Methodist church hosting ‘Celebrate Recovery’ program

The Washington United Methodist Church has started hosting meetings for “Celebrate Recovery,” a faith-based 12-step program for individuals struggling with addiction and other concerns.

“It’s kind of similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, which has the 12 steps, but (we) incorporated six principals to go along with the steps that are based on The Beatitudes,” said Brighton Community Church Associate Pastor Chuck Clifton, who is a leader for the program. “When you go to Alcoholics Anonymous, you say, ‘My name is Chuck, I am an alcoholic.’ When you come to CR, … we introduce ourselves as, ‘I’m Chuck, I’m a child of God, stuff like that, and I suffer from alcoholism.’”

The church hosts the free program every Tuesday night, along with a complimentary dinner at 6 p.m. While that dinner is followed by group worship before breaking out into smaller groups, Clifton said the program was non-denominational.

“It’s free, anyone can come,” he said. “Nobody in the leadership is paid, we all volunteer. We do get some support from the churches, City Point gives us some help and so does the Methodist church. We get a lot of food from the food banks around.”

Celebrate Recovery was founded in California in 1991, as an alternative to similar groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also a 12-step program. Many of the service’s features are similar to AA’s, including the emphasis on anonymity for members.

“If we went down the street and you said hi, or we stopped and started talking, and somebody asked me where I knew you from, I could not tell them that I knew you from Celebrate Recovery, we keep it that tight,” Clifton said. “Some of them say, ‘I’ve told people things I’ve never told anybody before that have been haunting me for years.’”

Unlike AA, Clifton said Celebrate Recovery had a more religiously-minded approach, and focused on a wider variety of “hurts and hang-ups,” including mental health issues, abuse, family support and grief.

“You’re talking to somebody else, it’s just like any other support group,” he said. “You’re talking to another person who suffers from the same thing.”

While few academic studies have focused on CR’s effectiveness, Clifton said the success he had witnessed firsthand spoke for itself.

“The thing I’ve seen here, peoples’ lives have just totally been turned around,” he said. “They come to realize. the only thing you really have control over is your attitude and the decisions that you make … I tell the guys in the large group that there’s no failure here. You’re either going to win or you’re going to learn.”

Clifton said for many volunteers, helping with the Celebrate Recovery program was a calling of its own.

“Most of the people involved have suffered from some type of codependency, alcoholism, drugs,” he said. “If you’re not familiar with the Bible, that’s who Jesus went and talked to most of the time. He didn’t go to the religious leaders, he went to the sick people … everybody had some affliction of some kind, and that’s who he went and ministered to.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com