The Coast's only faith-based recovery program is graduating their second class of participants next week and inviting new people who want to deal with any "hurts, habits and hang-ups" to join Celebrate Recovery.
"We have seen some amazing transformations," said Rob Henson, who facilitates the Celebrate Recovery program with his wife Jen for the Salvation Army.
The pair are excited about this year's 15 participants who will graduate on March 27.
Although they could not go into any specifics about what participants have overcome, they did note the program covers more than just chemical and alcohol addictions typically dealt with in 12-step programs.
"I think that's the misnomer for the title Celebrate Recovery. Everybody kind of defaults that it's an addiction issue and it's actually not," Rob said. "How Celebrate Recovery terms it is 'hurts, habits and hang-ups'. So it could be a single mom, it could be divorce, it could be depression, it could be loss of a child, loss of a loved one, whatever. It can be anything really."
Both Rob and Jen had to go through the program to be able to facilitate it and they personally credit the program's focus on the person of Jesus for its transforming power.
"There are people who are so disenfranchised with traditional churches that put up these barriers for people and we're saying 'no, let's focus on this Jesus guy at the end of the day, and yes, there will come some life behaviour changes we'll need to make, but let's first encounter Him and then let Him shape us'," Rob said.
Celebrate Recovery is a program that is meant to merge the traditional 12-step program with relevant biblical teaching. Each of the 12 steps has a scripture to reinforce it and the program also holds tightly to eight recovery principles based on the beatitudes in the bible. The beatitudes are a set of teachings by Jesus found in the gospel of Matthew.
"Every lesson is based on a step and a principle," Jen said.
"The eight principles spell out the word recovery and the first principle, for example, that connects with the first step is 'realize I'm not God; I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable', and that's based on the scripture in Matthew 5:3 that says 'happy are those who know they are spiritually poor'."
The Hensons have been delivering the program for the Salvation Army since 2010 after they moved to the Coast for Rob to take on the role of camp manager at Camp Sunrise. They say they've seen huge breakthroughs for hurting people and note that the program is spreading across the Coast as new graduates decide to facilitate their own groups.
Jen assures that everyone who becomes a facilitator must first meet strict guidelines set out by Celebrate Recovery Canada.
The Salvation Army group meets for a drop-in, large group session every Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Salvation Army building at No. 5, 6882 Gibsons Way. From there participants break into smaller gender-specific groups to share and once three or four people commit to come weekly, a study is set up to work through the steps and principles of Celebrate Recovery.
To find out more, the Hensons encourage people to come to a Tues-day night session, call 604-886-7232, email [email protected] or see their website at www.coastcelebraterecovery.com.
