“Jan is a high energy Christian speaker. Her own journey—survivor turned marketing executive turned counselor to others in Jesus Christ—riveted my attention and the rest of the audience.”

--- Major John R. Cheydleur, Ph.D., ACSW
The Salvation Army

“ Grace and healing are communicated through the vulnerability of men and women who have been fractured and heartbroken by life.” 1

Meet Jan Coates, speaker/author and a “work-in-progress” believer. What God has done in Jan’s life is what qualifies her to write and speak. She is living testimony that God is a God who loves, forgives, redeems, and restores.

Consumed with shame and guilt from childhood abuse, Jan turned her back on her Christian faith during her teen years. She filled her life with self-destruction to mask her pain. By the time she was 19, she was divorced with a young son.

In 1982 a drunk driver killed that son, Jan’s only birth child. This tragedy left her emotionally paralyzed and numb. Her knees buckled and she collapsed on the floor, face down. "No, God, not Chris," she cried out. “Please God, I need you.” For the first time in seventeen years she communicated with God.

Jan knows firsthand the pain of hiding from God because of feelings of unworthiness and shame. By God’s grace, she overcame childhood abuse, dysfunctional family relations, divorce, the loss of her only child, depression, cancer and much more. Jan knows about hanging on to a bare thread of hope and overcoming, in spite of all odds and worldly conditions.

Jan rededicated her life to Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday 1983. Now, as an international speaker, lay counselor, and author, and consultant, Jan ministers to countless individuals how they too can be set free.

Jan Coates is living proof that through Jesus, painful pasts can be put behind and victims can become victors who then become “difference makers”—passionate advocates with a Kingdom purpose—that God can use.