Video Transcript: Lesson 13

Well, in the last leg of this course on breaking the addiction cycle, we've been  talking about the rich history of the Oxford group, Bill Wilson, Dr Bob, and many  other developments that came through Alcoholics Anonymous and other  anonymous groups, alcoholics for Christ in the 1970s and eventually Celebrate  Recovery that came in 1991 through Saddleback Church and John Baker now  an international movement, as is alcoholics for Christ, and also Alcoholics  Anonymous and many other recovery groups. However, what is very interesting  still today is that as I encounter many churches, and I pray, as you're watching  this, I pray that in the next five years, 10 years, this will not be a problem  anymore. What is it? The problem is recovery ministry is not accepted  universally or even spoken about or practiced or recognized universally in every  church, every denomination, for whatever reason, years ago, with, again, the 12  Steps coming Out of Bill Wilson and the Oxford group, and the divergence is like two roads that kind of went off in different paths, kind of like that poem, two  roads, diversion in the wood. Those two roads diverged, and for whatever  reason, and I'm sure there are many theories. And for those of you are watching  who are in recovery and you have a sponsor, you've been to recovery, you're  sponsoring people and so on, you're going, Yeah, no kidding. Here's why. I'm  not going to get into that today, but what we want to acknowledge and also cite  is that the church never really integrated or brought into here's the point. Did not  really bring recovery ministry or recovery itself, in that semantic, in that  language, the 12 Steps and the 12 traditions and all that we now know about the history of recovery into the life, the general life of the church, into sermons, into  Sunday school, Christian education through the church, as well as other  ministries In the church having to do with salvation, sanctification. Becoming a  Christ follower, for whatever reason, it was always something else. We are the  church. They are the recovery. People, us, them. Big problem, big problem still  prevalent today. And I've been working and doing recovery ministry and  interfacing people in AA and also Narcotics Anonymous and other white groups,  and they I still hear this now in 2019 the same problem the church does not  recognize it completely. Oh yeah, that's good. It's probably more accepted. It's  more if you would say something about it and say, oh okay, to a church goer,  yeah, I know. I kind of know what that is. What is it again? And still a bit muddy  when it comes to what recovery ministry, or recovery rather in general, is, unless you're in it, or you know someone who is, or you just don't want to go there  because of fear and because, well, I just want to be in denial, and I want to be  fine thank you, and not go there at all because of what I might uncover if I  actually work on me. Okay, so the 12 Steps part four, recovery ministry,  Celebrate Recovery gave us a good model of that gives us some mechanics of  the how and the celebrate recovery model that we started with at new  Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan was this that they have dinner  during the first hour of a weekly event. So every week, there's one night a week 

dedicated to recovery at the church building, in the full environment, where  people come together to worship, fellowship and so on. And so that on the night  of recovery, of Celebrate Recovery, you'd have dinner at 6pm typically, or  whatever time you choose. But the first thing is dinner. The next thing is a  Celebrate Recovery worship service, and that involves using, of course, the  Bible and celebrate recovery material that is now in print and online. The third  part of the evening is the support group, peer support working the 12 Steps in  an open support group, or with some groups, as the ministry grows some they're closed because of the sensitive nature of the issues. And that goes for that next  hour after the group time the model goes that you have that one on one  fellowship, time with dessert, coffee, hanging out, important. And then, of  course, go home. And then throughout the week, of course, you have the  sponsor that you call, the person who helps you walk through the steps you  have, or an accountability, a partner or or both, as well as course, you have your things at church that compliment, Celebrate Recovery, the one night a week,  thing given that you are again plugged into the general life of the Church, as well as another evening or time During the week that you devote to a step study, step study, where you intentionally work through the 12 Steps of recovery with the  participant guides that are in the Celebrate Recovery curriculum. Well, that was  the model that we started with in 1999 as I went from Lake City, Michigan to  Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in that year, and then we started with Celebrate  Recovery, as I just described to you, and it was a great thing. We also started  where I built partnerships with different agencies and people and and groups  and and recovery houses and and in Grand Rapids, we are social work rich. We  have a lot of resources, a lot of people getting a lot of services, but everybody is  doing their own thing. And I saw that there's a need for collaboration, and that's  where community recovery came into play. See, by 2002 I had John Baker, the  founder of Celebrate Recovery and his team, come to Grand Rapids to do a one day conference about Celebrate Recovery. Had 300 people show up. It was a  great day. 60 over 60 churches represented. It was a good start for a lot of  churches, of course, now all of them went back home and did it, but they got  more information, and were then coming to understand what was, what  Celebrate Recovery was about. And as we went forward, I came we at new  Community Church, as we grew to about a good 200 to 300 people on a Friday  night at that time, decided to incorporate as a 501 c3 nonprofit organization here in the United States, and of course, better known as an NGO in other Other  countries, but a nonprofit organization, and we had to get a name and put a  name together to reflect who we were. And we at first we would, we thought,  well, let's just use Celebrate Recovery as part of the name. Found out we  couldn't, because Celebrate Recovery is trademarked at that time, and they just  got it done at the end of 2002 by 2003 and, oh, 2002 we were incorporated. It  was all good, and we had to come up with a different name. And so community 

