Your Suggestions for Effective Christian Recovery

Your Suggestions as to Effective Christian Recovery Help

By Dick B.

Please contact me if you can suggest a Christian Recovery Residential Facility, a Christian Treatment Facility, or a Christian Recovery Fellowship

Day in and day out, we receive phone calls, emails, or personal conversations with alcoholics, drug addicts, and codependents who may or may not be involved in A.A., N.A., or a Twelve-step fellowship.

Or who may or may not be looking for solid, well planned, effective Christian recovery help: Help In a  residential facility, a treatment facility, or a recovery fellowship that believes God can help those who still suffer. That believes competent –preferably recovered==Christian personnel can aid the process whether clergy, recovery pastors, program directors, counselors, interventionists, therapists or recovered Christian Twelve-Steppers who may offer help for you or yours. That believes help can or should include Bible study, prayer, quiet time, personal counseling, Christian fellowship with like-minded believers, and tolerance of the expressed needs of others who have exhausted their own resources, found no help elsewhere, and have a genuine desire to work in a “First Century Christian” fellowship atmosphere much like that in the old school A.A. founded by Akron A.A.’s Christian Fellowship in 1935.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the need, talked to those who want help, visited facilities or people who have had successful experience as recovered Christians who care and serve.

You need not judge the entity or person suggested. And we won’t. But your suggestions should include a name, a location and contact, a phone and email, and a URL along with illustrative literature.

We’ve seen enough inadequate, albeit well-intentioned, efforts; those that are too expensive; and those that lack leaders and staff equipped to minister, teach Bible, conduct prayer sessions, counsel, and give the afflicted a real shot at in depth reliance on God, His Son, and the Bible.

Please contact Dick B. at 808 874 4876 or dickb@dickb.com; and look at our websites such as www.dickb.com. Make your suggestion. Make your comments. And stay in touch with us if you see the kind of help that might meet your need.

Gloria Deo

Restore Your Faith in Today's A.A. and Embrace the Rights and Views of Others

Now that 25 years of research has been completed, the emphasis will be on teaching the actual facts--the "rest of the story", and the ignored links--in digestible bites. The basic documentation is available in 46 titles, 1700 articles, blogs, newsletters, and personal conversations. But the wide dissemination now will allow viewers, speakers, diverse training folks, and leaders to conduct their own programs in their own ways, but to have access to regular input from Dick and Ken.

 

How? Radio, videos, webinars, interviews, and ample, personal communications, facebook, twitter, and other media. Expensive travel to conferences will be replaced largely by specific, brief, topical segments that will help trainers, help trainees, enhance recovery, and help others.

 

Mindless meeting chatter, war stories, and entertaining circuit speakers can give place to groups that learn chunks of recovery facts, ask questions, receive pointers to resources, and make comments. Fellowship, Big Book study, Step study, history study, and information about the role played and that can be played by God, His Son Jesus Christ, the Bible will enable old school A.A. to supplement the experience of members in helping others with today's spiritual tools.

 

No change in A.A. Just enabling serious recovery facts to beef up learning at a local, personal, nationwide level.

Faith in A.A. Comes From Learning What It Has Done and What It Plans to Do. Study groups build faith

Frank Mauser, now deceased, was the second archivist of A.A. upon the retirement of Nell Wing. Frank became a good friend of mine, and he was a strong supporter of suggesting to AAs that they heed the saying about how a civilization or society perishes or declines because there is always one condition present. They forgot where they came from.

It's time to think through the opportunities for success and growth in A.A. that can and will come when the importance and diversity of study groups is once again recognized and organized.

Of late, we have women's groups. We have atheist groups. We have agnostic groups. We have gay and lesbian groups. We have Step Study groups, Big Book study groups, Traditions groups, and history groups.

But when it comes to the kind of study groups that emanated from the Joe and Charlie Big Book Seminars, lots of learning is shelved in favor of roundups, flings, dances, and circuit speakers. Content is not the test of value and quality; but large crowds, famed speakers, "spirituality" groups, and Buddhist groups seem to trump the kind of research, preparation, and utility that can come from learning how AA began, what it's strong points were, what has been changed, what has been eliminated, and what is sometimes barred by moderators, "conference-approved" barriers, and arguments about what Traditions permit or don't permit.

We will be inviting your comments on and suggestions concerning some often-mentioned and very important studies that more and more in the fellowship are seeking to conduct.

It's not about what's permitted. It's not about what's banned. It's not about which "evidence-based" pharmaceutical or psychological counseling has been discovered and found useful. It's not about what some office manager, secretary, "trusted servant," or delegate thinks A.A. is, should be, and should do.

What will soon be evident is that the strength, duration, and value of A.A., its roots, its literature, its Steps, and its discussions can and should be led by avid researchers who employ history, medicine, religion, community, archives, interviews, and great teachers to tell us what we did. To tell us what we have forgotten. To tell us the facts about working with drunks and addicts and helping them to be cured.. And to point us to the speakers, the literature, and the meetings that help us to grow.

What kind of meetings? Big Book, Step, Bible, History, Roots, the personal stories of the pioneers, and the recorded success rates of such groups as early Cleveland A.A. developed, polished, enhanced, and assured great success--far more than had been achieved theretofore. There can be prayer meetings, devotional meetings, guidance meetings, and a host of others whose very names have been forgotten.

Well that's what is in the burner. It's coming from those who have faith in A.A., see the shortcomings of the "wisdom of the rooms," and want to thinking and leadership of those who founded some of the great recovery ideas of yesteryear.