Celebrate Recovery in Christ

September 20, 2009

Celebrate Recovery, differs from most World-Service Organization sponsored 12-step programs in that it is unabashedly faith-based and Christ-centered, naming ‘Jesus’ as the ‘higher power’ responsible for healing any ailment in one’s life.

Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Narcotics Anonymous and others, encourage members to name their own higher power. Some believe this helps attract newcomer addicts to meetings where they otherwise would not join because of the stigma involved in naming ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ as a higher power.

Countless 12-step groups exist: Adult Children of Alcoholics, Overeaters Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, to name a few, and even some less expected, such as Clutterer’s Anonymous, Workaholic’s Anonymous, and Emotions Anonymous.

There are online meetings. There are people meetings. There are phone meetings. There is no shortage of meetings.

So why another 12-step meeting? What makes Celebrate Recovery different?

Besides being explicitly Christ-centered, all Celebrate Recovery meetings are broadly open to and intended to serve individuals suffering from any “hurt, habit, or hangup.”

Advocates and program participants say the process has a healing effect, in that, by naming Jesus Christ as the higher power, healing for any life ailment follows when individuals place their faith in God, as opposed to trying to ‘control’ their addictions or hang-ups themselves.

Lisa Romeo, a member of Parkview Baptist Church in Lexington, leads a women-only Celebrate Recovery group that meets each Tuesday night from 7:30-9 p.m.

According to Paul Pack, one of Parkview’s pastors who works largely with youth, believes that one of Parkview’s strengths is that it strives to help members find their gifts, when considering how they want to serve their fellow community members.

He describes Lisa as a go-to person, someone who works incredibly well behind-the-scenes, who is passionate and dependable. Lisa has taken advantage of trainings and workshops offered through Parkview such as the Vantage Point 3 program which focuses identifying gifts and developing group leadership skills. She now uses this in the Celebrate Recovery meeting leader capacity.

Romeo adds that it is a good time for anyone who wishes to join the group, because they just began a new cycle of working through the steps. Anyone is welcome to join at anytime, however.

Another Celebrate Rec-overy group, open to both men and women, meets each Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Evangelical Free church in Lexington.

Pastor Duane Russell has led this meeting since August of 2009, and says the cycle will begin again on Oct. 22 for anyone who would like to join at the beginning of a cycle.

All Celebrate Recovery meetings work off of the same curriculum, which includes a set of four workbooks. Celebrate Recovery refers to eight principles which echo the 12 steps, and each principle carries with it a scriptural passage from the Beatitudes.

“Jesus is telling us that if and when we connect and seek God, no matter what the circumstances, he will meet us. This is why I believe that Celebrate Recovery is for anyone, we have all had peaks and valleys…that is life,” says Romeo.

One member of Celebrate Recovery, named E.Z. for the purpose of this article, reveals that her grandfather brought her a flyer about Celebrate Recovery meetings. She had attended a variety of 12-step programs in the past, including one in a Lincoln treatment center and others from within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“I suffered from eating disorders in highschool, then later depression and anxiety became my coping mechanisms, and in order to alleviate those, I briefly turned to drugs.”

“I go to the Bible for inspiration and guidance, and I go to Celebrate Recovery for the same thing,” says E.Z.

“After I left treatment and came home, nobody here [in my peer group] had the same thought process as me. In Celebrate Recovery, there are people who think the same way I do, plus their focus is on God.”

Romeo echoes that people are willing to speak about both pleasant and unpleasant things in their lives, including past experience with drugs, gangs, abusive relationships, or other emotional issues like anger management.

There is no cost for participants who attend these meetings. They are focused on outreach. Everything in any Celebrate Recovery meeting is confidential.

“The process ends in healing if the participant chooses that,” Romeo says that working the steps helps people realize, that through the course of time, they can make better choices.”

“With all the searching we do through the course of our lives, we get messed up in all kinds of habits, hurts, and hang-ups, based on our self-esteem, based on our experiences in life, based on goals we had that did or didn’t get met,” says Romeo.

“Our thinking is developed in that way, and if you are trying to function through, separated from God, by not accepting him or not seeking after him or not praying for guidance, or whatever it may be, you get lost.”

In that process, she adds, people latch on to inappropriate relationships to many things in order to fill an empty hole, including gambling, sex additions, or chemicals.

There is a dependency on something, and if it’s not God, it’s something else.

People get angry, or they want to depend on something they can see, hear, feel, taste, or touch.

As a person grows to better understand and rely on God, continued Romeo, feeling the hole transforms into feeling whole, without the compulsive need for extraneous crutches of worldly dependency. When a person truly understands and intentionally depends on God, life changes.

“Some people think, ‘I’m never going to be able to quit drugs,’” Romeo says, “I don’t think that’s true. With God, all things are possible.”