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Our Story
A person’s worst chapter doesn’t have to be their final story.
Saved By Grace House didn’t start as a business plan. It started with a man who lived the thing he now builds for other people.
Meet the Founder
Jarvis Guthrie
Jarvis Guthrie knows firsthand that a person’s worst chapter does not have to become their final story.
After experiencing incarceration from 2012 to 2014, Jarvis encountered God while serving his sentence. On May 13, 2013, Ephesians 6:19–20 changed the direction of his life as he began to understand his calling to be an ambassador in bonds.
Since his release in April 2014, he has dedicated his life to helping others discover the same hope, grace, and opportunity for change that transformed him.
May 13, 2013
“For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”Ephesians 6:20
The Road Here
Grace House isn’t a theory he read about.
It’s the road he walked — turned into a house other people can walk it in.
Incarcerated — and found
Jarvis encountered God while serving his sentence. Not at the end of the road, but in the middle of it.
“An ambassador in bonds”
Ephesians 6:19–20 changed the direction of his life. Paul wrote those words from a prison too — and called himself an ambassador anyway. Jarvis began to understand that his calling had already started, right where he was.
Released
And immediately turned back toward the people still inside — and the ones just coming out.
The work
Prison ministry. Reentry. Fatherhood engagement. Mentoring. Supporting families impacted by the child welfare and criminal justice systems. He has gone back into correctional facilities as a volunteer and mentor, encouraging incarcerated men to prepare for life beyond prison — and to become better fathers, husbands, and leaders.
Florida State College at Jacksonville
An Associate degree in Business Administration, followed by a Bachelor’s degree in Supervision and Management.
Ordained
Ordained as a minister — formal recognition of what he had already been doing for a decade.
Grace House
Jarvis and his wife, Jennifer, are building Saved By Grace House — a Christ-centered shared living community in Jacksonville designed to give adults more than a place to sleep. Structure, accountability, discipleship, community, and encouragement, for people committed to sobriety and rebuilding their lives.
Why It’s Personal
More than a second chance.
For Jarvis, Grace House is deeply personal. He believes people need more than a second chance — they need people willing to walk beside them as they build a new direction.
He has seen what happens when someone is ready to change and has nowhere stable to do it. They get released, they get discharged, they get sober — and then they get handed back to the same street, the same couch, the same people, the same night that took them down the first time.
It isn’t that they lacked willingness. They lacked a place. Somewhere with a door that locks, a bed that’s theirs, people who expect something of them, and a standard high enough to be worth rising to.
Grace is freely given. Trust is faithfully earned. Responsibility is willingly accepted.
Family is the first ministry.
Above every title, Jarvis considers being a husband and father one of his greatest responsibilities, and believes that family is the first ministry.
That isn’t a sentiment tacked onto the end of a bio. It’s why fatherhood runs through everything he does — and it’s the standard the people in this house get held to.
He and Jennifer are building Grace House together.
The Conviction
A bed is not a plan.
This is the sentence the whole house is built on, and it came from watching the alternative.
What usually happens
Someone finishes treatment or walks out of a facility with a bag and a phone number. They find a cheap room somewhere. Nobody there knows their name, asks about their week, or notices when they stop coming home. Rent is due, work is unsteady, church never happens, and in eleven weeks they’re back where they started — convinced this time that they’re the problem.
What we’re after instead
Someone moves in and within two weeks has a written plan — work, money, faith, relationships, and where they’re headed next. Every week, somebody sits across from them and asks how it’s going. Six months later they’ve got savings, a church family, a work history, and a move-out date they chose. That’s not a miracle. It’s a plan, plus people.
Where We Are Now
Small on purpose. Growing on purpose.
We’d rather do this well with a few people than badly with many. Every bed we add gets added the same way — finished properly, filled carefully.
The renovation is nearly done. Two bedrooms are left — roughly four thousand dollars in materials and labor between where we are today and two more people off a couch, out of a car, or out of a situation that was going to end badly.
If you want to be part of finishing them, or of hiring the people who live here, or of walking alongside this household in prayer, there’s a place for you.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”Ephesians 2:8