In January, I attended my first Celebrate Recovery (CR) ambassador meeting online. It was so encouraging to see people across the country joining, and to see how CR is so much bigger than the group in my little corner of the UK.

At the meeting we discussed how we can be spreading the word about CR and this year’s UK conference in Newcastle. It was encouraging to see other people’s enthusiasm for the programme, and how naturally it flowed out of them when they spoke about how helpful the programme has been for them, and how God has used it to bring freedom, and even to bring people to saving faith in Jesus.

We talked about how to help more people find out about CR, and to get us started we went round the small breakout group we were in and said how each of us found out about the programme. Everyone’s story was different. One person was invited by a friend, someone else found out from social media, and I shared how I found out when it was advertised in one of my church’s services.

I know that God can transform people’s lives and bring freedom, and I was looking to get involved with something along those lines in the new church I started attending after moving cities, and hearing about CR filled me with excitement. A programme which seeks to transform out hurts, hang-ups and habits through the teaching and power of Jesus Christ!

In my previous church, we had the difficulty of doing great outreach ministry to people in need in our community; foodbanks, a community coffee shop, toddler groups. But sometimes it felt like we were just helping with people’s external needs, not seeing Jesus transform people from the inside out and bring freedom.

I want to go back to my previous church and tell them all about CR! I think it may be just what they need. They have so much contact and good relationships with people with many hurts, hangups and habits (although, you don’t need to look far to find we all have these), and long to see transformation in these people’s lives, and CR is a great programme to facilitate that.

That’s why I came to the ambassador meeting. Because I think there are many churches doing good work, but who long to see more, to see Jesus transform and free people, and CR is a great programme which seeks to do just that.

We had a great time of sharing our individual ideas on what could be done to get the programme noticed by more people, both in our local churches and out into the wider community.

We discussed the challenges of it being a Christ-centred programme, and how we present it to people in a way where people who don’t have a faith know they are really welcome to come along as well.

Ideas were thrown around about emailing different groups, using social media, and getting in touch with personal connections.

At the end of the meeting, Catherine, the CR UK Director, instructed us to email her at enquiries@celebraterecovery.co.uk with any other ideas or any way we individually could help make those ideas happen.

I left the meeting full of excitement and ideas. I was encouraged at how every person was welcomed to share their thoughts and to get involved, and when the meeting ended I went straight to my email to send a message to Catherine about ways that I could maybe help too.

So if you have any great ideas, do the same and get in touch!

Here are some ideas of how you can get involved:

• Help with the tech
• Be a group leader
• Be a sponsor
• Join the welcome team
• Serve refreshments
• Be a social media champion