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Hang Ups
# D O I N ’ G O O D
THERE are three registered Celebrate
Recovery meetings in Wilmington,
and one each in Leland and Southport.
Celebrate Recovery (CR) is a
12-step, Christ-centered recovery plan
for those with hurt, pain or addiction
of any kind.
“Anything that might prevent them from filling any plan
that God has for them,” says Jodie Rife, whose personal
recovery journey began 29 years ago with what he describes
as a “struggle with drugs and alcohol, a little anger and fear.”
Rife, with wife Suzanne and a team of leaders from their
Life Community Church (aka the former mall church) in
Wilmington lead a Monday evening Celebrate Recovery
now located at Cape Fear Free Will Baptist Church, on
Holly Tree Road at 6:15 p.m. beginning with a hot meal.
“We point people in the direction of help and hope,”
Rife says.
This includes those with a wide range of behaviors
and habits; high anxiety; fear; codependency; compulsive
behaviors; sex addiction; financial dysfunction; drug and
alcohol addictions and eating disorders.
In its seventh year, Rife says the group began with two
or three, then four or five, who were tired of being bound.
During the group’s fifth anniversary gathering there were
135 to 140 in attendance. Maintaining the anonymity and
confidentiality of those in attendance is key, but even on a
cold Monday night in March 2019 there is a large group
of men and women present.
“God has continued to bless us in a very special way, it’s
been an amazing transformation,” says Rife.
One of the seventh largest recovery programs worldwide,
under its registered trademarked name, Celebrate Recovery
began in 1990 founded by John Baker, as an alcoholic and
staff member of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. “We are
all broken. We have all sinned. We have all missed the mark.
We are all struggling with a hurt, habit or hang up,” says
Baker quoted on the global CR website from “12 Steps,
Christian Style; Lake Forest Ministry Has Helped Thousands,
in a Concept That’s Spread”, Los Angeles Times, p. B3,
William Lobdell (24 April 1999).
Jodie Rife at the Monday night weekly Celebrate Recovery
meeting, March 4, 2019.
By PAT BRADFORD
Photography by ALLISON POTTER
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