Dick B.’s Christian Recovery Radio Interview on
February 23, 2013 of Greg P., One of a Number of Christian Recovery Leaders at
Cornerstone Fellowship, Livermore Campus, Livermore, California
On
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Introduction to Greg’s Interview
Greg P., our guest today, is one of the dynamic Christian
recovery leaders who has helped us in the launching and growth of a number of
International Christian Recovery Coalition projects, meetings, and groups in
the greater San Francisco Bay Area. These important efforts include stocking
and distributing a large inventory of A.A. history/Bible study volumes,
conducting biblical recovery groups, reaching out to the suffering in the
community, and hosting conferences for those in A.A., N.A., the dependency arena,
and others who seek God's help in overcoming addictions and being delivered
from their life-controlling burdens.
Greg works with the Turning Point
group, part of New Hope Ministries of Cornerstone Fellowship--Livermore Campus,
in Livermore, California. In our working group of Christian leaders and workers
in the recovery arena--along with another Cornerstone Fellowship Christian
recovery volunteer, Dominic D.--Greg has been a major California supporter of
the International Christian Recovery Coalition, our informal fellowship of
Christian recovery leaders and workers who emphasize the role that God, His Son
Jesus Christ, and the Bible have played in the astonishing successes of early
A.A. and its Christian predecessors, and can play right now.
Today, Greg will tell us a little
about himself, his family, his religious background, his education and regular
employment, and his connection with the alcoholism/addiction arena.
Particularly on the large campus of Cornerstone church at Livermore.
We are very thankful to have
stalwart Christian recovery leaders helping grow California's Christian
Recovery Movement in Livermore, Brentwood, San Jose, Pleasanton, Los Gatos, Foster
City, Oakland, San Francisco, and reaching north to Santa Rosa and Oroville,
California.
And with that, take it away Greg.
Synopsis
[I want to open with something new at Cornerstone, something
that Greg announces at the close of his interview. This is the video play which
Cornerstone is preparing to do and which they asked me to write the script for.
This unusual presentation will briefly cover a live enactment of what early
A.A. Christian Fellowship meetings in 1936 in Akron’s founding place in Ohio
were actually like. Many many more of this presentations could soon be shown or
reproduced in many parts of the United States and the world. They will bring,
in what Dr. Bob referred to as “terse and tangible” form, the heart of how
early AAs developed their remarkable self-sufficient, highly successful
Christian technique for cure that put Alcoholics Anonymous on the map. They
will enable newer alcoholics, addicts, codependents, and others to see proof of
how “old school” A.A. can be applied to, and enhance the successes of, recovery
today. Dick B.]
Greg was introduced to Christianity at 9 or 10, in the 4th
Grade. His school conducted religious training in a barn near his school. They
had a Christian Bible teacher. And Greg was able to enthuse over what he
learned about everlasting life, the forgiveness of sins, and the fact that
there was more to life than homework and chasing girls.
However, the Bible teacher told the class Jesus came into
her room regularly and that she washed his feet. Craig became afraid that Jesus
would come into his room. In fact, Greg’s dad found Greg pacing the hallway,
fearful and awaiting the arrival of Jesus in his room and of his duty to wash
the feet of the Savior.
Nonetheless, Greg developed a sound relationship with God.
But he also developed a strong relationship with alcohol at age 16 in high
school. By that means, he acquired new found strength from his friend alcohol.
But his connection with God ran away. He was not connected. He was moved toward
sex and romance and the excitement thereof. He had been shy and scared of
women. And liquor, said he, “fortified me.”
In a decade, he [like both Dr. Bob and Bill] had become
jittery, and he began mixing booze with tranquilizers [In Bill and Bob’s case,
it was “high powered sedatives.”]. And Greg soon developed problems with debt,
food, and relationships.
He found the beginning of his new answer—12 Step groups.
Since his son had developed drug problems, and Greg was a single parent, he was
an ardent Al-Anon for 6 years. But he saw that those rooms were packed with
alkies. He concluded “I am one.” And he turned to being an A.A. newcomer and
then an AA with 29 ½ years continuous sobriety. He liked A.A. a lot – the
emphasis on honesty and sharing. At the same time, he was close to his mother
(who just passed away); and her emphasis on Jesus brought him back to that fold.
He pursued Christ. He married again—this time to a woman raised in the Bible
belt. He found himself in A.A. meetings where Bible verses were quoted, and
members asked “What Step” those familiar
ideas came from.
