As St. Valentine’s Day, an event that has been associated with love and reconciliation for centuries, approaches, it is appropriate to revisit that day in 1991. That was when John Baker took his wife Cheryl to dinner to begin making amends for the alcoholic behavior that nearly destroyed their marriage.
Baker, an alcoholic who had been estranged from his wife, told her he had stopped drinking and wanted to help restore their marriage and be a part of her life if she would have him. She accepted, and shortly after, they renewed their vows and today are now celebrating more than 50 years of marriage.
That fateful Valentine’s Day evening portended much more than a saved marriage. It was the beginning of a ministry for those with substance abuse problems and other addictions called Celebrate Recovery (CR), a Christ-centered version of Alcoholics Anonymous. Baker designed it, and sold it to Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in California where the first CR meetings were held.
Now, 23 years later, Celebrate Recovery is in over 20,000 churches worldwide.
In his book, “the purpose driven life,” a 25 million copy bestseller urging people to follow God’s plan for them and to serve others, Warren provided the spiritual underpinnings for the celebrate recovery ministry. And when Baker presented him with a detailed plan for its development and operations, Warren quickly approved it and urged Baker to proceed.
Warren believes that “great churches are built on broken people, willing to abandon pride, pretensions and self-righteous posturing.
“When we reach the end of our rope and give up our self-sufficiency,” he continues, “that is when God moves into our lives with healing and growth.”
With its “get real” focus, Celebrate Recovery tends to be a much grittier version of a traditional Sunday morning worship service, and it is also carefully structured to make it a safe place for the needy and hurting to come, bare their souls and recover.
Some churches, many of which have embraced Celebrate Recovery, believe it is long overdue and very much what Jesus had in mind. But getting real, at least in Purpose Driven Life terms, is not to everyone’s taste.
Some Sunday churchgoers and conservative pastors, possibly unwilling to disturb comfortable routines to confront their own dysfunctions, have found the recovery message “inappropriate.”
Under the headline, “Popular Strategy for Church Growth Splits Congregants,” the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story in June 2006 reporting on a split at a Baptist Church in Mississippi over the use of Warren’s purpose driven approach.
As reported in the story, dissidents took exception to the “Madison Avenue” mission statement and other business style strategies. A later story included a reference stating that the Bible is about “redemption and atonement, not solving problems.”
A spokesman at Saddleback responded with the comment that Warren “believes the Bible addresses sin and redemption as well as human problems.”
When my church, Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock Arkansas, adopted the celebrate recovery program more than a decade ago, I was one of those who led a group of “chemically dependent” men. A recovering alcoholic, myself, I had found God and sobriety some 20 years earlier with Alcoholics Anonymous, and I surrendered my life to Christ when I joined my church.
Programs of recovery are continuing to evolve as we learn more about the brain. Many of us, we are finding, have been treating our depression, anxiety and other forms of mental illness with alcohol, marijuana and a variety of illegally obtained intoxicants. Today, most treatment facilities require a mental-health evaluation and treatment as a part of their recovery curriculum. This is all to the good.
Our nation’s drug problem is a trillion dollar annual calamity, and we thank John Baker and his celebrate recovery program for his contribution to the cause on this special day. There is more to be done, but we are getting there.
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