Celebrate Recovery helps provide healing for Alabamians in crisis

Celebrate Recovery helps provide healing for Alabamians in crisis

Regina George’s relationship with her son Griffin is marked out in very distinct, countable amounts of time.
   
Six or seven months — that’s how long he would be clean before he would plummet back into drug use. Ten years — that’s how long he struggled with his addiction. And 22 days into 2004 — that’s when Griffin George finally lost the battle.
   
“Griffin would come back from rehab and need to be in a group setting to keep up his clean time. But he didn’t have a support system, so he would fall back into the same lifestyle,” George said. “After he passed away from an overdose, my husband and I knew the Lord was leading us to do something — people needed a place to go.”
   
In memory of their son, George and her husband, Donnie, asked family and friends to forgo buying flowers and donate money to their church — First Baptist Church, Centre, in Cherokee Baptist Association — to start a Celebrate Recovery program.
   
Celebrate Recovery, started in 1991 by Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif., helps churches nationwide offer a Christ-centered 12-step addiction recovery program and support for those healing from crises such as divorce. Those who attend walk alongside others trying to beat the same “hurts, habits and hang-ups” and are counseled by those who already have.
   
The Georges both serve as counselors with their church’s program, and their daughter Payden drives back from Samford University in Birmingham each Friday to sing in the worship band.
   
Now George counts her son’s impact in different figures — the 10 or 12 cakes she’ll need for dessert after the small group time, the 20–25 volunteers needed to run a Friday night session and, most importantly, the 150 or so adults who come each week to find healing. “It’s like AA or NA dipped in Jesus Christ,” George said. “There are so many people out there who are hurting about so many different things. This ministry is our family’s calling.”
   
Brenda Scott, a member of Pleasant View Baptist Church, Holly Pond, in Blount Baptist Association, said her family feels the same way. Scott’s son Eric was tangled in methamphetamine use for almost 20 years — something that made her feel like a failure as a parent.
   
“We would bail him out over and over again, and after we helped him get back on his feet, he’d be gone,” she said. “Finally he got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
   
Now he, along with his parents, helps on Friday nights at the church with the small group members who come to struggle through their recovery just as he did. 
   
At Pleasant View Baptist, Friday nights are called New Life Recovery, as volunteer leaders don’t use the full-out Celebrate Recovery plan. But the Christ-centered 12 steps, as well as copies of the The Life Recovery Bible given to participants, are the same — as are the appreciative responses from those who turn to the church for help.
   
“We have seen successes and we have seen failures, but people are being helped through this,” Scott said. “We keep hoping and praying that it will continue to make a difference in our community.”
   
Brad Rutledge, Southeast regional director for Celebrate Recovery, said churches are finding that it is an effective way to meet the hurting people around them where they are. He added that 25 full-fledged Celebrate Recovery ministries have now been recognized in the state of Alabama but that there could be that many more that are either in the beginning stages or simply haven’t asked to be recognized yet. 
   
More still are like Pleasant View — employing portions of the curriculum but not enough to call their ministry Celebrate Recovery. “We just ask that in using the curriculum — whether exclusively or mixed with other tools — that Christ is the one ‘higher Power’ to heal people,” Rutledge said.
   
Randy Burtram, pastor of Pleasant View, said the ministry has been a good way for his church to employ Intentional Evangelism and reach the community for Christ.
   
He added that Cullman County has been willing to work with Pleasant View because county leaders see the churches as being strategically located to help those struggling with addictions. “The district attorney has put her blessings on it. She came to the graduation of the first class and thanked the church for helping,” Burtram said. “She seems to be sold on the fact that churches are a natural help organization.”
   
For more information about Celebrate Recovery, visit www.celebraterecovery.com.