A Letter from a long-recovered Christian AA Who Leads
Recovery Group House Meeting Working with Believers and Non-Believers, Who Have
Learned to Work Together
Dick B.
Copyright 2013 Anonymous. All rights reserved
Hi Ken,
Currently we have four in our recovery group house meeting -
"non-believers" (one doctor, one engineer, a taxi business owner, and
a waiter) (none of whom owned a Bible when we started this session the first
week of January) - and Keith who has been with me for years in our ministry.
Attendance has been 100% each week since we started and it looks like we will
have 3 more joining the group this week (tonight) who have been led to the
meeting by the non - believer members - not Keith or I.
The longest sobriety in this group is the taxi business
owner who has 17 years of sobriety (who has been the most challenging,
frustrating, and perplexing sponsee I have ever had) and almost one year (the
waiter) and 150 days is the average for the other two right now, and then we have Keith with 35
years and me. The average age is 37 and the youngest is 32. All of them have
either Keith or I as a formal AA sponsor.
So this is a very small group this time around. When the
group is all non-believers the challenge is a little different than when we
have a group mixed with some believers as well as non- believers. And when it
is 3 newcomers and 1 with long term sobriety there has to be a special focus on
their immediate successes and target honesty in communication over and over
again. Chris, an atheist, (17 yrs) creates a lot of issues and challenges in
the group meetings but last week had a major breakthrough when he talked about
how much "he hates his life" as it is now and that he must find a way
to change and transform it.
Our current
discussion and action plan focuses on:
1) " If I could do this on my own - what would I need
God for? ";
2) Where do we find the specific instructions and examples
for making Step Three a vital breathing part of our lives (1Corintians 13,
Matthew 5 thru 7, and, the Book of James) - one of these scriptures are
supposed to be read each day and they are required to write diary comments in
their notebooks after each reading of the scriptures. When they feel the Holy
Spirit moving in their lives in some way they are supposed to call Keith or me
to express their experience;
3) Writing out and defining our GOD (or Higher Power at this
stage) in the notebook and amending it almost weekly as time goes bye;
4) Doing one special thing each day for a stranger as an act
of gratitude;
5) Honestly, making an effort to pray several times a day.
6) In this group only two are copying out the first 164
pages of the Big Book, a disappointment - but it is still early in the process.
7) Two have stopped going to the Sunday morning AA meeting
and are now with us in church instead. We are filling 3 rows of pews - there is
something special about that.
8) We are all going to Akron to do a formal 3rd Step at Dr.
Bob's house in the next few weeks.
Have to run. Will keep you posted a Jesus transforms lives.
Your BIC,
Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment