Tommy Wilson is founder and director of Living Free Ministries, a non-residential facility in that offers support groups for recovering addicts.
The ministry is based in Corinth, a town of 14,300 located in Northeast Mississippi.
“Really, we're just there to help folks that's struggling with life,” Wilson tells AFN. "We've had a big opportunity and the community has really supported us for a long time."
Because statistics show 93% of people who want help don’t want to move into a residential program, Living Free offers two weeknight sessions, and one on Saturday mornings, to reach people who are struggling with what Wilson calls “life-supporting” and “life-controlling” problems.
“And addiction's the biggest thing,” he says.
Helping struggling people is personal for Wilson, who lived a dangerous life as a teenager and young man. What began with smoking marijuana at age 15 turned into a cocaine addiction at 18, then a guilty plea on drug charges at age 22.
After losing everything, including wife Marea and their son Preston, everything changed when Wilson finally attended church for the first time since childhood. That was on Easter Sunday, in 1998.
“And I kept going back for a few weeks. Something was drawing me,” he recalls. “Something had my interest that I needed a change in life, and I got saved May 24, 1998. And almost immediately I had a heart to start helping other men that was in my situation."
Wilson founded Living Free in 2005. The ministry has since expanded into a 12-man residential program, the Freedom Center.
