Celebrate Recovery Canada 2011

We had an amazing conference in Guelph, Ontario, Canada this past Oct. Lakeside Church hosted this event with excellence as always. There were almost 600 people present for this One Day training. Many CR groups have been started as a result. Grateful for everyone that participated.

At this event we also had the first Canadian National Rep retreat, with all the regional reps from all across Canada. The team had a time of prayer, sharing refreshment and planning for the future. The Canadian team is doing an outstanding job building the Kingdom across Canada.

Celebrate Recovery Taiwan 2011

In September we were invited to Bancaio, Taiwan the 3rd CR Conference. There was a small team of 4 people that went from Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, NV. We were blessed to have an audience of a couple hundred people from different congregations all eager to learn about Celebrate Recovery. Our host church had previously started CR prior to our arrival and had the foundation from which we worked. They realized that without the proper training CR was not all it could be at there church. Below is an email I recently received from Pastor Samuel Chang the Senior Pastor of Banciao Gospel Lutheran Church.

The good news is we just had the CR anniversary this past weekend, and over 200 people came, with much great food, worship, testimony, and many changed lives~God has truly done miracles among us!!


We are so grateful we had the time with Pastor Samuel, his wife Gloria, their family and our new CR family in Taiwan. We look forward to returning next year.

CR Norway Expanding

Our team is just returning from a fantastic conference and team building week in Iveland Norway. CR leader and Norway director Karl Inge Thomassen and his team have been hard at work coordinating a 2-day conference and finalizing the CR materials in Norwegian. Karl has been growing relationships with other churches all around the west, east and south parts of the country and sharing his experience, strength and hope in getting their own programs ready. Our team saw first-hand to see how amazingly ready the Iveland team is in helping spread the good news of recovery throughout the nation. The Iveland team taught almost every session at the conference which included hosting their regular Friday night meeting to demonstrate how a CR program works. By them taking the helm and doing this showed how mature the team has grown as CR leaders and it demonstrated how the international model for CR is one that works. There were 40 other participants in attendance from 7 other churches.

Our team consisted of Dave and Cathy Dent from Union Bridge, Maryland, Tony and Val Turner from Derby, England and Bobby and Dot Arnold from Wimberely, Texas.

With the materials now ready to go to print, it is exciting to see the next phase of this ministry begin to unfold. A few of the churches in attendance were already well into their kickoff strategies and are about to launch. We look forward to meeting up with the team at the annual CR summit and August and continuing our working together in this amazing journey.

Great job Iveland CR team!

Celebrate Recovery Conference in Guayaquil, Ecuador establishes a firm foundation

A 2-man team from Union Bridge, Maryland traveled to Ecuador on May 10th and spent several day's connecting with a local Celebrate Recovery group to aid in training its ministry team. The team was CR International Trainer Dave Dent and a Maryland CR Team Member Brian Hoff.


We were invited to come and review what the Iglesia Bautista Israel Church http://www.iglesiabautistaisrael.com/ had been doing the last 2 years with the curriculum and to make suggestions on how the church might improve its ministry and to work closer with the Celebrate Recovery International movement as a whole. The local church has invested in the curriculum and without any formal training had set off and launched the program. Our first night there, we were invited to sit in on two of the six small groups that the church had operating. It was a great encouragement to see the groups working diligently through the participants guides and to see such large numbers of men and women involved in the program. We spend most of our second day meeting with the local team, led by Julio Bermeo and answering many questions about how to use the materials. We also met that day with their senior pastor Parrish Jacome who shared his passion and vision for taking the gospel throughout Latin America and to include in that, the ministry of Celebrate Recovery. On Thursday, we conducted a seminar all day, with 40 participants from several churches from the area of Guayaquil and also from Quito. Most of the participants of the conference had been using the Celebrate Recovery materials, but had never acquired any training. It was a week of establishing some great relationships and connections with churches who share our vision and we trust that this will open the door for more training and networking in Ecuador and other nations in Central and South America. Several team members are expected to be at this years annual CR Summit at Saddleback Church where we are sure to continue to connect, encourage and see great changes ahead for Ecuador and beyond.

Latvia Set to Launch Celebrate Recovery

Katie Roth, BBI Missionary to Latvia wrote:
As a missionary working in fairly ‘non-traditional’ Latvian Baptist churches, I have felt much frustration over our inability to reach out effectively with the hope of true freedom. The desire is there, the belief in Christ’s saving power is there, the need is everywhere, but we have experienced so much failure! For many years I felt utterly impotent in this area. Then there are other, more traditional, churches which honestly believe that they don’t have a problem! “We don’t have any of ‘those sort’ of people in our church!” People have to get their act cleaned up before they join the church or else claim instantaneous deliverance upon receiving Christ.

But that is all about to change! This fall ‘True Freedom’ is coming to Latvia! ‘True Freedom’ is the Latvian name for the Celebrate Recovery program that started at Saddleback Church in California nineteen years ago. At the recent Celebrate Recovery International Summit we heard how Christ is bringing freedom all over the world to people struggling with all kinds of hurts, habits and hang-ups. There were CR leaders there from Haiti, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, England, Norway, African countries and every state of America.