Tools of Celebrate Recovery - Great Resources to Transform Lives!

Tools are great, and having the right tool for a job makes all the difference! I’ve realized this at times when I have been wrenching on my car, bicycle, house, or plumbing. I’ve also seen this principle applied to golf (a bag full of the right clubs), gaming (THE right computer), iPhone (the right application), surfing (having a quiver full of the right boards), and recently in my own bicycling experience.

Central Texas is currently under extreme drought conditions, and has been so for many months. Even with recent rains that have fallen, the weather experts are all telling us we are in a thirty inch deficit for the past two years. We are under water rationing that affects everything from keeping the yard to ordering water in restaurants.

Last Friday, a rainy day, Paula and I took our moms out to dinner. In talking about the weather and recent rain, my mom made a comment “it was so nice and smelled so good, I was tempted to stand in the yard!”  Last Saturday morning it was still raining when I woke, and I thought “why not play in the rain!”

It’s been a while since I’ve purposed a bicycle ride in the rain, but I planned to take an older bike I was not too concerned to expose to the water and the grime. I took off the platform pedals and put on clip-in pedals that matched some old cycling shoes, put on my brightest “day glow neon yellow” jersey and a clear plastic cycling rain jacket (pic on FB!). The right tools for the ride helped me enjoy a little 34 mile trek to neighboring Round Rock and back. I was not the only one to get out to enjoy the rain! In my trip out and back I saw many cyclists, runners, and walkers having fun in  the wet weather.

When I started CR at my home church in Austin a little over 12 years ago, we did not have many resources or tools to assist the process of transforming lives. The leaders guide and the participant’s guides were bound with plastic binding, and had plenty of space to write in the margins. That was about it!

We now have tools that will help you invest more time into helping people rather than look for resources to move them, or their children through the process of life change. If you are new to Celebrate Recovery, or have not recently had the opportunity to check these resources out, I encourage you to spend a little more time investigating this CR website.

The Leaders Guide and Participant Guides are the core resource of running your recovery ministry. You’ll definitely need the Leaders Guide to plan for the start and growth of the ministry. The Participant Guides help you first train group leaders, then as help to church and community. Talk to your state rep about the process!

If your Celebrate Recovery ministry has been up and running a while, you and your team will want to check out the material found in the Advanced Leadership Training kit. This is a tool that will help a great ministry excel!

The Celebrate Recovery Bible and Life’s Healing Choices are approved resources that can be used to bring new illustrations to your lessons, and to sharing in your small group time. Newcomers to CR will find inspiration in stories of men, women, and couples whose lives have been transformed  through God’s word and eight healing choices we all need to make to be successful in life. 

It is also important to note the fall campaign with Life’s Healing Choices that is just now underway at Saddleback Church and hundreds of churches across the country.  We believe the wave of Celebrate recovery will continue to grow as people are introduced to the help, strength, and hope available in Christ.

A growing part of this ministry is taking principles of Celebrate Recovery to the next generation too! This summer Group Publishing introduced Celebration Station for kids. This is a wonderful 52 week curriculum following the lessons of Celebrate Recovery that mom and dad are going through. When you consider Life Hurts, God Heals used with many youth across the country, you see there is truly something for the entire family.

The resources of Celebrate Recovery are tools that create transformed lives across the country and around the globe. 

Celebrating Recovery – each day in Christ! - Jim