Leadership Journal

When I think back on the many Sundays when I sat in church next to my father, listening to theological musings that flew right over the gritty reality of the many addictions he fought alone, I get angry. How could our family have played church for so long with so little impact on our everyday struggles? Maybe that's why I left the church as soon as I was old enough to rebel.

Christ's community should be a place of healing for people like my father, whose deep wounds, inflicted by his father's brokenness, fueled the addictive behaviors that robbed him of peace and drove him to an early grave.

In a generation spawned in brokenness, addictions rule! Emerging generations struggle with addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, tobacco, spending, sex, eating, working, dieting, and gambling to escape the pain of brokenness. Extrapolating the statistics, it appears that half of twenty-somethings today may battle some form of addiction. The church can't be caught flat-footed if we want to see a generation redeemed.

For the church to have a healing influence, we must understand how to break the slavery of addiction. Just telling people their behavior is immoral or wrong won't set them free—in fact, it may exacerbate the problem since shame often fuels the addiction. We need to cultivate a church culture that facilitates healing and growth.

At Gateway Church, we've seen many people find faith and healing from addictions, but only because they heard us say again and again, "Come as you are." The path to healing starts with creating a culture of grace—accepting people "as is" and pointing out their intrinsic value, even before they believe or "clean up." We must show people that God has already valued them—at the cost of his Son.

If you create this grace-first culture, the people who come will begin inviting their friends, just like the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well and ran to tell her friends. Nate invited his alcoholic roommate, Craig, who found faith in Christ and sobriety. Craig then invited Trey. Listen to the way Trey found healing from a cocaine addiction:

"I had been trying to connect with God ever since praying a prayer to become a Christian in the eighth grade. But the more I failed, the more I felt uncomfortable in church. But Craig told me that Gateway's policies were 'Come as you are' and 'No perfect people allowed.' That immediately put me at ease, because I definitely qualified. Fast forward to today. I have been sober since the first weekend I walked into Gateway (absolutely no coincidence). I realized that drugs and alcohol were just symptoms of my real dilemma: separation from God. I thought that I needed to get well and then come to church. I had it backwards. I needed to come to church to get well."

What would people say about your church? Is it the place to come to get well? Or do you need to "get well" to come?

One thing that inhibits grace and its reach to set captives free is the "us vs. them" mentality that many churchgoers unconsciously project. If we think of addicts as "those people" with the serious problems, unlike us who don't "desperately" need God's help, we sound a lot like the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like "that tax collector."

PAGE 1 of 6