A place to belong before you believe

This weekend, people are gathering at Auckland City Corps to celebrate what has often been, literally, a death to life transformation through 20 years of Salvation Army Recovery Church. ‘Making the rest of my life, the best of my life’ is the weekend slogan—a motto that has become synonymous with Recovery Church.

Sadly, one of the co-founders of Recovery Church, Major Kevin Goldsack, was promoted to Glory on the 25th of September, shortly after this interview.

The first inklings of what would become Recovery Church began, not from The Salvation Army, but from a client who had been through the Bridge Programme (which is also known as Addiction Services).

Majors Kevin and Merilyn Goldsack spent eight years overseeing the Bridge Programme in Auckland, including its centre on Rotoroa Island in the Hauraki Gulf. One client stood out: he participated fully in the programme, living in community with gang members, a prison guard and those on probation. He came through the programme a transformed man. At graduation, the man said to Kevin: ‘I could have paid for this treatment. I want to do what I can to help.’ Initially, he bought new toasters, a washing machine and dryer, and even got a roading crew in to improve the roads.

But sometime later, he approached Kevin and Merilyn and offered to send them to the United States to visit Salvation Army Addictions Services there. This was the birth of a new vision. ‘We saw how they ran the chapel service in the States, it was like what church should be and Recovery Church would become,’ they say.

Back in New Zealand, the couple was increasingly aware of the barriers their clients faced in their fledgling faith. ‘When people come to the Bridge they’re at a crisis point—with family, relationships, often the courts and ill health. Out of that, God works and people may make a decision for the Lord,’ recalls Merilyn. ‘But once they have left treatment, they fall through the gaps. We saw a huge gap between our programme and mainstream church.’

Kevin adds, ‘When God was preparing us for Recovery Church, there was a graduate who was doing really well and made a decision for the Lord. We took him to church and he was literally shaking. He couldn’t come in. He said it was too big, too flash. So I just sat outside with him. It was another thing God used to show us that we had to bridge the gap.’

The birth of Recovery Church

God added to the growing vision. On Rotoroa Island, Kevin had been watching an old log rotting over the years. Suddenly, the log began growing new shoots out of the dead wood. Kevin felt God’s spirit speak to him: ‘This is what I want you to do. Grow new life!’

Kevin consulted US church leader Bill Hybels about whether he should heed the vision. ‘He said to me, you need two things: It’s got to be real, so look for confirmation. And there will be risk.’

At a Bridge Programme reunion, Kevin stood up and announced that a new church was going to start that he was calling ‘Recovery Church’. ‘There were whoops and cheers. Afterwards, about a dozen people came up and said, “Are you for real? Are you for real?” We took that as confirmation—yes, it was real.’

The first unofficial Recovery Church was held in January 1995, in Auckland. By the third week, the space was crammed and they had to open up extra room. By the time it came to officially start Recovery Church in May, 150 people were already attending.

A place to belong

Twenty years later, there are 13 Recovery Churches around New Zealand—half are part of a local corps (Salvation Army church), and half are part of the Army’s national Addiction Services.

‘It’s a special place, for a special group of people,’ says Commissioner Astrid Herring, National Mission Coordinator for Addiction Services ‘Recovery Church is vital to Addictions Services and to our corps. People come who are in recovery from addiction or traumatic experiences and they find it a safe, welcoming place. There really is a sense of community and a spirit of grace that provides a place to heal and grow.’

The emphasis at Recovery Church is on honesty and acceptance. The only requirement is that people are ‘clean and sober on the day’. Doubts and questions are welcomed. People can hold alternative beliefs, or no beliefs. The Recovery Church motto is: ‘A place to belong, before you believe.’

‘Testimony is raw, up-to-date and includes failures and everyday challenges,’ writes former Christchurch Addictions Services manager, Major Sue Hay, in the Army’s Recovery Church Guidelines. ‘Leaders are also appropriately transparent about their own life struggles. There is empathy for those who fail even after long-term recovery. Grace is extended.’ People are encouraged to ‘come as they are’—there is no judgement of relationships, sexuality or where people are at in their journey with God.

Clients are welcome to join the music team, which plays secular songs that relate to recovery—such as ‘Lean on Me’ and ‘One Day At a Time’, as well as well-known hymns like ‘Amazing Grace’.

People, including newcomers, are invited to join in by reading the Bible, prayers and reflections from The Recovery Bible.

Prayers are often simple but raw, says Major Paul Clifford, who heads up Recovery Church in Hamilton and has been involved since almost the beginning. At a recent service, one man stood up and said, ‘God, give me a break!’, then sat down again. Another man prayed, ‘God, bless all my children and all their mothers too’. ‘That’s the world they come from, and we don’t judge,’ adds Paul.

