PIC No. 21:
• Title: Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? And Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery
• Author: Stephen R. Haynes
• Publisher: Eerdmans (Oct. 26, 2021, 240 pages)
• Management Bucket #6 of 20: The Program Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 21 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
“Finding Jesus in the Basement”
Most of us are not fine. Well…unless you admit you’re just “Facebook fine.”
That’s the sad news from Stephen R. Haynes in his insightful (maybe even prophetic) analysis and history of AA and the 12-step movement in Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? And Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery.
In his opening salvo, “Why Can’t Sunday Be More Like Saturday? (it’s not what you think),” Haynes writes: “In exploring the church’s relationship to Twelve-Step recovery, I have learned that over the years, many Christians have found themselves facing a dilemma similar to mine. Compared with their recovery communities, their churches feel like real-world versions of Facebook—screens on which people project idealized versions of themselves in unspoken competition with others who are doing the same thing, all of them curating and consuming images designed to show they are fine, even great.”
He adds, “Why, these Christians who have experienced the authentic human connection of Twelve-Step recovery wonder, can’t my church be more like an AA meeting?”
Scan his 12 chapter titles and you won’t know where to start—the teases (and parenthetical hints) are so tempting:
• What Can the Church Learn From AA? (quite a bit)
• Do Christians Need Recovery? (not until they do)
• Are AA and the Church Allies or Competitors? (maybe both)
• Is Recovery Anti-Christian? (nope)
• Is Recovery Biblical (sort of)
There’s more:
• How Are Christians Reclaiming What the Church Gave AA? (let us count the ways)
• What Does the Church Bring to Recovery? (in a word, theology)
• Does Twelve-Step Recovery Work? (define work)
Haynes is a college professor of religious studies, adjunct professor of recovery ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary, and more. He transparently shares his own story and that grabs your attention.
Who should read this book?
• Pastors, priests, church board members, and counselors
• Anyone with a friend in recovery or who needs recovery (AA or “Christian” AA?)
• Almost everyone—you may need it (now or later), but chances are high someone close to you will appreciate these insights (now or later)
Memorable:
• “What is a clergyman and lifelong churchgoer to make of the fact that the spiritual highlight of his week more often than not is a secular recovery meeting?”
• Well-researched (34 pages of notes!), Haynes quotes experts and authors (Samuel Shoemaker, Keith Miller, Tim Stafford, and more) on the continuum between secular recovery approaches and so-called “Christian” recovery. He notes this from Jerome Ellison: “‘The last place where one can be candid about one’s faults is in church,’ he writes sardonically. ‘In a bar, yes, in a church, no. I know; I’ve tried both places.’”
• “In ‘Sinners Anonymous,’ blogger R. Brad White calls AA a place of ‘healing, support, encouragement, and accountability’ and asks why this description does not apply to more churches. Perhaps if we renamed our congregations ‘Sinners Anonymous’ or ‘First Church of Sinners,’ he writes, this would assist us in making them feel more like AA.”
• “Writing on the Roman Catholic site Crux, Kathleen Hirsch claims that if she had a dollar for every time she has heard the question ‘why can’t church be more like AA?’ she would be dining out every night.”
• “In an autobiographical piece titled ‘Finding Jesus in the Basement,’ [Rev. Bill] Wigmore describes how he ended up in an AA meeting that, unsurprisingly, met in a church basement. Though his first impulse was to seek help upstairs from the good church folk, he writes, he found that the alcoholics downstairs could ‘read [him] like a book.’”
If you’ve never read a book on the history of AA and the tension between AA and various “Christian” AA expressions—and formed your own view—then read this book. (Note: One program founded at Saddleback Church, Celebrate Recovery, as of 2020, has grown to 35,000 “churches, prisons, rehab facilities, and rescue missions worldwide.”) The final chapter addresses sex addiction.
You’ll appreciate the author’s balanced views—and numerous sidebars. The chart on page 95 listing three recovery ministries and their favorite Scriptures for each of the 12 steps is…well…revealing! (Not everyone agrees.)
Don’t skip reading about the various expressions of “Drunk Church” (that’s the real name) across the U.S. and their values (unity, Steps, rotation, rawness, and discipleship/sponsorship).
In the epilogue, the author asks, “What’s it like to attend a recovery meeting full of religious professors?” His answer: “They’ve learned the hard way that being a religion expert will not keep them sober, and that, in fact, the grandiosity behind such titles is part of what drives their addictions.”
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Program Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
• Angel for Higher, by Robert Hendershot with Trevor (order on Amazon) - (read John's review)
• The Cure: What If God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol and Bill Thrall (read John’s review)
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, by Anonymous - “A cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous tells how members recover and how the society functions.” - (order on Amazon)
• The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (Including Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) Kindle Edition, by Alcoholics Anonymous World Service Inc. - (order on Amazon)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? And Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery, by Stephen R. Haynes. For more book reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting. (And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.)
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