was part of the name, and recovery was part of what we did. So community  recovery and we were doing things overseas. Community Recovery  International, that became our name. But what we did was, because we were  doing things a little differently than the Celebrate Recovery trademark, we ended up not calling it Celebrate Recovery anymore, although many of our people, and we still do today, still call us celebrate or Celebrate Recovery or and then finally,  oh yeah, community recovery. That's, that's, that's what we have, what we're  called now. But what we found was, was this, and here's my point, we found a  need to reach out and bridge Our vision is to bridge recovery people, which is all of us, to God through Christ, the true self made in the image of God and the  community, to give back as a mission, as a ministry, as a model. And big part of  our model and philosophy is that we as a ministry, part of a local church,  because a local church needs to be that place where we can then bring others  to Jesus and also into a recovery process of restoration. So given that vision,  and also premise, and also mission of receiving people, where they are  restoring them to Christ and and returning them to the community with a give  back. Hence, step 12 overall, doing a lifestyle of risk, restoring others in a non  co dependent way and in an interdependent way, with good boundaries and and great support, ideally from God's people, the church. We then blended. We built  a blend, and we still do this today. We blend, what you could say, celebrate  recovery groups with or Christian support groups with the 12 Steps and the  biblical comparisons with AA groups and also, or AA group and also in emotions, anonymous group, a Narcotics Anonymous group, and other anonymous  groups, just because that's what people know. That's what they understand. So  for in our experience, in now getting into the how, how does the church bring  those who up front obviously are struggling with addiction in an acute manner,  an obvious way into the church where we can bring them to Jesus. And it's a  matter of evangelism, it's a matter of relationships. It's a matter of again  recovery, a matter of then restoring people and, of course, building healthy  relationships. It's all together because back 20 years ago, my leadership team of that time and I noticed that we needed to build partnerships and collaborations  with other groups. No one knew what a Celebrate Recovery was at that time,  because it was still rather new, and we needed to introduce the fact that Jesus  Christ is going to be the center of what we did with recovery in general, whether  we had an AA group there that night or or a Christian recovery group that night,  and we have many different groups now, in addition to a Christian recovery  group that deals with alcohol substance abuse, we also had a Grief Recovery  group. We also had have a depression recovery group. We also have other  groups that met the same night at the weekly event alongside of the anonymous groups. Hence, God did the miracle. God did it. He brought everything full circle  together for us. And what was interesting, too, was that a lot of our AA people  who knew AA, a lot of our narcotics, anonymous people who knew NA thought, 

and many of them being believers themselves, thought this is really great. We  can do AA as we know it, and NA as we know it, and bring it back to the source,  bring it back to Jesus, because He is our all in all, yes, we go over the 12 Steps, the 12 traditions, and also the other things that come along the way that some  there's a little booklet called just for today with these Anonymous groups in the  curriculum, which is wonderful, good frameworks, good stuff. But then again,  where did you get back to Christ? And that is where in our experience, we found that to be very helpful. And as a result, we have now been able to bring this  blend, this combination, innovation, innovation to four other countries as an  international movement. Currently, we're in Kenya, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and  India, as well as we want to break down the us versus them, the Us and Them  problem, because we want to do this. We want what the church can be. The  church can be this. And over the years, we've been involved with re entry  ministry. What do I mean? Reentry? From Jail prison. So your church family  becomes that receptacle, becomes that, that welcoming environment in place at  the place you meet, where there's already a recovery ministry, where there's  already then a group of people ready to sponsor, to mentor, to support those  who are coming out of jail, serving their time or prison, and getting reoriented  restarted in the community. It takes a lot. It really brings the church back with the recovery ministry, back to what it's supposed to really be, not about making it a  great worship service on Sunday that although it's part of it, because you want  to have a great worship service as a way of connecting people to God in a great  first step, but then bring them into the discipleship process, discipleship, pointing them to Jesus, restorative process. So it's full circle and back to the worship  again, wherever they wherever we are as believers. So in our experience, we've been involved with the healing communities movement started by Dr Dean  Tralier out in Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC area, in here in the United States, and  also other church networks, building church networks, as I speak right now, in  2019 here in the fall, we're working to establish other community recoveries with us in about three, about four other churches now in our local area, as well as, of  course, having it being done in the other countries that I mentioned, and we're  just saying them. Let us show you how. Here's the how you can do in putting  together the recovery ministry. We could talk about it all day and explain the  steps of recovery, but at the end of the day, the how is still unclear for many  congregations, because it's still rather new, bringing it all into the vernacular,  bringing all into the language of the church and how we live our lifestyle as  God's people. And every church has its own culture. Amen. Every church is  different, amen, and we need to work and think collaboratively. For example, I  just gave you the weekly event model that Celebrate Recovery, blessed us with  to put those things together, of the food, the worship component of the whole  thing, with then the groups as well, and the Christ based, or the Bible basis,  now, of the 12 Steps, and then, of course, from their sponsorship. And therefore 