Merilyn and Kevin, now in retirement, are still leaders at the Palmerston North Recovery Church. Recently, there has been a lot of prayer for Kevin, who has been diagnosed with acute leukaemia. A recent prayer was: ‘God, you might think you need Kevin, but we need him more! So heal him and leave him with us.’

Merilyn says, ‘We really treat each other like family at Recovery Church. We share our experiences with openness and honesty. If someone comes and says, “This is my second day clean and sober”, they’ll be greeted with cheers and clapping. If someone says, “I am 15 years clean and sober,” they’ll get the same recognition.’

A beginners’ guide to faith

Most importantly, Recovery Church has given people who may feel excluded from church, a place to discover the Christian faith. ‘Many people have had no spiritual input or have had hurtful Christian experiences, so it’s a place to re-establish their relationship with their higher power, who they come to know is God. It’s a “beginner’s guide” to the Christian spiritual life,’ says Paul.

Although the Goldsacks’ original vision was to bridge the gap, ‘we never thought we’d have people come through to soldiership,’ laughs Merilyn. ‘We got the biggest shock when the first group of people came to us and said, “What do we do to join The Salvation Army?”, and we held our first enrolment service for new soldiers.’

Recovery Church truly reflects the beginnings of The Salvation Army, notes Astrid. ‘I can’t help but think this is the type of group William and Catherine Booth would have led—people who need the help of social services to change their lives, but who also need acceptance and a spiritual community to belong to and give back to. It’s life-changing stuff; we’re bringing life rather than death.’

It’s hard to avoid the fact that Recovery Church is a model of how the whole church should be. And the authenticity of Recovery church has also impacted the wider Salvation Army—it has been a place where many Salvationists have found a new depth of experience in Christ.

‘In church we tend to want to show our strengths, not our weaknesses,’ says Kevin. ‘People in recovery church know they are weak … but God makes them strong.’ A person who had been a Salvationist all his life attended Recovery Church, and said to Kevin afterwards, “I found the Lord tonight!” ’

Recovery Church is not only for people who are in recovery from addictions. People also come to recover from traumatic experiences or situations. Astrid recently met a woman who had been part of a church where she suffered spiritual abuse. She was invited to Recovery Church and after belonging there for a while, felt free to love and serve God again. She is now a soldier, attending her local Salvation Army corps.

Recovery stories

Story after story of changed lives flow out of Kevin and Merilyn. In the first few weeks of Recovery Church, a woman was invited along by Linda, the Bridge Programme’s chaplain, who simply said, ‘You are welcome here.’
‘The woman came forward and gave her life to the Lord, and the following week she brought her husband and he gave his life to the Lord,’ Merilyn recalls. ‘The next week, they brought a friend and the friend gave their life to the Lord. They realised they were all alcoholics, and they did their recovery through Recovery Church’.

Another story that stands out in their minds is a member of a well-known New Zealand band in the ’80s. ‘He had a very significant recovery. He came into treatment and joined Recovery Church, and wanted to become a Salvationist. He only had black leathers that he wore, so he sold those to buy two uniforms and wore his uniform everywhere he went.’

Another young woman still calls Kevin ‘dad’. She was a prostitute on ‘K Road’ and went through treatment three times. Her father was dying, and Kevin went and prayed for the family. ‘It had a huge effect on this young woman,’ says Merilyn. ‘She ended up going through Laidlaw Bible College and graduating as valedictorian. She is now very involved advocating for prostitutes and making submissions to Parliament.’

Celebrating 20 years

Miracles are still happening at Recovery Church, 20 years after it began—like the young woman who recently moved to Palmerston North to escape the drug scene in her home town. She wanted to make a fresh start and find a church. She was walking past The Salvation Army, heard the band playing and decided to go in. ‘She began attending Recovery Church and her life has changed spectacularly!’ says Kevin.

And it’s not just individual lives that are changing, it is whole families. For Paul, a standout of Recovery Church is when people graduate from the treatment programme and family are invited to see their clean and sober loved ones graduate. ‘Graduates often thank their family for hanging in there, and that becomes a catalyst for trust and change. It’s great to see individual lives set free from addiction and move on, but it’s even greater to see whole families restored and changed.’

He reflects, ‘Some of these people have done terrible things, and they come and discover that God is a God of love—that there is one source of life, and that everyone gets another chance with God.’

Merilyn laughs when she recalls that as a teenager, she was so scared of alcohol she would cross the road rather than walk past a pub. She freely admits her ‘horror’ when, as Salvation Army officers, she and Kevin were appointed to Epsom Lodge—a home for people who have been sleeping rough. ‘But God gave us such a love for those people,’ she recalls—it was the start of more than 20 years working in the addictions field and in Recovery Church.

‘God has been so good! He’s given us a wonderful ministry and our lives have become so rich because of the people we have worked with. We have loved people, but we’ve been loved so much more.’

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by Ingrid Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 3 October 2015, pp5-7
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.