Unbound Grace is a Birmingham ministry partnering with Samford’s Office of Spiritual Life for College Grace Groups, aimed at helping students find freedom from silent struggles like gambling, alcohol, pornography and other struggles.
The ministry and the grace groups were started by John Steakley. These groups will be separated for men and women and are intentionally not on campus, so students can feel comfortable entering and experience the privacy of the groups.
John Steakley founded Unbound Grace in 2018. He has a connection to Samford and a personal story of recovery, because he attended Beeson Divinity to get his Masters in Divinity. In that time, he was married, had his first child, was a full-time student and also worked full time at Covenant Presbyterian.
Due to the stress of seminary, work and family life, John said he began to have an extra glass of wine at night to help him sleep better.
“That went from something that I did to help rest to something that I did to help relieve me from stress, and it escalated from a habit into an addiction.” Steakley said.
Steakley ended up attending rehab at UAB, and when he left, he had the desire to do ministry to help people struggling with addictions. He ended up founding Unbound Grace, as a ministry to work alongside churches.
“I think every person struggles with addiction because I think it’s just a complicated word that we use for sin,” Steakley said.
After spending time counseling college students in recent years, Steakley had the idea of doing on-campus support groups, and he’s beginning at Samford, which is only a mile from their office.
“There’s some pretty significant issues, especially, the modern college student, that faces so many temptations from so many different angles,” he said. “And it’s not always these big stigmatizing addictions like drugs and alcohol and pornography, it can be our phone, it could be shopping, it could be fear of missing out. There’s so many different addictions, but addictions are just the presenting symptom, there’s always something behind that, and that’s what we try to get to in these groups.”
Steakley reached out to Samford’s Office of Spiritual Life to see if they would be interested in partnering.
“It felt like it was just a really, really good alignment with Samford and what we would love to do. And also a unique enough niche that was like not something that we can typically provide a lot of resources for,” said Todd Oakley, Associate Campus Minister.
Oakley and Taylor Dubuisson, another Associate Campus Minister, are hoping to point students in need to these groups to help them get help.
“If there’s something that you cannot break free from, like we want to just help you address that. We want to help you find freedom in that,” Dubuisson said.
Interested students can visit the website to see the time meeting location for the men’s and women’s groups.
“My challenge would be just walk in one time, and if it’s not worth your time, never come back,” Steakley said. “But I think people will be shocked with how they are able to be vulnerable and feel safe and feel the joy of that deeper connection just in one meeting.”
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