The General Meeting Night - Part 2 - The Basics

Wow, check it out! A part two. Even I'm surprised.

I wanted to touch a little on just what the General Meeting Night (GMN) is and what the components are. The GMN is your main Celebrate Recovery meeting night. Here at Saddleback, it's Friday nights. We've been meeting every Friday night since 1991. We've moved into different buildings and rooms, but we're here every Friday night. Your GMN doesn't have to be on Fridays, there's nothing sacred or special about that day of the week, it's just the day that worked for us.

When you pick the night for your GMN you may want to find out if there are other Celebrate Recovery groups meeting in your area? If so, what night or nights do they meet? Try to have your GMN on a different night of the week so more people can come to more meetings. You'll also be able to have leaders from the other CR groups come to your GMN and give their testimonies. Wait, we'll get to that in another post.

Also, you'll need to check with your church to see what nights are available. Is there a night of the week that allows you to spread out? Choose whatever night works best for you and your church, keeping in mind the other CR groups that may be meeting. I know of lots of places that offer CR meetings every night of the week because a few churches have worked together to make that happen. That is so cool.

The basic components of the GMN are Large Group and Open Share Groups. The Large Group is the meeting that most resembles a church service. This is where you'll have worship, a testimony or a Celebrate Recovery lesson. We'll talk about all of those elements in the coming weeks. The Open Share Groups follow the Large Group and are gender specific and recovery issue specific. The Group Guidelines are used in this time, but the Celebrate Recovery Participant Guides are not.

Another component of the GMN is Fellowship Events, like the BBQ and Solid Rock Cafe. You guessed it, we'll talk about those later too. 

I know this may seem like basic information if you are already doing CR, but I really want to get back to the basics for the next few posts. 

Next post we'll start looking at each of the elements of the Large Group.

Johnny