Racheting Up Christian Recovery and Recovered Christians

Racheting Up Christian Recovery and Recovered Christians

Dick B.
© 2010 Anonymous. All rights reserved

No Substitutions Suggested—Just Improved Effectiveness and Longevity

Many today are asking why recovery rates for alcoholics, addicts, and even those in prison are so low and recidivism so high. Some criticize 12 Step fellowships, treatment programs, counseling techniques, and even the undaunted, but very successful efforts of drug lords and drug dealers.

To arrest the malaise, science is diving in with pharmaceuticals. Counselors are pressing for more treatment. Attorneys are advocating more Drug Courts. Churches are organizing more
recovery fellowships. Christians are often pushing for departure from Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-Step programs. And Society is wringing its hands as it watches the ascending drug use among youngsters, drub abuse by adults, and rampant drug
wars abroad, across our borders, and on our city streets.

But Alcoholics Anonymous developed an answer in 1935. It was a Christian answer. It was neither original nor new. Christian people and organizations like evangelists, revivalists, YMCA lay workers, rescue missions, and the Salvation Army had been effectively offering
cures for alcoholism through salvation and reliance on God, His Son, and His Word for at
least 100 years before Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob put together their Akron Christian Fellowship in 1935.

In the ensuing years, there has been flight from God, from Jesus Christ, from the Bible, from “old school” A.A., from Akron A.A.’s Christian Fellowship, from the “Minnesota Model,” and even from A.A. itself. And it is not our purpose here to discuss or criticize the resultant treatment, counseling, therapy, and prolonged rehabilitation that have been a part of the well-financed and often “required” new recovery ideas.

Some Renewed Long-Term, Tried and True, Add-ons for Today

There are many who stay clean and sober today without A.A., 12 Steps, treatment, therapy, church, or support groups. There are many who attain sobriety through the hundreds of anonymous and/or 12 Step groups that exist today. There are still more who seek religious help through a host of organizations like Celebrate Recovery, Teen Challenge, Overcomers Outreach, Inc., Rock Recovery Ministries, and Christian recovery fellowships and groups.

But there are some assumptions here that can make a difference in the long-term results and life that is lived. They involve ideas that are not new. They are simple. They have been tried in many different arenas. And we believe they were tried, true, and effective in the early A.A. Christian Fellowship program founded in Akron in 1935. They included salvation, the Bible, prayer, God’s guidance, Christian living, and deliverance from guilt, shame, fear, despair, ill-health, and anxiety.

The only requirement was not just a desire to stop drinking. The additional requirement for those who are or want to be sober and delivered Christians was and is: (1) belief in God, (2) acceptance of Jesus as Lord, and (3) reliance on the Bible and such revelation as God chooses to impart for the deliverance that God assures for those who become His children and walk by His spirit in their daily lives.

The two are not inconsistent.

A.A., for example, originally insisted on an unswerving intention to quit drinking forever—never to touch a drop of alcohol. And for those who looked on themselves as allergic to alcohol, driven by the devil, obsessed with a desire for drink, surrounded by bad habits and bad people, plagued with life-controlling problems, genetically pre-disposed to drink-get drunk-encounter disaster- and then return again and again for more of same, there’s a simple answer: “You shouldn’t drink at all.” And that has been the simple advice for AAs from the beginning.

And how about the person who has been driven close to insanity, jail, or death and yet continues to pursue his illusory relief system. One who utters the “national anthem of the alcoholic—I’ll never do that again;” and then returns to the bottle in no time at all. One who has gotten himself into an unbelievable pile of trouble—divorce, discharge from work, business failure, bankruptcy, disgrace, prison, fights, accidents, and loss of the love of family and friends. This is the guy who should say, “I’ve had enough. I’m done. I’m through drinking.” But—whatever his thoughts—surrenders to the bottle once again and over and over again. This is the person to whom early A.A. offered belief in God, acceptance of Christ, the truth of the Bible, and a disciplined fellowship of like-minded recovered believers to help him get well and healed.

Simple Suggestions for Extending Recovery and Deliverance

Cast aside the suggestion that you leave A.A. That you leave your church. That you refuse treatment. That you reject intervention. That you don’t really have a problem. That no counselor or therapist or clergyman or physician or support group can help you. The early AAs didn’t. And they were the winners—the folks with a documented 75% success rate among the “worst-of-the-worst.”

What can you do today! Learn the early A.A. way. Buy reliable books that can tell you the facts. Establish a group and a library that will go for long-term fellowship and recovery. Form a study group. Take an introductory class such as our Introductory Foundations for Christian Recovery.
If you are in A.A. or a Twelve Step Fellowship, go for the gold. Study groups and long-term affiliation are not foreign to A.A. It’s just that A.A. has lost concern over and study of early A.A. or the Bible or hold prayer meetings or advocate church attendance. They’ve lost it as a Society, but you need not be a loser. It’s what the winners did in the beginning and what A.A.’s own Big Book actually suggests today. Trust God!

If you run a church, a Christian recovery fellowship, or have a Christian recovery pastor, go for the gold. Buy reliable books about A.A. and early A.A. Establish a group and a library that will applaud long-term fellowship and recovery. Form a study group. Teach our class. Conduct Bible study and Big Book meetings. Hold prayer meetings. Encourage church attendance. And don’t criticize other methods—use them, distinguish your task from theirs, and support both. Trust God!

If you run a treatment program, a rehabilitation center, a Christian recovery program, a “Christ-centered” recovery program, a support group program, or a community outreach program, go for the gold. Establish a library. Buy the books that will tell you the Christian history. Form a study group. Study the Big Book, A.A. History, How to take and practice the Twelve Steps, and what the early AAs did in their simple program. Teach our class. Hold prayer meetings. Encourage church attendance. And don’t criticize other methods—use them, distinguish their task from yours, and support both. Trust God!

Where You Can Apply These Suggestions

Any A.A. or 12 Step fellowship can establish a library, form a study group, study A.A. history, show our class, study the Bible, hold prayer meetings, and continue a fellowship of like-minded believers who dine together, do sports together, go to entertainment together, study together, read together, play together, dance together, hold conferences and seminars together, and enjoy sober, Christian living together—in and out of a church or Bible fellowship or ministry.

Any church or Christian recovery group can do the same thing. Library. Study group. Prayer, Bible classes. History classes. A.A. and 12-Step classes. Religious and social fellowship. They do it all the time. They can do it with groups of drunks dedicated to sobriety.

Any treatment program can have after-care, alumni groups, extended care fellowships, Twelve Step or Witnessing outreach, social and religious comradeship, emphasis on church or Bible fellowships. Enjoying sober Christian living together in and out of a church, Bible fellowship, or ministry.

The greatest spur to long-term sobriety, longevity, and Christian living occurs when every program stresses helping others to the same solution. This has been the standard for Christian successes for centuries. It can and should be today. Call it witnessing. Call it fellowshipping. Call it sponsorship. Call it speaking. Call it serving. Call it volunteering. Call it financial support. Call it leadership. Call it applause. It works.