Bridges to Grace: Innovative Approaches to Recovery Ministry (Leadership Network Innovation Series) - Softcover

Swanson, Elizabeth A; McBean, Teresa J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310329671 ISBN 13: 9780310329671

Publisher: Zondervan, 2011

Synopsis

Discover the power of recovery ministry for your church.Churchgoers who experience painful family issues, addictions, abuse, loss, mental illnesses, and other secret sorrows begin to believe they live beyond the grip of God’s redemptive hand. Pastors often feel ill equipped to help with such problems and refer people to resources outside the church. People badly need Christ-centered counsel and encouragement, but few church leaders even know where to start.Bridges to Grace is an inspiring introduction highlighting the stories of churches across the country that are thinking systematically and organizationally about the ministry of recovery. The authors share how this ministry is bringing God’s grace to hurting individuals. They relate both success and failure, and best of all, they demonstrate how God uses recovery ministry powerfully for his kingdom purposes.

About this title

About the Authors

Liz Swanson is the Project Director for Tango Family Initiative, an organization committed to helping build healthy families and marriages through changed lives. Before coming to Tango, Liz served for five years with Leadership Network as the National Leadership Community Director for Recovery Ministry.  As a result of her research into recovery, Liz lead and convened 55 churches who are leading the charge for recovery in the church. Liz taught Communications at Colorado State University and Front Range Community College. Before embarking on her teaching career she served for 22 years  with Campus Crusade for Christ.  She resides in Louisville, Colorado with her husband Eric.

Teresa McBean is the Executive Director of the National Association for Christian Recovery, an organization providing resources, training, and hope to Christian organizations and individuals serving addicts and their families. Her passion for recovery is expressed through her service as minister of NorthStar Community (NSC), a position she has held since 1999. NSC is a recovery ministry of Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. She and her husband, Peter, have three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bridges to Grace

Innovative approaches to recovery ministryBy Liz Swanson Teresa McBean

Zondervan

Copyright © 2011 Liz Swanson and Teresa McBean
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-32967-1

Contents

PREFACE..........................................................................................1IN APPRECIATION..................................................................................7INTRODUCTION: The Tattoos Tell the Story.........................................................111. IT ALL BEGINS WITH YOU: Christian Assemblies Church...........................................212. WHAT THE MRI REVEALED: Woodcrest Chapel.......................................................313. CANCER, ADDICTION, AND A MEXICAN DUMP: Henderson Hills Baptist Church.........................494. THE CHURCH, A PLACE OF HOPE AND HELP: Salem Alliance Church...................................635. IT'S ALL ABOUT THEM, NOT ABOUT US: Bon Air Baptist Church.....................................776. CRISIS IN A SMALL TOWN: Caveland Baptist Church...............................................937. THE PEOPLE EVERY CHURCH WANTS: Grace United Methodist Church..................................1058. A FAMILY OF TRUST: Golden Gate Missionary Baptist Church......................................1199. A CHURCH WITHIN A CHURCH: Mercy Street Church.................................................131CONCLUSION: Where We Go from Here................................................................145APPENDIX A Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps..................................................159APPENDIX B Celebrate Recovery's Twelve Steps and Biblical Comparisons...........................161APPENDIX C Celebrate Recovery's Eight Recovery Principles.......................................163APPENDIX D Understanding the Twelve Steps.......................................................165APPENDIX E Henderson Hills' Theology of Christian Recovery......................................181APPENDIX F Recovery Ministry Leadership Communities: Participating Churches.....................185HELPFUL BOOKS....................................................................................191NOTES............................................................................................193

Chapter One

IT ALL BEGINS WITH YOU Christian Assemblies Church

I became more desperate to follow Christ than to pastor a church, so I began to preach from my own broken life as I taught the Scriptures.... I had learned to do church but had forgotten how to do Christ. — Pastor Mark Pickerel

WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT FROM THE OUTSIDE, the church building that houses the congregation of Christian Assemblies Church in Eagle Rock, California, is really nothing to brag about, but as I (Liz) entered the sanctuary that morning for worship, it was packed out. Those in the gathered body, standing and sitting, reflected the surrounding neighborhood in age and ethnicity. Located on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, this is a church filled with Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Pacific Islanders, and Caucasians. Christian Assemblies isn't your typical, homogeneous church, yet it is growing and thriving as a multiethnic community of faith.

