HELLO, OCALA! Meet your neighbor: Shirley Beattie

Shirley Beattie poses for a photo at her On Top of the World home in Ocala on June 6, 2025. Originally from Scotland, she moved to the United States in 1973. She is currently the office manager at the North Lake Presbyterian Church in Lady Lake. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette]

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Posted June 17, 2025 | By Eadie Sickler, Correspondent

All the way from the United Kingdom, Shirley Beattie has settled at On Top of the World in Ocala. Her locating here, however, followed having her feet on American and foreign soil in many different parts of the world.

“When I was growing up, my dream was to travel the world. I’ve learned that with God, all things are possible,” she said.

Bravely, when she was 21 years old, Beattie set out by herself to travel to America in 1973, on a visitor’s visa, to visit a cousin who lived in New York. The two had been pen pals since childhood. Moving from there to Washington, D.C., she worked for an insurance agency. It was there that she got her green card authorizing her to live and work in this country. From D.C., Beattie decided to move to Fort Lauderdale.

Her parents followed her lead and also moved from England to New York, then later to Fort Lauderdale.

“That is when God was first presented to me,” Beattie noted.

In 1975, during a visit to the beach, two young people approached and asked if she were to die, did she know where she would spend eternity? She didn’t have an answer. The girls shared the gospel and Beattie prayed to accept Jesus into her life, she recounted. She joined the young people in Bible studies in basic Christianity. She drifted away from the teaching, though, and left Florida in 1977 to travel to Los Angeles, invited there by a friend.

Because of her previous experience, she was hired into the insurance department of the Merle Norman Cosmetics company in L.A., eventually becoming the firm’s convention coordinator. She loved the experiences travel presented and worked for the company for seven years. She obtained her citizenship while in L.A., in 1981, at the L.A. Colosseum, among a group of 10,000 people.

Beattie moved back to Fort Lauderdale to be with her parents when she was pregnant with her son.

“Then God got ahold of me,” Beattie recalled.

She was offered a job at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church as assistant to the director of Evangelism Explosion, a training ministry instructing lay people to share their faith. During her time there, she went on mission trips to Switzerland, St. Thomas and India, doing training with local churches in evangelism. She stayed in that position for seven years. For the next 13 years, she worked for EE International, organizing international conferences for delegates around the world.

She also worked for the president of EE International and organized the International Congress of Nations, the first in Kuala Lumper in Malasia. Delegates were there from all over the world. Many other conventions took her all over the world, including South Africa (where she was able to go on a safari) and Fiji.

Beattie retired from EE in 2017. Because she had been volunteering for Xtreme SOULutions, the organization offered her the position of part-time office manager. Now living at On Top of the World in Ocala, she received a phone call from her niece who worked North Lake Presbyterian Church in Lady Lake. They needed an office manager and Beattie applied for the job and was hired.

“I love it,” she shared. “I have people around me all day long.”

Beattie’s father died in 2017 and her mother lived with her for three years until she passed away in 2023. Beattie’s son, C.J., lives in DeLand with his wife, Morgan, and they have a son and a daughter. Beattie has three brothers and a sister, all younger than herself. One brother lives in England but the others are in the United States.

Beattie has several hobbies, including creating glass art, painting and writing. She has created books for her family and for friends with whom she traveled to Tuscany.

She has been a member of College Road Baptist Church for about 10 years. She recently facilitated a class there, using the “Experiencing God” curriculum.

“I love the preaching, fellowship and just the whole church,” she said. “They feel like family.”

“Basically, my story is that God has been working on me from the beginning and I can see how experiences in the past have helped me in my current ministry position,” she offered.