This year, with all the uncertainties of lockdown, we decided to host our first online Celebrate Recovery UK Conference, ‘Come on a Journey’.
The build-up to the conference involved the UK team and several Ministry Leaders being rapidly inducted into the world of creating, presenting pre-recorded video content to ensure the day itself could run smoothly and to time! What a learning curve that was! 😊
The Conference was attended by around 90 people in total, and it was great to see people from all parts of the UK as well as other delegates from Belgium, Holland, France, Ireland – and we were thrilled to also have Richard Cobb (International Field Director for Celebrate Recovery) join us from the US.
It’s fair to say the Conference packed a punch in terms of the variety of content this time, as each of the sessions and testimonies were developed to take us ‘on a journey’ through the 8 Principles of Celebrate Recovery.
We were incredibly grateful to the number of Ministry Leaders who were willing to step up and run the breakout sessions on many familiar topics such as Setting up a CR Group; Doing Your 4th Step; Sponsoring. But it was also exciting to include new topics such as: Your Recovery Foundation; Encouraging Men into Recovery; When Serving Feels Hard Work; Senior Pastor Support; Anxiety and the CR Tools and Avoiding Burnout.
The feedback from the Conference has been very positive and encouraging with comments such as: “That was one of the most helpful sessions I have attended” and “Leading step study seminar was very helpful”
By the end of the day, the team felt the Conference had been a resounding success – thanks mainly to the amazing Tech team of Chris Hardy who worked tirelessly behind the scenes ensuring the right videos were in the right place and at the right time!
Would we do it again? We very much hope that the next UK Conference can be one we do in-person to enjoy those one-to-one conversations that are so beneficial in Celebrate Recovery – but we can never say never. For now though, our task is to ensure the dozens of video ‘outtakes’ remain buried deep in the realms of the CR UK archive!