Saved by Grace

 

Celebrate Recovery has become so successful in transforming lives that judges across the state advise parolees to take part as a step toward learning to live on the straight and narrow. 

 

It’s the Tuesday night before Easter, and the sound of nails being pounded into wood fills the sanctuary of First Assembly of God Church in North Little Rock. More than 150 people are lined up, awaiting their turn to grab a hammer and nail pieces of paper to one of three crosses standing at the front of the church, as a band of volunteer musicians and singers perform praise and worship music.

Outside the First NLR campus.

The experience is highly cathartic, and those who participate hunch forward in intense personal prayer once they sit down again. Some are visibly crying. The reason this is so emotional is that the attendees have been asked to write down their biggest life crises — ranging from alcohol and drug abuse to porn and sex addiction and anger management issues — and nail them to a cross as a firm statement of determination to turn their problems over to Jesus Christ and declare themselves powerless over their weaknesses.

That declaration is the first step required for successful participation in Celebrate Recovery (CR), a 12-step program that puts a directly Christian spin on the formula created by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its sister programs including Narcotics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. Founded 30 years ago by John Baker and internationally renowned pastor Rick Warren (author of the mega-selling Christian self-help book The Purpose Driven Life) of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, CR has grown to have chapters in 20 languages at nearly 37,000 churches worldwide.

Inside First NLR is a spacious and comfortable atmosphere.

“Basically, Celebrate Recovery is a place for anyone with a hurt, habit or hang-up,” says Layne Mason, 56, the minister at First Assembly of God Church who oversees the direction of CR at the church and 11 satellite groups at locations in Arkansas and as far-flung as New York City and even Afghanistan. “It’s a Christ-centered program, meaning we declare who our Higher Power is, and make no mistake about it — He’s Jesus Christ.

 

“We declare that’s who we serve and who gives us the strength and power to do this. What makes it so much different is our groups aren’t just for drugs or alcohol. Only about one out of three people who attend are there for drugs and alcohol. Most are there for some other life issue like codependency, anger, grief, abuse or sex addiction.”

Mason knows the power of CR personally, since he admits being an addict of “some substance or something” since he was 10 years old, starting with pornography before adding cigarettes, alcohol, sex and finally drugs to his personal list of temptations. His wife of 20 years, Marsha, who’s 52, also battled addiction to drugs and alcohol, and the pair first got together in 1997 in Salt Lake City before moving to the Sin City capital of Las Vegas after they became friends during their prior marriages.

 

“We didn’t do anything right. We weren’t believers in Jesus, and there was verbal and physical abuse because of my alcoholism,” Layne recalls.  “I was arrested in January 2003, and that started my recovery journey. I went back to an AA sponsor I’d had been exposed to before, but it was eight months into sobriety before we were introduced to CR, and miracles really started to happen.”

Even after joining CR and becoming leaders of the program in their Las Vegas church, the Mason marriage was struggling. Their relationship had deteriorated so badly amid their mutual drug use and physical abuse toward each other that it took two years for Marsha to fully trust that Layne was truly determined to change for good.

 

The Masons moved to Little Rock 13 years ago when Layne took the job of internet sales manager for the state of Arkansas for AT&T. He had started attending Bible college before arriving, and he took eight years to earn his degree, as the couple planted their roots at First NLR. They eventually started CR at the church about seven and a half years ago and have seen it flourish ever since.

“We had about 325 people attend each week before COVID, and we’re now at about half that but growing our numbers back each week,” Layne says. “We also have a program for children called Celebration Place, which is ‘pre-covery’ for children because they’re learning the same things as adults, only in an age-appropriate way. We also have child care, and we used to have a CR teens program that we want to start again.”

 

Each week at First NLR — which is the core location for all Central Arkansas CR activities — there is a catch-all gathering in which attendees sing praise and worship music before listening to a short speech by Layne and a testimony from a person who’s experienced success in their recovery. Each of the 12 steps of AA is read aloud, but with a corresponding verse from scripture that spotlights how each point is tied to Christian ideology. The crowd then disperses into small groups that are broken down by the various types of issues people face — drugs, alcohol and codependency are the main ones — and separated by genders.

 

“The separating of the sexes leads to more transparency in sharing because there’s another level of openness when you’re called to share with your own sex,” Marsha says. “When people are in mixed groups, there is posturing to impress or a desire to keep certain things secret. It’s very rare that a woman would admit to being a sex addict in front of a male, and vice versa. And you certainly wouldn’t want to put them all together in the same group, because that’s a recipe for disaster.” Celebrate Recovery has become so successful in transforming lives that judges across the state advise parolees to take part as a step toward learning to live on the straight and narrow. Each week, several buses pick up men and women at halfway houses across the city and bring them to the meetings and step studies (which are held on Thursday nights) and the specially designated CR church services on Saturday nights.

Layne also leads a prison ministry called CR Inside that offers 10-week step-study programs to inmates at Pulaski County Jail, as well as state prisons at Pine Bluff, Malvern and Wrightsville. He takes particular pride in the transformations he sees among prisoners in the program.

 

And that brings us full circle to this night, where well over 100 people nail their problems to the cross, believing that they could put them to death once and for all and experience the joy that comes from faith in the resurrection of Christ.

 

“That was the cool part about CR — the big difference comes in things like nailing your problems to the cross,” Layne says. “Recovery is fun because you’re doing it together as a forever family. A lot of our people don’t have healthy normal families they come from.

 

“Here, we have a healthy family of people who are willing to admit they’re not OK, and they come to this place where they’re vulnerable and honest — not there because they have to be, but because they want to have that different life dynamic. We’re healthy because we admit we have problems, and secondly, we know a program that’s gonna help us maneuver through those problems, and we know the source of all hope is Jesus. You combine all that seriously, and if you work this program hard, it works 100 percent of the time.”  

 

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