Recovering (Pastoring for Life: Theological Wisdom for Ministering Well)

Aaron White

Description

This book provides a theologically rich commentary on the challenge of addiction and the long road to recovery. Written by a minister with extensive experience working with people who struggle with addictions, this book helps pastors understand the roots and realities of our universal human struggle with addictions and attachments while showing that together we have great hope for freedom, wholeness, and recovery. Readers will learn how to create and foster a Beatitude Community, the kind of environment Jesus prescribed for his people, to help addicts and those who love them heal from brokenness. Foreword by Bob Ekblad.About the SeriesPastors are called to help people navigate the profound mysteries of being human, from birth to death and everything in between. This series, edited by leading pastoral theologian Jason Byassee, provides pastors and pastors-in-training with rich theological reflection on the various seasons that make up a human life, helping them minister with greater wisdom and joy.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 18 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493423712
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Half Title Page
Series Page

Theological Wisdom for Ministering Well Jason Byassee, Series Editor
Aging: Growing Old in Church by Will Willimon
Birth: The Mystery of Being Born by James C. Howell
Friendship: The Heart of Being Human by Victor Lee Austin
Recovering: From Brokenness and Addiction to Blessedness and Community by Aaron White
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Aaron White
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2371-2
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Scripture quotations labeled BSB are from The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible, BSB. Copyright ©2016, 2018 by Bible Hub. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Scripture quotations labeled NASB are from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Dedication
This book was written on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the x ʷ mə θ kwə y̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxw ú 7mesh (Squamish), St ó :lō and Sə lʼ í lwəta ʔ /Selilwitulh (TsleilWaututh) Nations.
These territories were never ceded to Canada through treaty, war, or surrender. I lift my hands to these beautiful people and say thank you: “Huy ch q’u”
Epigraph