I had been traveling around the United States and Canada for almost three years at this point, visiting churches and sitting in services, and yet when I arrived at Christian Assemblies in Los Angeles, something struck me as different. "They get it," I thought. "They really get it!" I knew very little about the church apart from what my niece, Sunny, had told me when she invited me. "All I can tell you is that this church understands recovery," she had said.

She was right.

Authenticity and Grace

As we worshiped together that morning, it was almost as if you could sense the presence of God in the atmosphere of authenticity and grace. After the ser vice, I found some time to meet with Mark Pickerel, the senior pastor of Christian Assemblies, and listen to him as he shared the story of the church and how God was working to bring freedom to people's lives.

It all started about twenty years ago when the church was going through a very difficult transition. Much of the church's structure was being changed at that time, and the entire congregation was going through a time of "great searching." Mark said that he too had been trying to figure out what was going on in his life. "I had learned to do church but had forgotten how to do Christ." About this time, he became fascinated by a group of alcoholics who began attending the church. "They wouldn't compromise at any point. They were so honest, even ruthlessly so, about their own lives and failures." Mark later found out that these men were faithful members and regular attenders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

At the time, Mark was also meeting regularly with Dr. Archibald Hart, a renowned psychologist and Christian leader who was teaching at Fuller Seminary. He had been helping Mark work through the issues that had caused such chaos in his church. Mark explained to Dr. Hart his fascination with this group whose members were so honest and devoted to AA. Dr. Hart suggested that he attend a meeting to see what he might discover.

So one Thursday night, Mark drove out to the San Fernando Valley to attend his first AA meeting. As he walked into the room, he began to realize that he was truly anonymous. Nobody there knew he was a pastor. Nor did they care. "They assumed I was just another drunk who needed to get sober, and they embraced me with a grace that was truly overwhelming." One of the guys, who didn't look as if he could rub two nickels together, even came up and offered to buy Mark a "Big Book" (the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the framework of AA, including the Twelve Steps to recovery). Mark thanked the man for his kind offer, amazed that a man with far fewer resources than Mark had was willing to buy a book for a complete stranger. Mark decided to buy the book himself, and he sat down to see how the rest of the meeting unfolded.

Everything that happened was very new for Mark. He didn't know the rules, and he felt out of place when everyone stood up and repeated a mantra declaring that they were a mess and needed help. Then, when everyone sat down, a nicely dressed, successful-looking businessman went to the podium. He began to talk about how his week was going, and at one point he became very quiet and said, "I felt so pressed ... but I didn't drink." The group began to clap and cheer as they shared in his victory. He then received a "ninety-day chip," indicating that he had gone almost three months without a single drink.

After he sat down, a woman stood up to speak to the group. She too was nicely dressed and quite articulate, but Mark could tell as soon as she began to speak that her story was headed in a completely different direction. As she reflected on the ups and downs of her week, she ended by confessing her failure to the group: "But damn it, I drank this week," she said. Unlike her predecessor, she had relapsed into her old ways of coping.

Mark wasn't sure what would happen next. After all, the woman had failed. Would they yank her off the stage or boo her for her mistake? Much to his surprise, the crowd again stood up and applauded. The small group of people there surrounded her with love and encouragement. Why? Well, simply because she had shown up that night; it didn't matter that she had failed. She was there and she had shared her struggle. "I almost didn't know what to do with it," Mark said to me.

After the meeting was over, Mark walked to the parking lot and got into his car. It was raining hard that night, but he didn't drive home. In fact, he didn't even start the engine. "I just sat in my car and wept. There was something in me that ached to be a part of a group where it was okay to fail and, in the midst of failure, to know there was still a power that gives you a second chance, a new beginning, one that gives you the possibility of a fresh start."

