What We Do

Unlocked Ministries is not a ministry...it's a movement. We exist to bring ministry to women everywhere, to help unlock their past and write a new future. We primarily do this through three avenues - life changing curriculum, empowering events, and helpful ongoing resources.

 

The vision for Unlocked Ministries was launched in 2018 after Founder and President, Kerrie Oles, spent years writing books and speaking across the country and one day wound up teaching in a women’s prison. After years visiting her own brother in multiple prisons and juvenile detention centers as a child, she realized that true transformation would never come as the result of just being locked up in a facility. She knew that we all tend to go back to what we know if root causes aren't addressed and that for these women, real transformation needed to happen so they wouldn't end right back up in prison after they were released. And while Kerrie never sought to have a prison ministry, the Lord spoke to her that she was going to have a ministry that freed women from a prison mentality. Kerrie left that experience and decided to write Unlock Now, a step-by-step curriculum to gain emotional healing and discover WHY they ended up in the place they were, instead of focusing on WHAT offense they had committed.

 

The beauty of Unlock Now is that it's not just for women in recovery or transitioning out of prison -- it's for every woman who wants to become fully who they are but finds themselves falling back into old patterns or familiar habits and is ready for breakthrough.

 

Unlocked Ministries primary outreach program started by partnering with transitional homes and halfway houses and has grown to assist homes for addiction recovery, battered women shelters, juvenile centers, and any homes with people needing help to recover from a trauma-filled life and live a transformed life. Our home partnerships include free Unlock Boxes for each woman starting the Unlock Now curriculum, and provides trained leaders to take them through the curriculum, or training for the group home leaders to facilitate the Unlock Now experience. Our beautiful Unlock Boxes are the catalyst to meeting these women where they are and communicating worth, dignity, and hope and they begin the brave journey to healing and wholeness.

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Unlocked Ministries has now expanded to include many other avenues for women everywhere to achieve healing and find authentic community including several additional books, Unlock Groups (both in churches and in homes), our annual Made to Shine Women's Conference, spring and fall retreats, weekly podcasts, and the development of our Unlocked Academy  (launching 2024) which will provide in-depth teaching from industry experts to take your journey to wholeness to another level and bring additional teaching to women who may not be able to participate in person. 

 

We truly believe there’s no place that God cannot begin to start you on a path to healing. He just won’t leave us where we are!