It was then that Greg turned heavily to helping others. He
started a group for Christian men. These were souls who were turned off with
A.A. where they rejected talk about Jesus; and they got drunk and stayed drunk.
They also had long-term bad experience with church. So Greg was determined to
form a bridge that could lead these men back to church. To a place where they would be in a comfortable environment
[and this plan is the one that has taken root in the new, burgeoning Christian
Recovery Movement of today—“Bible friendly, recovery friendly, A.A. friendly,
12 Step friendly, Christian friendly, newcomer friendly, and just plain
friendly.”
This group was the Genesis of “Turning Point” which meets at
Cornerstone Fellowship in Livermore. He works with Dominic D.—one of the
earlier members.
From there, the outreach became Christian-based and like
Alcoholics Anonymous. It met Monday and Thursday. Soon there was a similar
Al-Anon “counter-point” group, Then co-dependency group. Then a transformation
group dealing with sex issues. Finally a group for Teens, calling “Landing.”
And Greg himself began reaching out to prisons with similar A.A. meetings.
Greg now is planning two new projects that are consistent
with the Cornerstone approaches. The first is a play, a video, depicting what
1936 A.A. meetings were actually like; drawing on what is in the 46 Dick B.
books and articles and relevant. He asked Dick B. to prepare the script; and
plans are to put the production on the Internet via YouTube.
Three years ago, Greg’s life took a new and constructive
recovery arena turn. In his professional life, he began wide travels in the
U.S. and abroad. It struck him that there was not a parable of Jesus and the
alcoholic. And he didn’t know why. But then he believed he found it in the
powerful verses in Luke 11:20-26 dealing with Jesus’s casting out demons. When the
demons left, they began to walk in dry places, and then return again to their
clean-swept homes. But the afflicted. needed to fill the barren with God
through the Holy Spirit. Greg also was struck with the relevance that we are
not God.
[The relevant verses—Luke 11:20-26—are:
“But if I with the finger of God
cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. When a strong
man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than
he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour
wherein he trusted, and divedeth his spoils. He that is not with me is against
me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. When the unclean spirit is
gone out of a man, he walketh through
dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will
return unto m y house whence I came
out. And when he cometh, he findeth it
swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other
spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the
last state of that man I worse than the
first.”
I understand Greg’s parable and
reasoning. Do you? When I was delivering a seminar at the Wilson House at Bill W.’s birthplace in
East Dorset, Vermont, Ozzie Lepper—founder and President of Wilson House—heard
me teaching on Tenth Step origins and the necessity for continuing to
clean house lest the Adversary return to tempt and steal and destroy, making
matters worse than ever. Ozzie cited this very parable.]
Greg is planning another important event at Cornerstone in
April. It will reach out to many recovery groups and to the public. Its theme
is a One-Stop program. You don’t have to go to a variety of meetings when you
have a One-Stop sponsor, Jesus, who is fully informed on all addictions. He
said the A.A. Founders—in their wisdom—chose not to grow A.A. into a large
well-funded commercial group. Instead to stress that it needed to be
self-supporting to maintain the spiritual environment. Not commercial—self
sufficient.
In closing, Greg returned to the lessons he began learning
15 years ago as he applied his tech class professional talks in the United
States and the world. In his travels, he sought out A.A. meetings first. They
were following Steps, getting sober with an “higher power.” In Tel Aviv, he
attended meetings in a Bomb Shelter where Arabs, Jews, and West Bankers closed
their meetings holding hands. They had a grasp of the power of the program, the
need to surrender, and to ask God’s help for peace and love. This unique power
of the A.A. program in so many places in the world today stands, he believes,
as a strong example of how important A.A. is in joining people of all faiths,
self-supporting, and dedicated to overcome the ravages of addiction—whatever
their ethnic and religious beliefs may be. And this uniting of personal workers
for the primary purpose of helping the rock-bottom suffering persons is still
an important answer to those who criticize a non-monolithic A.A. as too
religious or too secular or too unfit for Christians or too bereft of
“evidence-based” research. This when success abounds where the afflicted
“thoroughly follow the path.” And, I, like I believe Greg believes, that the
time has come to return recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous itself to the simple
formula that enabled it to succeed so well and grow in its old school days:
Renounce liquor and drugs for good. Turn to God for help. Immediately reach out
to help “others” recover. The “others” didn’t come to A.A. to find God or a religion.
They came to get out of a misery they soon ascribe to abuse of alcohol and
mind-altering drugs. And whatever its formats or groups or “steps,” it enables
the afflicted to make a new start, a new approach, with brotherly help.
dickb@dickb.com
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