celebrate – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

Week after week our men’s step group gathered.

One by one, unhealthy elements of our lives found their way to the light. These elements (whether imposed by others or self-inflicted) defined the things that could now get brought openly before the Lord and one another.

As with the peeling away of onion skins, our interior selves gradually emerged. Confession – issuing from a humility of heart that only God can bestow – buoyed our confidence in his trustworthiness.

Because of his astounding love for broken persons caught up in vices of sexual impurity (scripture’s listings are long and precise), Christ calls his sons and daughters to identify and renounce our self-justifying games. I was summoned by the Spirit’s drawing to call a spade a spade. Enough with avoidance! As put forward in the lyrics of the old spiritual, “It’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer”.

Owning and confessing my personal moral wrongs was, I knew, necessary for turning toward and gaining freedom. Victory was in reach, but only through the strength of God’s promised Spirit and Word. This I had come to know. I longed for freedom as much as anything I could long for.

Frankly, I found it easier earlier on to open up about the bad things that had been done to me, than to come clean about my own repeated cycles of willful sinning. The process toward freedom was marked by the proverbial rhythm: “Two steps forward, one step back”. Factored in, was a continued revisiting of our compassionate God, calling out to him in fervent appeal. He did not disappoint. Not ever.

Of the various recovery communities spread across the North American landscape, the Step programs that seem to bear the more promising fruit are those calling for vulnerable, courageous action.

While (mercifully) my particular brokenness had not translated into outright infidelity (though heart iniquity was another matter), there was no side-stepping the element of straight-up confession. Not only before God and my brothers, but in contrition to my dearest and nearest family members – not the least, the precious wife of my youth. The distracting nature of a divided mind had far too many times deprived my family of a focused attentiveness.

STEP 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.*

Sensing that another of life’s thresholds lay ahead for me – one of greater bearing than others – I texted my pastor, requesting a visit.

Not long after his ‘dumpster dive’ narrative (the lone part of the sermon I recall from that Sunday morning), Roger had begun laying the groundwork for a twelve-step venture fitting a specific niche of persons. Men serving in Christian ministry.

A Step program had already been serving our faith community for some time, yielding some beautiful fruit along the way. Through Bible-centered curricula facilitated by a compassionate, Christ-loving husband/wife team, Jim and Pam, a number of souls had – for their first time ever – drunk from springs of undiluted hope. The program, by now widely available and spreading, carried the label Celebrate Recovery (‘CR’).

Enter Roger, a “man the cloth”, who inserted a third letter, sandwiched between the C and the R. The result – a kind of hybrid version nicknamed ‘C.P.R.’ – the ‘P’ loosely representing the term ‘Pastor’.

Imagine. A recovery program concerned with hurts, habits and hangups of preachers, pastors, missionaries, youth ministers and the like. Remarkably (or not so remarkably), Roger’s CPR groups – the first followed by another, then another – never lacked for signups.

In a study spanning a recent calendar year Barna Research noted that 42 percent of pastors had considered leaving full-time ministry. While a combination of factors can give rise to such troubling data, a common theme has surfaced. A high number of leaders in the Lord’s work suffer from a sense of isolation.

Yet, men (vocational churchmen included) connecting routinely with other men in honest, redemptive dialogue are finding themselves ushered into a place of oxygen. A doorway of hope starts opening. Wounds get disclosed. Fears and hiddenness get unveiled. Healing enters. Recovery comes.

Jesus occupies such settings. Men know the empowering presence, in the company of friends. This became my story and remains so today.

By the time of my first interactive session with a CPR band of brothers, much water had passed beneath the proverbial bridge. Some with murky currents indeed. Here, in time, I would muster adequate courage to bring to light the account of a sexual assault, of unsavory influences, and a history of associated brokenness.

I was a child when *Lawrence took advantage. Hiddenness – my behavior default – had kept the incident sealed for beyond six decades.

I would learn afresh that from God there issues love that, as the hymn writer worded it, will not let me go.

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