Generations Church CR Leadership

Our leadership is there to make sure you have every resource we can provide. These dedicated men and women really care about you, your family and your recovery. The truth is, they have been where you are and want to see you living in freedom and recovery. If you would like more information about CR, don’t hesitate to call Justin Sternberg: 910-269-6738.

GROUPS

Small groups are one of the most important elements of Celebrate Recovery. The program is built upon the New Testament principle that we don’t get well by ourselves – recovery must happen in the context of community.

If you would like more information on the topics that CR addresses, please fee free to download (by right-clicking) the following PDF documents.

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CR DISTINCTIVES

Group Guidelines

1. Keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings.  Please limit your sharing to 3-5 minutes.
   
2. There will be no cross talk please.  Cross talk is when 2 individuals engage in dialogue, excluding all others.  Each person is free to express feelings without interruption.
   
3. We are here to support one another.  We will not attempt to "fix" another.
   
4. Anonymity and confidentiality are basic requirements.  What is shared in the group stays in the group!
   
5. Offensive language has no place in a Christ-centered group.

Celebrate Recovery Groups Can/Will Not…

Celebrate Recovery Small Groups Can:

• Provide you a safe place to share your experiences, strengths and hopes with others who are going through the "Principles" in a Christ-Centered recovery. 
  
• Provide you a leader who has gone through a similar hurt, hang-up on habit that will facilitate the group as it focuses on a particular Step each week. The leader will also keep Celebrate Recovery's "FIVE RULES." (see the 5 Rules below)
  
• Provide you with the opportunity to find an accountability partner or sponsor. 
  
• Encourage you to attend other recovery meetings held throughout the week, if available.

Celebrate Recovery Small Groups Will Not:

• Attempt to offer any professional clinical advice. Our leaders are not counselors. We will provide you with a list of approved counseling referrals. 
  
• Allow its members to attempt to fix one another.

Rules and Why’s

Other Focus: Concentrating on others needs and problems.  Analyzing their motives and behavior.  Asking questions of others.  Telling stories about what he/she did.

• NEGATIVE RESULTS: Helps us avoid our own issues.  Makes us observers, not participants.   Puts a safe (and lonely) distance between ourselves and others.
  
• RULE 1: Keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings.  Please limit your sharing to 3-5 minutes.
  
• RULE 2: We are here to support one another.  We will not attempt to "fix" one another.
  
• GOALS: Work on self.  Share personal needs, feelings, ideas and problems.  Allow time for all those who need share.

Breaking Confidentiality: Telling outsiders what was said or done in group. Gossip disguised as a prayer request.

• NEGATIVE RESULTS: Violates trust and safety.   Makes members afraid to share risky material.
  
• RULE 3: Anonymity and confidentiality are basic requirements.  What is shared in the group stays in the group.
  
• GOALS: Celebrate Recovery is a safe place.

Cross-Talk:  Interrupting people, asking questions, having a dialogue with one other member of the group.

• NEGATIVE RESULTS: Members fear that they won't be able to finish sharing, that their ideas are not valued, or that they won't get a chance to speak.
  
• RULE 4: There will be no cross-talk please.   Cross-talk is when two individuals engage in a dialogue, excluding all others.   Each person is free to express feelings without interruption.
  
• RULE 5: Offensive language has no place in a Christ-centered recovery group.
  
• GOALS: Listen respectfully to what others choose to share.

Celebrate Recovery Is and Is Not...

8 PRINCIPLES

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY:  Eight Recovery Principles based on the BEATITUDES by Pastor Rick Warren

• R = PRINCIPLE 1: 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.
  { "Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor" -Matthew 5:3 }
• E = PRINCIPLE 2: Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.
  { "Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." -Matthew 5:4 }
• C = PRINCIPLE 3: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.
  { "Happy are the meek." -Matthew 5:5 }
• O = PRINCIPLE 4: Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.
  { "Happy are the pure in heart." -Matthew 5:8 }
• V = PRINCIPLE 5: Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.
  { "Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires." -Matthew 5:6 }
• E = PRINCIPLE 6: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.
  { "Happy are the merciful." -Matthew 5:7
  "Happy are the peacemakers." -Matthew 5:9 }
• R = PRINCIPLE 7: Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
• Y = PRINCIPLE 8: Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words.
  { "Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires." -Matthew 5:10 }

12 CHRIST-CENTERED STEPS

The Twelve Steps and their Biblical Comparisons

• STEP 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors. That our lives had become unmanageable.
  { "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." -Romans 7:18 }
• STEP 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  { For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." -Philippians 2:13 }
• STEP 3: We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God.
  { "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship." -Romans 12:1 }
• STEP 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  { "Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD." -Lamentations 3:40 }
• STEP 5: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  { "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." -James 5:16 }
• STEP 6: We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  { "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." -James 4:10 }
• STEP 7: We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.
  { "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. " -1 John 1:9 }
• STEP 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
  { "Do to others as you would have them do to you." -Luke 6:31 }
• STEP 9: We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  { "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift." -Matthew 5:23-24 }
• STEP 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  { "So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!" -1 Corinthians 10:12 }
• STEP 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.
  { "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." -Colossians 3:16 }
• STEP 12: Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
  { "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted." -Galatians 6:1 }

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