Develop a Discipleship System
Fresh Expressions of Recovery: New Training Pathway
By Michael Beck
Jill Beck and I serve a cooperative parish in Florida of three churches, two established congregations (Wildwood, St. Marks), and a church plant (Compassion).
The seating capacity for our sanctuaries is about 250-300 each.
Imagine with me each of those spaces filled almost to capacity with people. See their faces. They are young, old, and every shade of skin pigmentation.
Now imagine every face you saw in one of those sanctuaries dies in a single day. In three days, the rooms are empty and silent.
What happened? What deadly event or virus claimed their lives?
The overdose epidemic.
In 2022, some 224 people died every day from an overdose.[1]
We are living in the worst overdose epidemic in the history of the nation. In 2020, “the deadliest year in U.S. history,” overdose deaths reached a then-record 93,000 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That estimate was far above the 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year (an increase of 29 percent). From 2021 to 2023, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. died from a drug overdose.
To give a little historical context, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) reported fewer than 7,200 total U.S. overdose deaths in 1970 at the height of the heroin epidemic. More than 9,000 lives were claimed at the height of the crack epidemic in 1988. The overdose epidemic is more than ten times that number today.
These are real people with real families. These people are our parents, children, friends, and loved ones. They are people like my little brother, McKinley, who died in my arms from a drug overdose on September 27, 2018. I tell the full story in my forthcoming book Never Alone: Sharing the Gift of Community in a Lonely World.[2]
We are living in the worst overdose epidemic in the history of the nation. ... From 2021 to 2023, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. died from a drug overdose.
I am convinced that Christians should be first responders on the front lines of this crisis, not waiting for others. Our church facilities should be bastions of healing for the 2.5 million people age eighteen or older struggling with opioid use disorder.
In the Fresh Expressions movement, we cultivate new forms of church for people who might not connect with traditional church settings. We do this by empowering everyday Jesus followers to start these new expressions of church, making the church more accessible and less resource-intensive. One aspect of this work is what Leonard Sweet and I describe as “contextual intelligence,” which involves understanding and adapting to the unique cultural and social contexts in which these new church expressions are formed.
Any church community that ignores or avoids the addicted and afflicted just outside (or quietly inside) its stained-glass walls is ingenuine or even blind. The early Methodist movement began with noticing and tending to the disinherited and dispossessed of society.
Hurting people turn to various forms of addiction to self-medicate pain and loneliness. Yet, we know these are hurts that can be healed. And we know a wounded healer (John 20:27).
Recovery groups can be places where people find healing. Every single congregation can do something to help. Whether it’s repurposing church facilities to house programs, giving twelve-step fellowships space to meet, creating support groups for the loved ones of those afflicted, offering free Narcan, partnering with local care providers, rehabs, and sober houses, or starting Christian recovery ministries . . . we can make a difference.
More importantly, I believe it’s time for Christians to cultivate Fresh Expressions of Recovery. Our local cooperative parish has done this, and we have experienced a renewed sense of purpose, healing, and revitalization in our churches. We have seen lives saved and healed.
Later this month, we will launch a training pathway for teams that want to cultivate healing communities for people in need of recovery. We will focus on the importance of the church’s role in this crisis, advocating for faith communities to become proactive in providing support and resources to those affected.
We will learn how to offer spiritual support and practical assistance such as naloxone training and distribution, recovery programs, and partnerships with local health services.
This collective will equip church teams with the skills to start and sustain Fresh Expressions of Recovery in their communities.
We will be inspired and challenged to think creatively and compassionately about addressing this pressing but often ignored social issue and reach people in new and meaningful ways. We will explore how to become a church that is both innovative and deeply rooted in our historic mission to “reform the nation, and in particular, the church, to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”
If you are interested in cultivating new forms of recovery, join this collaboration of Fresh Expressions FL and Fresh Expressions UM. You will learn how to:
- Cultivate healing communities for people in recovery who might be interested in Jesus as their higher power.
- Integrate traditional recovery approaches with incarnational models of leadership.
- Understand the steps and principles of recovery fellowships.
- Explore trauma-informed approaches to discipleship for the twenty-first century.
If this pains your heart, I hope you’ll join a community of people who care about ways our churches can offer safe spaces of healing amid the overdose epidemic. Registration is free. Click here to learn more and register today.
Michael Beck is the Director of Fresh Expressions United Methodist (FXUM) with Path 1 at Discipleship Ministries.
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