Recovery Rocks at Farmersville

by Jacob Clagg with Pastor Brad Taylor

Pastor Brad Taylor from Farmersville Church of God in Farmersville, California has been running a recovery ministry out of the church for the better part of the past 10 years. Together with his wife,Trudy, the pair have worked tirelessly since 2013 to build Recovery Rocks into a ministry that helps people begin the process of recovery from addiction, hurts, habits, and hangups. We were inspired by Pastor Brad and Trudy and we wanted to learn more about how their ministry started, and where they want to take it into the future.

What is Recovery Rocks and why did you choose to start it at Farmersville Church?

At Recovery Rocks, we talk about hurts, habits, hangups, and addictions. My wife and I have had a lot of those since we were growing up. Because of the abuse my wife endured growing up and I, being someone who is a delivered, recovered alcoholic, we felt really drawn to that Celebrate Recovery concept.

Celebrate Recovery (CR) was bringing God back into the recovery process. I really felt that churches needed this incorporated, and they need to be able to offer that to people in church. We were involved in CR for a few years at a different church. When I became a pastor at Farmersville Church of God (FCOG) we wanted to offer a recovery program at our church as well. It took about two years, when the time was right. My wife was attending other recoveries and she wanted to draw from each one. We recognized the fact that God heals, and He delivers, and we didn’t want to be held back by a particular set of rules and regulations from any individual program. We know some people have found God with CR, but also at the foot of their bed. We want a recovery that’s open to all that, and to offer more prayer for those who attend.

It will be 10 years in November since we’ve been doing Recovery Rocks out of our church. We’ve seen growth. It’s not made our church burst at the seams. It took a little bit of time. Somebody told me, “This will be your biggest outreach ministry.” There are a lot of other faith-based recoveries that have folded up, and it takes a lot of patience, and it takes the pastor to want to be involved. Sometimes a church changes pastors and they don’t relate to it and the recovery folds up. It has been our biggest outreach, and our most consistent outreach. We are there every Tuesday; we were challenged during Covid of course. But we just couldn’t leave people hanging out there. Our door is always open. We have a big chunk of our congregation there every Tuesday night as well.

Can you walk us through what a typical evening looks like at Recovery Rocks? Is it like an AA meeting or like a worship service?

We meet every week; every other week is a lesson and incorporates one of the steps, and every other week is a testimony. They must have a year of “clean time,” clean from all addictions and mind-controlled substances. They can’t share the testimony if they haven’t been clean for a year. Testimonies may consist of overcoming their past hurt, their childhood trauma. We try hard to recruit testimonies out there.

Typically, the night will run just like a church. We're a small church so Recovery Rocks is held in the sanctuary. I didn’t want to treat it like a stepchild. We’re all one big family. There is some meet and greet beforehand, people have coffee and snacks. But we start with prayer, and then worship, announcements, and my wife introduces herself and tells everyone what Recovery Rocks is. We state our names, our clean time, and we call that “large group” when everyone is together. Then we do the reading of the 12 steps and their biblical comparisons. We try to get other people actively involved in the reading. We do something fun. One side does the step, one side does the biblical comparison. Then we do a “Ruach,” a breath of God. We incorporated that because it relaxes people, causes them to laugh and have a good time.

Then the teaching or the testimony gets shared. After that, we offer up a surrender chip. You’ve been clean for a day, and you’re surrendering that, or a hurt, habit, hangup, or even surrendering Facebook, or whatever is taking our time away from family and God. Every week we offer the surrender chip. It’s stepping out of denial and recognizing that you can’t do it on your own.

Can you Explain what the surrender chips are about?

Every week we offer a blue Surrender Chip, we order it from CR, and I like to encourage those surrendering to write a date on them. “This is the night that I surrender my drinking problem,” or whatever they need to surrender. And then, on the last Tuesday of the month, we celebrate all of the lengths of recovery—maybe they are one month clean, or one month since they received a surrender a chip. We have chips for all lengths of recovery. For example, they might be four months clean from an addiction or surrendered a habit or hurt. We celebrate that at the end of each month, we call that the birthday night.

It's really cool that people get a token, like a physical symbol of their recovery.

Sometimes it’s really awesome because some of them bring their mom or their dad, or they give the chip to their best friend or parent who has stuck by them and is supporting them. And they are little mini testimonies for them to see too. It gives other people something to aim for, so they are motivated to do it too. Even the family members may pick up a surrender chip. Maybe they were enabling an addict, and they had to take a stand and stop that enabling for them to realize they need help. It’s all things related to addiction, hurts, habits, and hang ups.

What’s your vision for all of this?

I want to see us expand on offering more small groups during the week where 4 or 5 people could come together. We have “Large Group” (the worship, teaching testimony, the giving out of the chips) and then we also have small groups (men's group, women’s group). I just want to have more step study groups, which is something that other recovery groups will offer. It’s a little more personal, a closer atmosphere. It’s part of people staying involved. More small groups could incorporate a little more counseling for them, and it’s discipling too.

There are so many people out there that aren’t having the full potential of their relationship with Christ, and they think just being faithful to church attendance is all there is. There is so much more we can learn, and that’s what I like about recovery. We have a gentleman that comes to Recovery Rocks because of church abuse. For some people that’s taken them out of church. They never trust God or the church again. But he applies what we do at Recovery Rocks to get over that, and to begin forgiving and trusting again.

There is so much for people to gain, who may feel too embarrassed to come to a recovery group. It’s hard for people to shake that, or to look past it. But there is so much more there than can be offered.

*Quotes have been edited for clarity.