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Gerald Dunaway used to sit in his darkened office every night, drinking and weeping. He had a drinking problem but did not know where to go for help. At his lowest point, he slept in his office every night and consumed a fifth of Scotch each day.

He would not ask his church in Georgia for help because all he heard Christian leaders tell people struggling with alcoholism was that they needed to be saved. "For me that was not true," Dunaway says. "I had Jesus."

In time Dunaway got sober through the well-known 12-step program that originated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Dunaway decided to take seriously the program's third step of turning his life and will over to the care of God. He aspired to work for the church in an overseas mission, but one organization after another turned him down.

Finally, an organization suggested he get a one-year Bible certificate, so Dunaway enrolled at Columbia International University in South Carolina. But he soon realized the overseas mission field was not for him.

Not knowing where God wanted him to minister, he continued his seminary training. During Dunaway's time at Columbia, a professor told him that pastors should minister among people for whom they feel intense care, even being willing to give up life itself to care for them.

Those challenging comments prompted Dunaway to recall the members of his home group.

"I remembered all the faces of those people I had gotten sober with," he says. "It was as though God put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Gerald, this is what it's all about. This is why I let you go through all of that. It's because I need somebody to go to the recovery community.' "

Following up on that conviction, Dunaway and his wife, Delores, planted a recovery church near Atlanta about a year ago. Every Sunday, the Dunaways set up two rows of folding chairs, a podium, and a cross, transforming the gymnasium of Snellville (Ga.) United Methodist Church into New Freedom Fellowship.

Except for Delores Dunaway, everyone in the tiny congregation is a recovering alcoholic or drug addict.

"I'm trying to reach those people who are in those secular programs and say to them, 'There's more to the 12 steps than just getting clean and sober. There's Christianity,' " Dunaway says. The church's mission is not to be a recovery program but to help people from secular recovery programs come to know Christ.

Some Christian authorities estimate that as many as one in four church members abuses alcohol or has an immediate relative who is an alcoholic.

More churches are turning to openly Christian 12-step programs, including Overcomers Outreach, Alcoholics Victorious, or Christians in Recovery. A few large churches are hiring recovery pastors. Tom Sharp, a recovery pastor at Capo Beach Calvary Chapel in Capistrano Beach, California, oversees the 3,500-member church's recovery ministry, including individual counseling and small groups.

Christian recovery programs stress that they are not Bible studies or substitutes for church. On the other hand, New Freedom and similar efforts emphasize that they are not replacements for recovery programs.

Both try to be a bridge between the church and the recovery community by accepting alcoholics unconditionally and supporting them in their quest to be free from addiction.

A major obstacle to effective church-based, recovery ministry is the lack of under stand ing about addiction, says Michael Liimatta of Alcoholics Victorious in Kansas City, Missouri.

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December 4 2000, Vol. 44, No. 14