Our Team

Dr. Shelly Melia

Dr. Shelly Melia is the Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Ministry at Dallas Baptist University. She served in the local church in children’s and family ministry for over 25 years prior to coming to DBU to lead the Master of Arts in Children’s Ministry and the Master of Arts in Family Ministry. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor and serves as a Professor of Childhood Education at DBU.
Shelly became a single parent in 2005 when her husband was killed in a car accident. She and her husband had three children ages 6, 4, and 2 when she became a widow. Her area of research interest is in resilience and how faith and spirituality contribute to a child’s ability to be resilient in the face of great personal challenges. It is her desire to awaken and empower the church to come alongside single parents and their children to provide support and hope as they experience the love of God through the care of His people.
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Caroline Chalkley

Caroline Chalkley is the Single Parent Pastor at New Life Bible Church London, and the only on-staff pastor in England specializing in Single Parent Families. As a former single mom herself, Caroline knows the many needs of single parents and feels a calling as a pastor to minister to unwed women raising children alone. After launching this ministry more than 15 years ago, Caroline has seen continued expansion as the population of single parent families continues to grow in her community and across the U.K. Her passion is to help single parents find their hope in Christ in the season of parenting alone. Having seen her own life transformed from brokenness to wholeness, Caroline’s desire is to extend that same hope to other single parents so they can also discover that their lives are made for purpose, and they can have a fresh start in Christ.
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Linda Jacobs

Linda Jacobs is one of the nation’s leading experts on how to minister effectively to single parents and children of divorce. Having been both divorced and widowed, Linda learned firsthand the emotional and support needs of single mom-led families, and she developed a passion to help other hurting families.As a pioneer of single parent family ministry, Linda has served over several decades as a children’s ministry director, children’s program developer, speaker, author, trainer, and therapeutic childcare center owner. Linda has shared her expertise across multiple platforms, including conferences like D6 and The Single Parenting Summit, organizations like Focus on the Family, and her 2019 book, The Single Parent: Confident and Successful. Linda is possibly best known for her role as Church Initiative Ministry Ambassador, where she developed the Divorce Care for Kids (DC4K) curriculum and monitored conversation traffic across the Divorce Care, DC4K, and Single and Parenting websites, which gave her unique insight into the actual experiences of single parents with the local church.
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Matt Haviland

Matt Haviland is the Men’s Center Director for Alpha Grand Rapids (AGR) which operates two centers in West Michigan: Alpha Women’s Center and Alpha Men’s Center. Matt is deeply passionate about discipling men and understands how valuable fathers are to their families and communities. As Men’s Center Director, Matt empowers staff members and volunteers to walk alongside fathers in an urban environment and equip them to be the best man, partner, and father possible. Co-author of The Daddy Gap and former Director of A Father’s Walk Single Dad Ministry, Matt has been working with fathers through a variety of organizations and partnerships since 2008. He joined the team at Alpha Grand Rapids at the beginning of 2021, shortly before the new Men’s Center facility was completed and opened as one of the first standalone buildings solely serving fathers in the United States. A native of Grand Rapids, Matt is married to his amazing wife, Christy, is the father of a wonderful teenage daughter, and he and Christy are currently in the adoption process as well.
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Carol Lubs

Carol Lubs is passionate to see the Church walk with single moms, support life at all its stages, and offer long term discipleship for single parents and their families. As an adoptive mom herself, Carol saw the lack of support available for moms to choose life in an unplanned pregnancy and the lack of resources to make an informed decision about whether to parent or to place in adoption. In 2007 Carol founded Cradles of Grace, which helped teens and young adults to choose life, choose Christ and choose church community. It offered church centers that met weekly with a meal for the moms and children and small group Bible studies to disciple the moms along their journey. It also had counselors and mentors to walk alongside the moms for the duration of the pregnancy and focus on being a grandma. Carol continues to speak and teach at their centers, was a speaker at the 2017 Single Parenting Summit, and is a children’s leader for middle and high school students for Bible Study Fellowship.
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Ani Blickley

Ani Blickley has been ministering to teen moms for 28 years, most recently as Communications Director for The Lighthouse for Teen Mothers since 2015. As a teenager, God planted a passion in Ani’s heart to help those who found themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. From there, she led a Teen MOPS ministry in Grand Rapids, MI for 18 years and in the process her eyes were opened to the prevalence of homelessness among this population and the need for safe housing for single moms and their kids.

The Lighthouse grew out of this need for housing solutions, creating a group home for teen mothers as well as developing shepherding homes where families take single parent families into their private homes to house and mentor them. Today, Ani is using her experience to  educate and mobilize church communities to help provide more safe housing solutions for single parent families.

In 2007 Carol founded Cradles of Grace, which helped teens and young adults to choose life, choose Christ and choose church community. It offered church centers that met weekly with a meal for the moms and children and small group Bible studies to disciple the moms along their journey. It also had counselors and mentors to walk alongside the moms for the duration of the pregnancy and focus on being a grandma. Carol continues to speak and teach at their centers, was a speaker at the 2017 Single Parenting Summit, and is a children’s leader for middle and high school students for Bible Study Fellowship.
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