considerable grace

This was a profound and wonderful workshop. I heartily encourage you to read the Live Blog transcript and anything you can get your hands on by Pastor Jeffrey S. Black.

Having the opportunity to learn from people like this? People with such keen minds, filled with the Spirit, lovers of God’s Word, lovers of Christ, churchmen with so much life experience living the gospel out in real life? And then to have these men be filled with such humility?

Well. Let me just say that I am a Pastor Jeffrey S. Black fan and I am looking forward to reviewing all of my CCEF Journal of Biblical Counseling articles by him in the coming weeks and months.

Hope you enjoy the notes. But please note again that they don’t even come close to capturing 1/100th of the depth of his teaching and his heart.

We’ve been talking about addictions and counseling for two days–but I’m going to talk to you about it through the lens of being a pastor.

I am a pastor of a large church. 8,000 adults. Addictions ministry meets weekly with 150 people. We have a trailer at the church manned every day and night; people with addictions issues come looking for help, discipleship, etc. We place people into in-patient residential care locations almost every week.

As an aside ... I don’t know how you think about this stuff; some find it controversial; I really don’t. Seems very practical to me. If you work with addicts, these are people who can be very unsafe–to themselves, people around them. Sometimes it is a way to keep them alive. In the last year, we’ve had six people die from overdoses.

I did a funeral of a guy, heartbreaking to me, I married him and his wife four years ago. Then I got a call from his wife that he had been murdered on Christmas Eve trying to make a drug buy.

Different kind of ministry, eh? Not that many have such imminent life and death implications.

I also teach and I’m a psychologist. I’ve done these things; but in my heart of hearts, I am a pastor. And I would like to make the argument today that for as many kinds of rehabs and 12-step programs and Christian 12-step programs ... all of those are excellent in some ways. But it is my opinion that the church is the place where addicts need to be ministered to. In fact, I would argue that the church is THE place.

I am going to argue that b/c there are a lot of things you can help people with and they live in isolation; but you can’t help an addict without them becoming a part of a community.

I don’t have an infomercial for people; I don’t have bullet points. Ministries don’t operate that way. But a couple of key ingredients define effective ministry in working with this particular ministry.

1. Effective ministry to addicts depends on redefining the concept of “addiction”.

Addicts and non-addicts have distorted views on addiction. I don’t think it’s possible for the church to minister to people with addictions until everyone gets on the same page as to what addiction is and is not. Both addicts and non-addicts have to be de-mythologized. They have myths about addiction that aren’t biblical and often aren’t even factual.

2. Effective ministry depends on first understanding the centrality and necessity of a redeeming community and then facilitating the creation of that community.

The people doing the ministry and the people coming for the ministry understand that participating in this community is essential/necessary. It’s my Hillary quote – takes a village to raise a child. Don’t know if that’s true; but I know that addicts who don’t participate in community relapse. Addicts who don’t become a part of Body Life have little chance of transformation.

3. Effective ministry to addicts depends on recognizing the profound systemic effects of chronic addictive behavior and relapse and creating mechanisms to heal and restore, replace and repair these effects.

James talks about the relationship between faith and works. We don’t want to get too messy; get involved ... but we’ll talk to them for 50 minutes. But chronically addicted people mess up. They are not just broken on the inside, their whole world is broken. In a very practical sense, their addiction creates problems; those create problems; and the problems drive them to their addiction; affects all of their life and families and relationships. If you counsel and addict, you’re going to counsel their family. If you’re not prepared to go there as a church, you are not going to have an effective ministry. Counseling piece; mercy piece; helps piece ... “wrap-around services.”

4. Effective ministry to addicts depends on recognizing the power of an addiction and making the right intervention at the right time.

The short word for this is timeliness. The crises that addicts have are always at just the wrong time. (laughter) 2AM. State of crises. You don’t say, “Call me in the morning.” You have to be willing to be timely with them. Window opens in the life of the addict and you climb in before it shuts. That’s what happens when a person has a thing in their life that constantly creates a crises-laden environment.

In a healing community, everybody recognizes what bondage is like; everyone is willing to come into the light; what they come into the light to receive is grace. In a community where we all understand who we are, grace abounds. A whole bunch of publicans beating their chests, “God have mercy.”

I want to talk about this other thing because it’s very important. I’m happy to live in my brain; I can drive for hours with only my thoughts. I’m not saying this because I’m a big advocate of community. I’m a community of one (laughter).

But God intends for the Body of Christ to be the Body of Christ. God intended that some things only occur in the context of community. I think addictions certainly falls into that category.

Biblical community is one of authenticity. People who see their need for grace are people who are open.

A second feature is accountability. In a normal relationship, if you are close to someone, if they tell you something, you presume that they want you to ask them about it. But if I share with my wife that I’m struggling with something, she’ll assume I want accountability/help. I can’t just get away from the accountability by saying, “Nah. I was just sharing.” They care enough to hold you accountable for what your heart is doing.

We are to have purposeful facilitation of interdependence: God intends for us to live day to day in interdependence with other people. That’s the norm in a biblical community, not the exception.

Lastly, I think churches that are generous with their resources–I don’t mean generous in the budget, but people in the community–they are the most effective in helping addicts because even if a person pursues sobriety and even as they are being transformed, there are all sorts of parts of their lives that have to be glued back together. Helping them to reconstruct some of the brokenness of their life."