Risen from the dead are the poor in spirit . . .
Risen from the dead are they who mourn . . .
Risen from the dead are the meek . . .
Risen from the dead are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . .
Risen from the dead are the merciful . . .
Risen from the dead are the pure of heart . . .
Risen from the dead are the peacemakers . . .
Risen from the dead are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake . . .
Jim Forest, “Climbing the Ladder of the Beatitudes,” August 16, 2017
Contents
Cover i
Half Title Page ii
Series Page iii
Title Page iv
Copyright Page v
Dedication vi
Epigraph vii
Series Preface ix
Foreword by Bob Ekblad xi
Introduction 1
Part 1 Broken and Blessed 9
1. Broken 11
2. Blessed 33
Part 2 The Beatitude Community 49
3. Surrendered Community: The Poor in Spirit 51
4. Lamenting Community: Those Who Mourn 67
5. Contented Community: The Meek 83
6. Ordered Community: Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness 99
7. Compassionate Community: The Merciful 115
8. Contemplative Community: The Pure in Heart 129
9. Reconciling Community: The Peacemakers 143
10. Co-suffering Community: The Persecuted 155
Resources 173
Notes 175
Bibliography 183
Index 189
Back Cover 195
Series Preface
One of the great privileges of being a pastor is that people seek out your presence in some of life’s most jarring transitions. They want to give thanks. Or cry out for help. They seek wisdom and think you may know where to find some. Above all, they long for God, even if they wouldn’t know to put it that way. I remember phone calls that came in a rush of excitement, terror, and hope. “We had our baby!” “It looks like she is going to die.” “I think I’m going to retire.” “He’s turning sixteen!” “We got our diagnosis.” Sometimes the caller didn’t know why they were calling their pastor. They just knew it was a good thing to do. They were right. I will always treasure the privilege of being in the room for some of life’s most intense moments.
And, of course, we don’t pastor only during intense times. No one can live at that decibel level all the time. We pastor in the ordinary, the mundane, the beautiful (or depressing!) day-by-day most of the time. Yet it is striking how often during those everyday moments our talk turns to the transitions of birth, death, illness, and the beginning and end of vocation. Pastors sometimes joke, or lament, that we are only called when people want to be “hatched, matched, or dispatched”—born or baptized, married, or eulogized. But those are moments we share with all humanity, and they are good moments in which to do gospel work. As an American, it feels perfectly natural to ask a couple how they met. But a South African friend told me he feels this is exceedingly intrusive! What I am really asking is how someone met God as they met the person to whom they have made lifelong promises. I am asking about transition and encounter—the tender places where the God of cross and resurrection meets us. And I am thinking about how to bear witness amid the transitions that are our lives. Pastors are the ones who get phone calls at these moments and have the joy, burden, or just plain old workaday job of showing up with oil for anointing, with prayers, to be a sign of the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing goodness in all of our lives.
I am so proud of this series of books. The authors are remarkable, the scholarship first-rate, the prose readable—even elegant—and the claims made ambitious and then well defended. I am especially pleased because so often in the church we play small ball. We argue with one another over intramural matters while the world around us struggles, burns, ignores, or otherwise proceeds on its way. The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t just for the renewal of the church. It’s for the renewal of the cosmos—everything God bothered to create in the first place. God’s gifts are not for God’s people. They are through God’s people, for everybody else. These authors write with wisdom, precision, insight, grace, and good humor. I so love the books that have resulted. May God use them to bring glory to God’s name, grace to God’s children, renewal to the church, and blessings to the world that God so loves and is dying to save.
Jason Byassee
Foreword
B OB E KBLAD
Aaron White’s Recovering: From Brokenness and Addiction to Blessedness and Community is a straight-talking and passionate treatise that lays out essential components of a holistic and radically Christian approach to effective recovery from addictions of any kind. As one who has ministered among people affected by addictions for over thirty-five years, I welcome my friend Aaron’s savvy, faith-filled wisdom wrought from years of living in community in the heart of North America’s highest concentration of IV drug users—Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Aaron’s writing comes out of fifteen years of compassion-filled pastoring of some of the most downtrodden and rejected people in one of North America’s most beautiful and wealthy cities. As a street theologian, he has persevered and even thrived in Canada’s most notorious neighborhood. Years of being in close relationship with those he serves, combined with a robust life of prayer; contemplation of Jesus; worship; and study of Scripture, theology, and anything that might bring lasting change to the most broken has qualified him to write this book.
Aaron has suffered numerous defeats as he has walked alongside the people on the streets of his neighborhood—as has anyone called to minister to people caught up in addictions. As he has pursued the gospel that truly has the power to save, his dialogue partners have broadened to include myriad fellow travelers—from active users and now recovering addicts to the academy, the church, and the nonprofit world.
With great humility Aaron has put himself under countless men and women he has encountered on the streets of the Downtown Eastside. Aaron has listened to people’s stories, heard his Indigenous friends’ pain born out of the dislocation of colonialism, learned from his street friends’ analyses, wept with his neighbors over their losses, and rejoiced with them over their miracles and victories. This book includes both tragic stories and beautiful testimonies that inspire hope.
Aaron has made his share of mistakes and writes from a tender place that is raw and honest while at the same time hope filled. His commitment to seeing true liberation come to his neighborhood has led him to consult experts in addiction and relapse prevention, traveling the world to learn from ministries working with people struggling with addictions. He has studied key sociologists, psychologists specializing in abuse and other kinds of trauma, early church fathers who inspire Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, evangelical and charismatic revivalists, and biblical authors. Aaron has drunk from many wells to sustain himself on his journey, and in particular he has drawn strength from the 24-7 Prayer movement, which he has helped lead in Canada since 2001.
All this to say that Aaron White offers here potent reflections from the trenches that will help anyone working in any context with people suffering from addictions—whether you are a veteran worker serving the homeless or someone starting fresh. Yet he himself does not present this as a fix-it manual for people who are addicted but rather as an appeal to foster “the kind of environment that Jesus prescribed for his people, which happens to be exactly the kind of environment that helps us