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 ...