How can your church help your surrounding community escape life-controlling addictions and the havoc they wreak? This guest article by Sharon Torres offers practical suggestions.

According to reports, 70% of young people engage in drinking by the age of 19. This report should be worrying given that underage drinkers are likely to develop a lifelong alcoholism problem.

The impact of substance abuse and alcoholism is a problem for policymakers, church leaders, parents, and the community in general. Drug abuse and alcoholism has a huge impact on the society and reportedly costs the state $235 billion and $181 billion a year respectively.

Church leaders are aware of problems such as the opioid crisis, alcoholism and drug abuse. The challenge is to provide factual information and engage the affected people so that they can lead them to suitable treatment and recovery.

The church can tap into the community and start an outreach that will address addiction issues. This outreach can transform the community by taking preventive steps to check addiction, and at the same time help those with a problem begin their journey to recovery.

There are certain steps the church can take to address drug abuse and alcoholism in the community:

Education

One of the most important steps the church can take is to not only educate their congregation but also leaders within the church. For the fight against drug addiction to be effective, it is critical that those involved are well-equipped with the right information.

Illicit drugs and alcohol are not the only problems that the church community had to deal with. The abuse of prescription drugs is becoming a serious problem. In some places, there are more overdose deaths caused by prescription drugs than by alcoholism and illicit drugs combined.

Avoid Being Judgmental

Often when providing information on addictions such as pornography, alcoholism and drug abuse, it is not uncommon for those involved to take a judgmental tone. To be effective, counselors need to be able to relate to the problems of the recovering addict. They need to feel free to discuss these problems with counselors and other people within the church tasked with addressing drug abuse and alcoholism.

To treat substance abuse and alcoholism, they must first be recognized as illnesses. These drugs change the chemical composition of the brain and in the process, they cause tolerance and dependency. It must, therefore, be acknowledged, that continued drug use is not merely a moral issue.

A lot of unnecessary complications could arise if drug abuse is not recognized as an illness. For example, crystal meth tends to cause dependency within a short period. People with meth and opioid addiction often require medication to enable to recover from their addiction problem. Looking at it as a moral issue may act as an obstacle to providing effective treatment.

People often think religion creates closed minds that see difference in terms of intolerance and division. Yet difference can be enriching and mutually instructive, while religion can be reassuring and ironic at the same time. For example, you may sometimes do God’s will only by denying your own. Discernment is a fruit of obedience, and a gift of genuine solidarity. Choice is empty without it. Second, disagreement is not a barrier to dialogue. On the contrary, it is a test of the willingness to presume on each other’s goodwill and to covet the best for each other. To be charitable is to be deserving of charity oneself. Without difference dialogue would be moot. If you feel the need to conceal what you believe for fear of difference, then dialogue becomes just a show, and agreement an illusion. Indeed, agreement by concealment is intolerance by another name, if truth be told. An important issue in the literature on dialogue is thus often confused by the view that difference is threatening, fanatical, harmful, and negative while uniform agreement is sound, inclusive, and enlightened. If that were true, we would all be condemned to sameness, uniformity, and conformity. Yet even then we would not escape the threat, the intolerance, the feuding and the cursing that disagreement is supposed to cause. In light of intercommunal conflicts, intrafamily feuds, and the truculence that often arise in the same race, household, or national or faith community, we arrive at a pretty pass when we approach the world in defiance of difference, or in a misguided optimism about agreement. People often fight because they want the same thing, or make peace because they embrace difference (pages 5-6).

There is a ton of deep stuff in these two paragraphs to meditate on – like a collection of “The Very Best of Far Side Cartoons.” Like I have done, I encourage you to read it many times and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you.

In the Body of Christ we are radical diversities and immeasurable differences. We have major differences and too-numerous-too-count subtle and secondary differences. Because of them, we have all experienced being on one side or the other of intolerance and division.

Do we want the Holy Spirit in our homes? I was listening to a message preached by an evangelist that held services at Trinity Assembly of God in Mt. Morris, Michigan. As he was preaching about our desire to have the Holy Spirit in our homes, the Holy Spirit quickened a few thoughts in my heart that I would like to share with you.

There was a woman whose husband had died and left a debt. She and her two sons were not able to pay off the debt. As was the legal custom of the day, her sons were to be made slaves and they would have to work until the debt was paid in full. The story is found in 2 Kings 4:1-7. This woman poured out her heart to Elisha. Elisha told her to borrow as many vessels as possible. She was instructed to have her sons go out and gather in as many as they could find. The word from the Lord was to shut the door.

PR

The word paraklesis has some rich meaning in the New Testament (see “parakaleo,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Abridged in One Volume), G. Bromiley, ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985), especially p. 781). When it relates to the proclamation of salvation, exhorting men to be saved, it implies speaking in the name of God and in the power of the Spirit. In the sense that it is used here, paraklesis is exhortation and admonition. Paraklesis is an urgent entreaty that is neither critical nor polemical, but serious and has been infused with the power of the Spirit. With this in mind, this column is intended to bring a word of encouragement to pastors, ministers and all those in Christian leadership.