Kathy Gallagher, along with her husband Steve, co-founded Pure Life Ministries in 1986. For the last 20 years, Kathy has been counseling wives of husbands who struggle with sexual sin, as well as a growing number of women struggling in sin themselves.

Her book, When His Secret Sin Breaks Your Heart: Letters to Hurting Wives, was written specifically to address the pain and devastation that wives face when dealing with their husband’s sin.

Kathy, based on her own real-life testimony, is able to impart heart-felt encouragement by providing practical and biblical answers, giving hope through the very answers that worked for her. She not only sympathizes with the emotional turmoil wives experience, but more importantly, she directs them to their only true source of hope: Jesus.

Today, as a result of her passionate efforts to help these women, each year hundreds of wives receive counseling through Pure Life’s Overcomers At-Home Program.

Currently, Kathy serves as Vice-President and CFO for Pure Life Ministries. She and Steve reside in Eastern KY.

Read Kathy's Testimony

Steve Gallagher, founder and president of Pure Life Ministries, grew up in Sacramento. His initiation into pornography and immorality began in his early teens. Over time, his struggles with sexual sin escalated. In 1982, as a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy, his life disintegrated around him, bringing him into a deep repentance. After leaving the Department and entering Bible school, he and his wife Kathy began Pure Life Ministries as a small support group in the living room of their home. The Lord eventually led them to Kentucky where they opened up their home to six men in sexual sin. Thus began the Pure Life Ministries residential program.

Appearances in the late 80’s on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 48 Hours with Dan Rather, The 700 Club, Focus on the Family, and a host of other programs quickly brought national exposure to the ministry as a place where men could turn to find God’s answers to sexual addiction.  Today, Christian men from all over the world come to the Pure Life Ministries Live-In Program. Steve and Kathy now make their home in Eastern KY.

Steve Gallagher is a prolific writer, having authored 11 books, including the best-selling At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, a comprehensive biblical examination of sexual sin. Because of his 20 years of experience in the counseling arena, Steve is frequently sought after as a conference speaker. He has conducted numerous workshops for pastors and counselors. Over the past two decades, Steve has ministered in churches of diverse denominational backgrounds across the USA and South America. He is also a regular featured columnist in both print and web media. 

Steve is an ordained minister and holds a Ministerial Arts degree from Capital Bible Institute in Sacramento. He is also a certified biblical counselor through the International Association of Biblical Counselors (IABC) in Denver, CO and has earned a Master’s in Pastoral Counseling from Master’s Graduate School of Divinity (Evansville, IN).

Rose Colón is the Director of Women’s Counseling at Pure Life Ministries, a position she has held since 1996. A certified biblical counselor, she also serves as mentor to female counselors-in-training for Pure Life Ministries.

Originally from New York City, Rose has a Masters of Ministry in Biblical Counseling from Master’s Graduate School of Divinity in Evansville, IN and holds certification from the International Association of Biblical Counselors (IABC) in Denver, CO. Mrs. Colón has conducted workshops and seminars in a variety of settings, including national Christian counseling conferences, women’s ministry groups, and Bible colleges.

Rose and her husband Jeff live in Williamstown, KY.

by JOHN MACARTHUR --  DOES GOD NEED A PSYCHIATRIST?  Over the past decade a host of evangelical psychological clinics have sprung up. Though almost all of them claim to offer biblical counsel, most merely dispense secular psychology disguised in spiritual terminology. Moreover, they are removing the counseling ministry from its proper arena in the church body and conditioning Christians to think of themselves as incompetent to counsel. Many pastors, feeling inadequate and perhaps afraid of possible malpractice litigation, are perfectly willing to let “professionals” take over what used to be seen as a vital pastoral responsibility. Too many have bought the lie that a crucial realm of wisdom lies outside Scripture and one’s relationship to Jesus Christ, and that some idea or technique from that extrabiblical realm holds the real key to helping people with their deep problems.      

True psychology (“the study of the soul”) can be done only by Christians, since only Christians have the resources for the understanding and the transformation of the soul. Since the secular discipline of psychology is based on godless assumptions and evolutionary foundations, it is capable of dealing with people only superficially and only on the temporal level. 

Christian psychology” as the term is used today is an oxymoron. The word psychology no longer speaks of studying the soul; instead it describes a diverse menagerie of therapies and theories that are fundamentally humanistic. The presuppositions and most of the doctrine of psychology cannot be successfully integrated with Christian truth. Moreover, the infusion of psychology into the teaching of the church has blurred the line between behavior modification and sanctification.       

Any counselor who desires to honor God and be effective must see the goal of his efforts as leading a person to the sufficiency of Christ. The view that man is capable of solving his own problems, or that people can help one another by “therapy” or other human means, denies the doctrine of human depravity and man’s need for God. It replaces the Spirit’s transforming power with impotent human wisdom, stated MacArthur. 

Patrick J. Carnes Biography

Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D., C.A.S. is a nationally known speaker on addiction and recovery issues.

The New Times suggested his book, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred, "will create a new wave of understanding about sexuality and the dynamics in intimate sexual relationships." Dr. Carnes is co-editor of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention.

He pioneered the founding of the Certified Sex Addiction Therapist program. This has evolved into a network of local, regional, and residential programs which specialize in this work. He currently serves as Executive Director at A Gentle Path Program at Pine Grove in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for the treatment of sexual and addictive disorders.

He developed a therapeutic technology based on his landmark study of the recoveries of 1,000 sex addicts. This work is summarized in Don't Call It Love, which has been described by The New Age Journal as "the best book on the market about addiction and its costs and consequences."

Dr. Carnes graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He received his Master's degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. in counselor education and organizational development from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Carnes was awarded the distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Council of Sex Addiction and Compulsivity. Each year, NCSA/C bestows a "Carnes Award" to deserving researchers and clinicians who have made outstanding contributions to the field of sexual medicine. He also was awarded the 2000 Counselor of the Year Award by AzAADAC in recognition of his contributions to the field of addictions treatment.

He as authored Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (1992), Contrary to Love: Helping the Sexual Addict (1989), The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships (1997), Open Hearts (1999), Facing the Shadow (2001), In the Shadows of the Net (2001), and The Clinical Management of Sex Addiction (2002). His first book on family systems, titled Understanding Us, is regarded as a classic in family education and is not available in many foreign editions.

Dr. Patrick Carnes Recovery Zone
Sponsored by The Programs at PineGrove
2255 Broadway Dr.
Hattiesburg, MS 39404
1-888-396-8621