Do you have a friend who attends Celebrate Recover? What do you know about Celebrate Recovery or C/R?

How did Celebrate Recovery start? In 1991 John Baker wrote Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, a "concise 13-page single-spaced" letter outlining the vision for Celebrate Recovery. After reading John's epistle, Pastor Warren said, "Great, John, go, do it!" That was the beginning of the Celebrate Recovery program. It has been almost three decades since the program began. During that time, C/R has grown to have over 25,000 locations, and the C/R leadership at Saddleback Church now estimates that over a million people have been involved with the program.

So why does this program attract so many people worldwide?

First, it is a program that helps suffering people. The program addresses not just alcoholism and drug addiction, but codependency, depression, eating disorders, anger, gambling, marriage struggles, guilt, grief, and other emotional and behavioral dysfunctions. John Baker will tell you the emphasis is on healing "hurts, hang-ups, and harmful habits." His feelings are, "Everyone, basically, struggles with a hurt, hang-up or habit, so it can't hurt anyone to go through Celebrate Recovery."

Second, it works. While no significant research has been done on Celebrate Recovery's efficacy, John Kelly, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, said the growth of the program is evidence that it is working for many people. "People are really grasping on to this. They're attending. They're going back," Kelly identified. "There is something going on there that people are deriving some kind of benefit from."

Third, it is based on Biblical principles. Although the program was designed in 1991, it is based on the principles Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) 2000 years ago. Many people who have participated in the program describe feelings of abandonment or hopelessness as the root of other problems in their lives, and they credit the words of Jesus as filling that hole.

You may hear the term Celebrate Recovery DNA, which is a way of saying what Celebrate Recovery is and is not.

Celebrate Recovery is an anonymous, confidential, safe place to share your experience, strength, and hope with others who are struggling with the same issues. It is a tried-and-true plan of recovery for whatever struggle you are facing. It is a place where you will find caring, nonjudgmental people who have gone through a similar hurt or hang-up and dealt with the same harmful habits. It is a place to learn, to face challenges, risks, to grow, to find a turning point in your life, and to become strong again.

Celebrate Recovery is not a place to judge others or to "fix" others. Confidentiality is crucial and it is not a place to engage in gossip.

C/R is a program that helps you build the skills you need; it is not a place to be rescued or a place to rescue others. There is no need to keep secrets because a central tenet is "we have all sinned and fallen short" (Romans 3: 23). All of us have hurts and hang-ups; therefore, this is not a place looking for or expecting perfection.

You may be asking why get involved in a group; why air my problems to others? Take a minute and think about your favorite person in the Bible. Did that person have help? Moses had Aaron. Ruth had Naomi. Paul had Barnabas and Timothy. As Proverbs 11:14 tells us, "Where there is no guidance, the people fall. But in the abundance of counselors, there is victory."

Cheryl Gowin and Dennis Gowin bring over 20 years of experience in leading the C/R group in Appomattox, Virginia. You can find out more about Celebrate Recovery at www.memumc.org/cr or www.facebook.com/celebrate.recovery.appomattox.

If this program sounds interesting to you, there are 25,0000 churches worldwide that offer the Celebration Recovery Program. Ok, that is overwhelming, so let's look closer to home. What day of the week is convenient for you? Groups meet on Tuesdays at Memorial United Methodist in Appomattox, Virginia. You can find more groups on on the Celebrate Recovery website.

Hopefully, this helps you understand Celebrate Recovery and enables you to begin dealing with your hurts, hang-ups, and harmful habits that are negatively affecting your life.

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. James 5:16