Recap of 05-25-09

We had a very nice Memorial Day CR service last night. We started out with a couple of patriotic songs and a video about the state of our country reminding us to pray for it. We also acknowledged our veterans we had with us. We had a special moment with Ron C., who just celebrated 1 year of living a new life. Pat the Poet wrote and read him a poem. Then we heard a very moving testimony from a special guest speaker. This person chose to not have their testimony recorded and put on the web so if you missed it, sorry.

If you haven’t went back and read any old posts then you might not know but we are no longer putting lessons on the web either. We’ve actually gone back and took them all off. We will only put testimonies that we’re given signed permission up on the web. Make every effort you can to get to a CR near you on a regular basis to here these life changing lessons and testimonies. The fellowship and time to share is also so valuable.

Last night we had 48 people including 6 children.

Our first CR Cookout!

We had an awesome time in the park yesterday! This was our first official CR Cookout, with plans of many more. We had about 40 people who showed up between the 3-4 hours we were there. A lot of people weren’t CR people (yet anyway!) who had just heard about it at church and came to check it out. We cooked about 70 burgers and 50 hot dogs and even fed a couple people who just walked by, it was great. We had an egg toss that ended up being a little messy for a few people and we had a “not your average” volleyball game. Only one person remembered a camera and apparently it only had a few pictures left on it so we missed a lot of stuff but we did get a few pics and there on here!

We hope to do this monthly for the rest of the season. Oh yea, there was like an 80-90% chance of rain and thunderstorms yesterday and it didn’t look to promising at the beginning but a couple of us prayed that God might hold it off for us. Well, the sun tried to come out but it didn’t rain until about 30 minutes after we had all left and then the bottom fell out! Thank you Father for answered prayer and for Your Son that came out in each one of us and for a wonderful time we all had!

Testimony by Shawn N. (video)

We had a guest speaker Shawn N. on 05-11-09. Shawn gave his personal testimony.



(All images used were created by and are owned by Celebrate Recovery of Saddleback Church. As an authentic Celebrate Recovery ministry we use them only to promote Celebrate Recovery and the love and saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.)

We Got Answers!

Wow, right after writing the previous post we got word about the video situation. We’ve been asked to take the lesson videos down but we can keep doing the testimonies as long as we continue to get permission.

With that said, that’s what we will do! Right after this is post is posted the lessons will have been removed and they will be marked private on Vimeo so you won’t be able to see them there either. I guess you’ll just have to join us in person or find a CR near you to hear the lessons which isn’t a bad thing either. The testimonies are all “one of a kind” and we still get to put those up, praise God! It’s our prayer that they will touch your life and or someone you know.

We were also told we should be on the national website any day now!

Thank you Jesus for allowing us to be involved with this ministry and all the work You do in and through this ministry, thank you Saddleback Church for starting it, thank you Barefoot Church for having it and thank you for everyone’s patience and understanding while we got all this worked out.

We're Still Here!

Don’t give up on us! We have just hit a minor bump in the road on our “Road to Recovery”. We found out recently at a CR Leadership One Day Training that our posting of videos is on the “edge” of what is OK according to the National CR Leadership Team. We found this out while inquiring into why we are not yet listed in the “Find a Group” section of
www.CelebrateRecovery.com. We’re not sure if one has anything to do with the other but we are still looking into both. We want to comply and we will comply with whatever decisions are made; we are just waiting to find out. We have heard a couple different things, one that podcasts would be OK, just not video but we’ve also heard that doing Testimony videos, with permission of the speaker, are OK just not Lesson videos. We have been obtaining signed permission from everybody we have posted videos of from the beginning and will continue to do so. We did have one person so far that wasn’t comfortable with it so we didn’t even turn the camera on that night.

If we have done anything wrong we didn’t realize it and didn’t intend to. The way we have seen this is while trying to model CR from Saddleback like we are trained we should, we are also trying to follow the DNA of our church. Barefoot Church is big on leveraging technology to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our church use video regularly and has recently started an Internet Campus which live streams our 3 weekend services, our Wednesday night youth service and has already done a Bible study live called Basic Training. All these live broadcast are not meant for people to stay home instead but are targeted to people who wouldn’t otherwise be hearing the message. There are tons of possibilities here; people who are curious (anywhere in the world by the way), people who aren’t physically able to get out, people on vacation from our church, people that came to our church while on vacation after they get back home, people in hospitals, people under lockdown whether in Rehab, jail, prison or whatever. This list could go on and on. Jesus said to take the Gospel to all ends of the world; the internet is one tool to do that. There is so much bad stuff on the internet that there needs to be plenty of good stuff on there too.

These are some of the reasons that motivate us to do what we do the way we do it. We would like to see our Monday night CR Large Group on our Internet Campus one day too. Of course the camera would always only point at the stage and everybody that got on the stage would know. Up until now our hold up was not having a big enough tech team on Monday nights to get it done. But now we realize that our higher ups in CR might not approve it and if that’s the case so be it.

We would love to hear your thoughts on any of this stuff. We encourage you to leave a comment on this post with your feelings. Keep it real just keep it appropriate also! Thanks and have a blessed day.

Testimony by Cathy H. (video)

Cathy H. gave her personal testimony on 04-27-09.


(All images used were created by and are owned by Celebrate Recovery of Saddleback Church. As an authentic Celebrate Recovery ministry we use them only to promote Celebrate Recovery and the love and saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.)