Treatment for substance abuse has come a long way, with more medical and mental health professionals operating in these areas than ever before. Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are also more prevalent than ever before.

Why, then, as a society are we not making more progress? We believe God’s power to transform hearts and lives is too often downplayed in many treatment alternatives. Real progress requires that the church play a role in the physical and spiritual healing of these souls.

Increasingly, we are seeing recovery ministries coming out of church basements and into the forefront. Churches and church leaders are recognizing both the great need and the great mission opportunity in helping those struggling with addictions gain freedom and release from this slavery. New materials and partnerships are also helping to position the local church as the front line provider of recovery ministry.

Our Leadership Community Process will serve the churches that are redefining recovery ministry in the 21st century. The process will seek to accelerate both results and transferable learning.

In a Leadership Community, we gather together strategic leadership teams of churches to set goals, make plans, face challenges, encourage one another and hold each other accountable for their results in a single focus area. Each Leadership Community meets four times over a two-year period. In past Leadership Communities, our proprietary process has helped participants dramatically increase their outputs in both the focus area and in other areas of church health. We believe churches working in the Recovery Ministry area will see similar results.

Leadership Communities are “invitation only” groups. This high degree of selectivity increases the success of the process. Selection criteria are both targeted and measurable. For the Recovery Ministry Churches Leadership Community, selection criteria include:
• The church must have a staff person devoted to this work.
• The church must desire to double its recovery ministry in 3 years.
• This desire must clearly be in the heart of the Senior Pastor.

In forming a Leadership Community, we also seek enough regional, denominational, style and racial diversity to demonstrate to the larger church that the practices can be successful in many contexts.

At the end of our five-year project, we will have a total of 60 participating churches that have doubled their recovery ministries from the start of the project and have proven plans and processes in place to continue their growth.  At least five of these influential churches will be teaching recovery ministry principles to other churches through conferencing and other platforms.  Additionally, we will generate eight recovery ministry concept tools that serve the larger Christian church.

The most important outcome will be the number of lives changed as a result of the recovery ministries. Freeing individuals from the chains of addiction will lead to other powerful and positive by-products, including restoration of their spiritual well-being; healing of their broken relationships; and thousands of souls brought into active participation in local churches.