Oct. 15, 2023

This is a Believer's Teaching Sunday with the following speakers:  Pastor John Custer, Pastor Jehte Custer, Demetria Dodson, Stacie Balf, Joe Wadsworth, John Boone., Traci Toth, Tim Woods, and Amy Barfield. 

Here are Pastor John's Sermon Notes:

Lessons from Narcotics Anonymous (BTS 15 Oct 23) -- Pastor John Custer

Introduction - I recently finished reading the Basic Text published by Narcotics Anonymous.  As a practical guidebook, it is their equivalent, in my estimation, to our Bible.  Since we are focusing this morning on having members of Branch Groups testify about the effectiveness of our Branch Groups, I thought it would be a good time to tell you about the contents of the Basic Text, especially its remarkable similarity to the small group structure of the early church and the life-changing power found within those groups:  

Acts 2:42 and they were continuing steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship, and the breaking of the bread, and the prayers…46 Daily also continuing with one accord in the temple, breaking also at every house bread, they were partaking of food in gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God, and having favour with all the people, and the Lord was adding those being saved every day to the assembly. YLT

The NA Basic Text reads almost like these verses above.  Most of the Basic Text is a series of real-life testimonies from people who were held captive by the destructive effects of drug abuse and their recovery from that snare.  Drug abuse causes the loss of everything, including, eventually, life itself.  Three things emerged repeatedly, pointedly:  

1 Attend meetings, at least weekly.  This who did not attend almost universally relapsed into addiction again.   

2 Work the “Steps” (a basic training program moving them step-by step-to a relationship with their “Higher Power,” equivalent to our basic steps of getting saved, baptized in water, baptized in the Spirit, finding your gift, learning the Bible, starting to teach, counsel, and lead, multiplying a group, etc.) and 

3 Begin serving the group. Everyone had a job!  From holding a door key to the meeting room, to stacking chairs, making coffee or sweeping up.  Rather than being demeaning or intimidating,  serving was a key to acceptance, honor, and inclusion in the group.  

The regular groups are almost always small, from 2-20 people.  NA does not build big congregations, like Western churches do. Outside of a skeleton structure to interface with the business world to produce its literature or have an occasional convention, the main structure is totally small groups!  It is interesting that there is no biblical record of large, complex, business-style church operations for the Christian church.  The pattern, similar to NA, appears to be all small, in-house groups.  

Conclusion - Admittedly, the Basic Text is not the Bible.  Nonetheless, the modern church would profit from observing the success and worldwide spread of this noble group which has used Christian principles to succeed.  It has only existed since 1953, and it now has 72,000 meetings a week in 143 countries.  It has brought about the healing of a rather small, but difficult and desperate segment of our world population.  They’re probably doing a better job reaching this population than the mainline Christian church has done.  All this without presenting itself as a Christian organization (although many members become Christians in the process).  Might it be good for us to really focus our efforts on producing small groups rather than large “modern church” congregations?  Let’s humbly learn some lessons from Narcotics Anonymous!