Celebrate Recovery tackles troubles with faith
Celebrate Recovery, a faithbased recovery group, got together for a Thanksgiving dinner last week.
Gary Jaworski, ministry leader for the volunteer-staffed program, explained it’s sponsored by the Northwest Community Church, which provides office space, and New Life Christian Church, which provides a meeting space every Thursday evening, starting at 5:30.
Anyone is welcome, he said, and the program exists to provide strictly confidential help for people working through any sort of issues, including addiction, mental and emotional troubles, grief and others.
“Anything that life has thrown at us,” he said.
There’s no charge and no need to sign up, he added.
The Thanksgiving dinner was open to the public and more heavily publicized than a typical meeting, he explained, because it was designed as an outreach effort.
“We want to reach the people of Bella Vista,” he said.
The program started in August 2017 when Jaworski and other leaders went for training, with a focus on the different steps in the program and learning to help, he said, and the first group got together in October last year.
By July 2019, the group outgrew Northwest Community Church’s meeting space and Jaworski said he’s grateful that the New Life Christian Church was willing to co-sponsor the program and provide a larger space.
A more typical meeting includes a social window for its first hour, followed by a worship service at 6:30 p.m. Jaworski
suggested first-timers show up for the service and skip the first hour because it can be awkward to hang out with an unfamiliar group.
From 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., everyone splits into gendered open sharing groups, he said.
“You can kind of share what’s going on in your life,” Jaworski said.
And from 8:30 to 9 p.m. a cafe session opens up where clients can talk more directly with one-another and possibly respond to what someone has shared, he added.
It’s important to note that this group provides a form of support, but doesn’t discourage other forms of support like medical or psychiatric help, Gary Jaworski said.
“We’re not here to fix people, we’re just here to open and love on people,” he said. People participating in this program are encouraged to grow, he said.
“It helps you grow into a different person,” he said. “When I see people’s lives being transformed from somebody who feels hopeless… when they feel that they have value and they have worth, to see that transformation, there’s nothing more rewarding.”
Becky Jaworski, who is married to Gary Jaworski and volunteers in the program, said she sees a lot of value in the program and she’s personally benefited from having a place to share and work through her problems.
She said she had concerns about her past, but this program helped her realize the importance of looking ahead and not living in the past.
“There’s so much more ahead of a person,” she said.