people, helping people, but then bringing it more into the fabric of the church, so that every church can eventually, like I said, five to 10 years from now, hopefully, eventually bring everything into the culture of the church, whatever culture you  may have, there's that common speech, so there's a collaboration and bring a  12 step lifestyle in the church, where you have your recovery event every week.  But also, do you support other recovery events, other recovery nights as multi  churches within your city or in your town, so every church in town eventually will  have a recovery night or a daytime version, and where you can create an  inclusive, safe environment and be Christ, to provide a non judgmental  environment and place of building healthy relationships. In this course, we've  talked about healthy relationships. Have talked about being the fact that we  need to be inclusive, and don't judge Matthew 7, Jesus talks about that, the  plank, the log in your face, suppose the speck in your brother's eye or sister's  eye. No. Jesus says, Look to me, and I'll take care of the rest. And with  recovery, we also want to create what the church needs to be, a church of  recovery, a recovery church. And also with the how we then blend in, we pull  together ministry and mental health. Now, some of you asked, thinking to  yourself, wow, mental health isn't that something that social workers do?  Actually, if you look at mental health, we all need to admit that mental health has to do with me. You us, all of us. We all have issues. We all. Need restoration. So let's bring it all to the forefront in the church experience and be God's people.  Where two or three are gathered, Christ is there and recovery is there. Where  500 gather, Christ is there and recovery is there. Or 1000 or whatever, however  big your church may be, maybe it's 30 people. And maybe you can see that's  also a great opportunity for church growth, inviting new people say it's okay y'all  come, just come on in. And then you have 31 people, then you have 35 people,  then you have 40 and then more and more. God uses you to make a difference,  because you're saying it's okay to admit your issue, it's okay to come into  recovery, and here will hold your hand, but then then God will change and  transform you, and God will use you to help someone else. And I like to put it  this way, make it okay to be not okay. Make it okay acceptable to be not okay or  not to be okay, because we're all in a form of re entry. We all need to be  empowered, with God's help. As we're empowered by God's help, we then  become more and more of what God wants us to be. So God will use you and  use me to bring Christ to someone who's lost and needs his restorative touch.  That means eternity. Because too often, when it comes to to church, people  have their own ideas. They have a preconceived notion. But the more we bring  recovery, the 12 Steps integrated with the Bible, we then have opportunity to  demonstrate model, show the intentional of helping others experience hope,  hope so consider the Celebrate Recovery model. Consider a blended model that I show, I shared with you, but where we have the AA groups as well as the  Christian recovery groups. Or maybe you just want to have AA in the in the 

church building and and a building, but you have a connection with them. And  yes, I, I could probably say right now that it's because of how the 12 traditions in  AA have said we have no religious affiliation or no political affiliation. Some of  you AA people watching are going, Yeah, see, that's it. Uh huh. Okay. However,  there should have been still a bridge, a connection, and we can be that bridge  connection, so that Jesus, Christ is at the center. He is a higher power. He is the one who then does it all, so that we can then bring AA back into the church,  bring Narcotics Anonymous back into the church, bring recovery in general,  back into the church, because Christ is the source, that's the vision, that's also  the mission, that's also the strategy, and also the how in doing it. And there are  many tools out there to help you do just that. So consider the 12 Steps, in the  biblical comparisons. Consider building relationships with other churches and  also other people in the recovery community that can become part of the  Christian community. You'll find many are already a part of the Christian  community the church. They just need the invitation to say, come on in and we  go forward in Jesus, name Amen