What We Are All Doing to Make Better Lives

Taking Part
in focus :  LIFE

Partners for PeaceMakers

5-step spiritually-centered reflective process to engage with youth and young adults to be partners with them as they move from “challenges” to a positive journey for LIFE.

Healing Care Groups

Groups of six to eight people who desire to experience spiritual growth for the sake of another’s healing. Areas of spiritual growth include knowing who we are in Christ, embracing God’s love for us, meditating on the word of God, and experiencing the presence of Jesus. Areas of emotional healing include addressing issues of loss, anxious feelings, woundedness, and times of deep sadness. The focus :  LIFE Institute offers two Healing Care Groups: Women Bridging Change and Men for Others.

Peace Circles

Participants of focus :  LIFE Institute offerings are invited to take part in Peace Circles for ongoing inductive discernment. The way to the truth comes out from inside of us in relationships with others. The path to peace is to transform negative energy into positive power to heal.

Faces of a Mother

Faces of a Mother radiates the sense of unconditional acceptance for grandchildren. To listen to the stories of young people without wanting to fix whatever is shared. People from the business community partner with elders to accompany young people to discover what they want to do with their lives based on their talents and interests. Faces of a Mother encourages young people to see all they do as lessons learned. As Faces of a Mother respond, the learnings can deepen. Ordinarily, they meet in group settings.

People at focus : LIFE

Fr. John Phelps

Fr. John is President and CEO of Life Directions, an organization working in Public High Schools and among young adults to develop a hunger for positive values and spirituality. He co-founded Life Directions in 1973 with four other concerned Detroiters. The work has impacted over 168,000 young adults in six areas of the country. He has spent his life working among the economically challenged. He is the Pastor of St. Peter Claver Catholic Church with 40,000 people within its boundaries.

Annette Howard

Annette Howard is Director of Training at Life Directions. Her primary responsibility is the supervisory and management of programs and overseeing training. Annette has been employed with Life Directions since 2013. She’s involved with the implementation and delivery of the Peer Motivation and Peer Mentor Programs for Middle and High School Students as well as the Summer Youth Employment Program, and oversees training through the Life Directions Training Center.

Fr. Alex Steinmiller

Rev. G. Alex Steinmiller is a missionary, belonging to the Passionist Congregation of the U.S. In June of 1970 when he was ordained, he was assigned to Detroit, Michigan to participate in conducting retreats with young adults, laymen and married couples.

For 44 years he has been affiliated with Life Directions, which he co-founded, an outreach program to facilitate productive relationships between higher achieving young adults and their lower achieving peers. His work included weekly group work in public schools and in the surrounding neighborhoods with adults in their 20’s and 30’s. In 2006, he was the founding president of Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Upon his retirement from the school he pastored a multi-cultural parish for three years. He now resides, again, in Detroit working with Life Directions and assisting at St. Paul of the Cross Retreat Center.

He has travelled through southern India four times visiting Passionist missions, and has worked with fellow Passionists in Brazil.

Fr. Steinmiller holds an MA degree in Theology from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.