That night, Mark Pickerel, a pastor, left an AA meeting having witnessed the power of a different kind of confession. While one of the people in the group had acknowledged his struggle and was able to celebrate his victory, another member of the group had admitted her failure. Both confessions of faith were celebrated. And in that anonymous meeting room — where there had been no mention of God or Jesus Christ — Mark Pickerel had seen a model of how to respond to hurting people. What he witnessed that night brought him to tears. Why? Because Mark knew that the power of confession and repentance, so vital to spiritual growth and transformation, wasn't present in his church.

Replicating the Meeting

Mark reported back to Dr. Hart on his experience at the AA meeting, acknowledging his concerns about his church: "I thought that to be successful, I had to be better, bigger, and faster. But at that meeting, people embraced me with a kind of grace that was really overwhelming." Mark decided to do something about it. He sensed that God was calling him to create a place that was characterized by grace and acceptance in action, a church where God's love could be seen and felt by anyone who attended. "If somebody comes to church that week and has succeeded, we'll stand and applaud the grace of God that gave him the power to do what brought him success. But if someone fails, we will also stand and applaud him because there is still the hope of grace that can change him."

Attending the AA meeting gave a new focus to Mark's life. As he returned to the pulpit the next week, he began to make some practical changes in the way he was leading the church. "I realized that even though I was not an alcoholic, I too was desperate. I was a man who was hiding from others." Mark didn't have a grand plan or a new strategy, but as he describes it, "I became more desperate to follow Christ than to pastor a church, and I began to preach from my own broken life as I taught the Scriptures." Mark found himself revealing more of his own struggles to the church. As he shared honestly on Sunday mornings, he found not only that he was experiencing the power of healing but also that his vulnerability in the pulpit was beginning to change the culture of the church. "People were saying to me, 'This is what it looks like to follow Jesus. This is what it means to confess our sins one to another.'" As Mark confessed and shared his struggle with sin, he wasn't just giving out a laundry list of his personal shortcomings. He began to speak openly about his brokenness, his pain, his fears, and his failures. Because he spoke honestly, people connected with him, seeing him not as an aloof pastor but as a man who shared many of the same experiences they had.

Starting a Recovery Ministry

When Jim Cosby, the care pastor at Christian Assemblies, came to the church to start an "official" recovery ministry, he simply built on the groundwork Mark had already laid. "The church had already become a church of grace," Jim said. "It was a place where people were welcomed and accepted just as they are. It was a place where no one needed to perform to be accepted. Christian Assemblies is the first place I found grace. I was a pastor who had utterly failed in the past. People I led did not get better; they got worse. And I didn't get better either. It wasn't that the gospel was broken — I was."

Jim told me that when he shifted from telling people what he thought they ought to know to telling them about his own brokenness and healing through Jesus, the people he was leading began to experience God's healing as well. All Jim had to do was provide a safe place for people to speak about their struggles, knowing they would receive help and not judgment or condemnation. "We aren't just about drugs, alcohol, and addictions; we're about helping broken people," he said.

Today Christian Assemblies exudes an atmosphere of grace. The way people express their faith is authentic and honest. People speak openly of their shortcomings, their setbacks, and the broken areas of their lives as well as of the power of God to heal and change. It's a church where everyone, including the pastoral staff, is in a process of recovery. No one pretends they have arrived. People experience the freedom to be exactly where they are in their spiritual journeys, and they are applauded simply for showing up.

We can learn several key lessons from Christian Assemblies' story, principles that help churches to successfully create a culture of acceptance and grace.

1. Recovery begins in the pulpit, not in the pews. As a pastor, Mark understands the unique power that pastors have when they are honest and model what it means to have a growing relationship with Christ. Whenever he talks with church leaders, he advises them to talk about their own journeys of faith, both the successes and the failures. "Don't always tell details," he says, "but be honest. If it has been a good week, talk about that. But if it hasn't been so good, talk about that too. This opens the door for others to feel the freedom to walk in the same way. There is a great need for transparency from anyone who is up front, not in the telling of coarse details for some kind of dramatic effect but in sharing honest struggles in a true spirit of authenticity and humility."

