Celebrate Recovery General Meeting

Celebrate Recovery Testimonies

Many young CR Groups across the country do not have live CR testimonies to incorporate every other week during their general meeting (Large Group). Testimonies to go are an ideal resource. Currently, on www.saddlebackresources.com, CR offers 18 personal testimonies on DVD. In addition, a new volume of personal testimonies will be available at this year’s CR Summit. But, what does a CR group do when they have already run these testimonies? The tendency is to seek out special guest speakers.

Keep in the mind that the ministry leader is responsible for everything said from the pulpit at your general meeting. This includes testimonies, lessons, and guest speakers. Be selective, if you invite a guest speaker who wants to push their agenda to sale their books or materials this would violate the CR Trademark agreement. Also make sure that all guest speakers have been through recovery themselves and are not there to speak to “those people.” In addition, CR does not single out any one particular area of recovery. Focusing on one area of recovery excludes others. OK, I can hear some of you saying right now, well “what about testimonies?” Whereas individuals do have a specific area of recovery that brought them to CR, every testimony offers experiences, perspectives and feelings that everyone identifies with. Everyone can relate to childhood, social issues, Christ, the 8 principles & the Christ centered 12 steps!

When inviting a local Christian counselor to speak at your general meeting; he/she must be a Christian counselor who supports the 8 Principles and 12-steps - 100%. When Saddleback CR invites a guest speaker, our guest speaks on the principle we are currently teaching on. We discuss the lesson ahead of time and give them the topic we want him/her to talk about. The number one priority as a ministry leader is to ensure that CR remains committed to providing a Christ centered recovery program.

Here are a few additional suggestions when you feel you have exhausted all your resources:

· Contact other CR groups within an hour radius and inquire about live “CR testimonies to Go” The Ministry leader should request an electronic copy of the testimony ahead of time. It is the Ministry leader’s responsibility to read the testimony ahead of time to ensure CR testimony writing guidelines are in place. (See Module 5, Writing Your Testimony, in the Advanced Leadership Training Guide)

· If you don’t have a testimony, teach the next lesson! If you complete teaching all 25 lessons before the year ends go back to lesson one. It does not hurt your participants’ progress to hear the Denial lesson twice in one year. On the contrary; many of us in recovery are facing denial in other areas of our lives and don’t even realize it. Remember new comers have joined your CR since the first time you taught on Denial, Powerlessness, etc…

· Teach lessons from Module 10, in the Advanced Leadership Training Guide during your general meeting night. These lessons were written by Pastor John Baker.

1. Recovery Check – teach before the holidays
2. How’s Your Serenity – a teaching on the serenity prayer
3. H.A.N.D.S – a teaching that helps motivate healthy CR volunteer service

· Encourage your existing leaders to write out their testimonies. Schedule a testimony writing workshop for your leaders.

· Raise up new leaders! With every new leader is a new live testimony!

And I received another great idea from Liz of Alberta, Canada:

· Stretch "7 Reasons We Get Stuck" lesson 25 in the CR Leaders Guide over a period of a few weeks. Since this lesson is not created in the form of an acrostic, you may split this lesson into 2 parts, or 3 parts, or even 4 parts.

Thank you Liz, for this great idea! (Added June 5, 2009)