The Miraculous Power of Authentic Community: What Really Leads To Recovery

The Miraculous Power of Authentic Community: What Really Leads To Recovery

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Major James Betts, Salvation Army, New York, NY; April 23, 2018:

[What Salvation Army calls] Core Community Centers: they’re church communities, church fellowships where we come together to worship. The thing about is that folks from all layers of life, all classes, all backgrounds, all professions, all stages of life are coming together in community. They’re worshiping together. When I think of folks living outside of a home or in homelessness, I think we can be in relationship with them. And if the Army can provide an opportunity to them for them to be not just in relationship with me, or with our staff – our incredible staff who do so many wonderful things –  but they can be in relationship with everyday regular people in community that makes all the difference of the world.

We had an independent study done, out in the western US. They looked at our resident rehabilitation services program. We have about a hundred rehabilitation programs across the country (resident programs). In that program the study looked at one question:

“Twelve months after graduation, are you still clean and sober?”

They first looked at rehabilitation programs, and across the country: not just Army, but all rehabilitation programs. And the number was 8% that they saw on the study. The question, “Are you still clean and sober?” then they looked at the Army programs and it was at about 24% with our programs, which we would have been thrilled with and that’s a good number.

Then they looked at one further group, those who while they were in the program became engaged with one of those Core Community Centers, one of those church fellowship/church communities where you have someone in a rehabilitation program sitting next to someone with a PhD, and is an executive down the street. “Clean and sober for twelve months: 86%.

That transformed everything we thought about, everything we do.

[Generosity NY presents "Serving Those On The Street: A Spiritual Alliance is Forming To End Homelessness in NYC." - Apr 23, 2018, @ 33:24, 34:16; 47:43; slightly edited for style]

https://vimeo.com/266308275

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