Admittedly, Mark's suggestion that pastors talk about their own sins and weaknesses runs counter to what most congregations expect from their leaders (and what leaders require of themselves). Pastors desire to practice what they preach; congregants rightfully hope their leaders lead with integrity. To be candid, these expectations are onerous and seductive, creating an environment that may hinder, rather than foster, recovery. While Mark's suggestion may seem naive, even risky, to many pastors, pew sitters and former church attenders report a longing for authenticity from the pulpit more than for an appearance of moral perfection. Mark does not suggest that pastors use the Sunday morning message as a personal therapy session. But he also warns that pastors who consistently fail to personalize their messages run into certain dangers. Listeners today may feel that the message is condescending or even just plain irrelevant to their lives, lives that are often filled with ongoing struggles against sin and brokenness.

Applying this lesson in a church setting requires care and sensitivity, but the failure to value honesty is a costly mistake. Honesty from the pulpit, properly communicated, can create a church culture that is conducive to helping people heal and experience intimacy with God and others.

2. Recovery in the church is possible when ministry leaders are willing to live with appropriate honesty and healthy self-disclosure. The AA meeting that Mark attended was a vivid illustration to him of the words found in James 5:15 – 16: "If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." While it's true that corporate prayer was lacking in the AA meeting that night, confession of sin was embraced and was handled with more grace than Mark witnessed in his church.

In many ways, the very act of walking into an AA meeting room is a form of confession. These meetings are designed for people who are in trouble, people who need help, who have reached the end of their strength and want to change. No one sugarcoats the dire circumstances that AA members face. When a person steps through that door, every moment is dedicated to the very real act of confession. AA places a high value on creating an environment where it is safe for all attenders to honestly disclose their struggles without fear of reprisal or condemnation.

Isn't this what the church is supposed to be like?

Shouldn't the act of walking into a church be an act of confession, an acknowledgment that we're here because we need help? It's interesting to note that the word confess in Greek is ekzomologeo, which simply means "to declare or say out loud." Although many of us have grown accustomed to thinking of this word strictly in the sense of confessing our sins, that's not exactly what the text says. The word translated as "sins" in James 5:15 – 16 is the Greek word paraptoma, which describes a slip in some area of life. It refers to a person who has "fallen, failed, erred, or made some kind of mistake; a person who has accidentally bumped into something, accidentally swerved or turned amiss."

Recovery begins with a public acknowledgment of a need for restoration, and it continues with a process for honest self-appraisal and the willingness to share that with others. Pastor Mark Pickerel became a broken healer when he recognized that he had veered from the road he had started on and had substituted the function of doing church for the freedom of experiencing Christ. It was his willingness to face his failure and talk about it that set the stage for a thriving recovery ministry at his church.

3. Recovery is not about "sin management." Christian Assemblies has created a grace-filled environment in their community of faith. When hurting people attend AA meetings or show up at a church, they are looking for something that will help them make their lives work. Bill Thrall, coauthor of TrueFaced, makes an important observation in his book. He talks about the attempt to handle sin outside of an environment of grace as "sin management." But sin cannot truly be managed. Bill writes, "Grace teaches us that God — and only God — can handle my sin." According to Bill, "A sin-management system shuts off the only resource that can deal with sin: Our trust in whom God says we are and the power of his grace.... We cannot mature without the healing gifts of grace." Sin management looks for a program, a plan, a methodology, and the willpower to do right and please God. When we understand that sin cannot be managed, we become willing to wrestle with what it means simply to trust God with the truth about who we are and what we do.

Grace-filled churches are the key to ending the all too common practice of sin management. The suggestion that churches get back into the business of dispensing grace has been ignored as a concept too obvious to merit serious consideration. Some have sharply criticized the concept, suggesting that perhaps these communities are soft on sin. But anyone who has attended an AA meeting knows that this is an unfair assessment. Recovering addicts understand that they are powerless over their affliction and that only God can save them. They know from experience that addiction cannot be managed. And they know that unless a solution is found, the inevitable result will be death. Addicts are serious about seeking freedom from addiction, and AA teaches that trusting in a power greater than ourselves is the only way out. Mark saw these principles lived out in the AA meeting he attended, and it radically changed his view of how the church could respond to sin.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Bridges to Graceby Liz Swanson Teresa McBean Copyright © 2011 by Liz Swanson and Teresa McBean. Excerpted by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310329671
• ISBN 13: 9780310329671
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208