RAYMORE, Mo. — Shawna and Kevin Coffman’s house of refuge isn’t on the way to anywhere.
You wouldn’t know it’s here unless you heard about it from someone else who turned up from life’s floor — who maybe rotted relationships and teeth with methamphetamine, or raided a grandparent’s medicine cabinet for pills, or knows how to squat and cough for a jailer’s body-cavity check.
The Coffmans’ Saved by Grace Fellowship in rural Cass County east of Raymore, a city in the Kansas City metropolitan area, sits lonely on a horizon as big as all the hope its self-described misfits nurture for one another.
On a recent day, the small crowd that gathered on the gravel drive ahead of another Celebrate Recovery Friday service also knew the truth.
The sky, as big as it is, can’t absorb all their pain.
“Once you’re here, you’re still not fixed,” said Moe Witt, 39, one of seven members, along with husband Corey Witt, 41, who agreed to talk to The Star about a community’s generosity and its struggle to change lives.
“We don’t know how to live,” she said. “We’re trying to learn how to get through this life together. That’s what makes this place wonderful.”
They talked about the love and trust of the Coffmans. How they all found their way here. About addiction’s strangling grip. And how quickly they can fall.
Not all of them will stay clear of trouble by the time their stories are told here.
Did you shoot up once hiding in a bathtub at a homeless shelter? Did you steal your kid’s birthday money to spend on dope?
“Nothing surprises us,” Witt said. “We all know what it’s like.”
With hands open to the ceiling, voices high, they sing.
“I am free!”
On Sunday mornings. On Friday nights.
“I am free to run. I am free to dance.”
Shannon Bruegge, the Cass County Drug Court probation officer, had to see it for herself.
She drove out to Saved by Grace Fellowship on a Sunday morning and slipped into a seat in the back row.
Sure enough, she saw several of her people — convicted drug law violators who’d diverted from prison to the county’s intense drug treatment program. One was singing in the choir. One read the Scripture.
Drug court turns its clients’ lives inside out, watching over their treatment, their counseling, their home life, their employment, and their social and spiritual support.
Bruegge wanted to see this place and these people — “Shawna” and “Kevin” — whose names kept popping up when the court was checking in on its clients.
How’d you get to that job interview? Shawna took me.
Are you working? Kevin got me a job.
Have you found a place to stay? Shawna fixed me up.
When some of the clients had completed the grueling drug court program and were given graduation ceremonies, a mysterious woman in the back was clapping and cheering loudest of all.
Who is that? Judge Mike Rumley wanted to know.
It was Shawna.
‘For the underdog’
The Coffmans’ church is simple. A pianist and drummer at the front. A congregation casual in summer shirts, shorts and sandals. Plenty of long hair. Plenty of tattoos. No minister robes.
A satiric bowling ball with a bolted chain and emblazoned with the word “religion” sits at the front.
Here was “someone for the underdog,” Bruegge said. Here was a community “giving back to a lot of people society had given up on.”
There was no formal line for greeting when it was done. Bruegge approached Shawna, who was mingling, and introduced herself.
Shawna gushed, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
And the probation officer replied, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Fifteen years ago, Kevin and Shawna simply wanted to publish a religious newsletter to send into prisons.
He was a construction tradesman with a tile company, and she was a graphic designer — and they still are.
Some of their readers who left prison for homes in or near Cass County wanted to make church part of their lives but felt self-conscious and a bit ragged to step into a regular congregation.
So the Coffmans started a church in their home in 2002 just for those people. Within a few months, they rented a storefront shop to take in a small but growing church group.
They learned how much drugs and alcohol had ravaged so many of these former prisoners’ lives. Helping them help one another fight their addictions became a central part of their mission.
They moved into their own building in May 2011. Within a year, they opened a chapter of the national Celebrate Recovery program. It became one of the Cass County Drug Court’s approved choices for its clients’ required support group meetings.
They know that for every three people in their ministry in recovery, two are bound to relapse, they said.
Things disappear. Desperate people will take advantage of them.
“Sometimes we’re blessed,” Kevin said. “Sometimes we’re burned.”
But for the most part, their patience is inexhaustible. The doors are always open.
