africa.
Recently, with the help of Missouri Baptist churches and other supporters, Freeway was able to pay off the mortgage for its Springfield headquarters. As a result, it is able to invest the money that would have gone monthly to mortgage payments into the Timothy Project missionary efforts.
“We’ve had 12 graduate our internship program so far,” Stroup said. “Now, we’re just waiting for churches to say, ‘Hey, we want do to recovery ministry.’”
When a church decides to start its own Freeway program, it will be connected with a Timothy Project graduate, who can serve in a “recovery pastor” role on the church’s staff. “We help (the church) with support for the first three years, monthly,” Stroup said. “And then (after three years) the church picks them up, and they become bi-vocational or a (full-time) pastor of the church.”
The Freeway website shares the stories of some Timothy Project graduates, who have been transformed by Christ and who are ready now to serve as Freeway missionaries.
Take, for example, Timothy Project graduate Joe Walters.
“Joe has been in and out of prison institutions since he was 18 years old,” the website says. “He came straight from prison in 2019 into the Freeway Ministries Discipleship Program. Joe excelled and learned very quickly how to apply and live out the Word of God in everyday life.”
Eventually, Joe became a house leader at the Freeway Ministry men’s house in Marshfield. Feeling a call to ministry, he is continuing his education at Liberty University.
“Joe entered The Timothy Project to learn how to operate and oversee Freeway Ministries’ operations. He is ready to be sent out and willing to go wherever God calls him.
“Joe met his wife serving at Freeway Ministries and is excited to have a family of his own,” the website adds. “He is excited about missions and the things of God.”
Like so many of the men and women involved with Freeway Ministries and its Timothy Project, Stroup is a former drug addict and ex-convict who has been drastically transformed by the gospel. In recognition of this transformation, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson pardoned Stroup on May 28, 2021.
Stroup is the author of two books: From the Pit to the Pulpit, which shares Stroup’s testimony of being transformed by Christ’s love; and Stop Loving Your Kids to Death: Breaking the Destructive Cycle of Enablement in Addiction from a Biblical Perspective.
To learn more about Freeway Ministries, visit http://www.freeway-ministries.com.