MKR HEADLINES
AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP DVORAK ON RECOVERY CHURCH MOVEMENT BY BECKY BARNETT
Pastor Philip Dvorak is a leader at the forefront of Christian addiction treatment in the United States and the founder of The Recovery Church Movement, a fast-growing group of churches that serve as a bridge between 12-Step Fellowships and the Church. Recovery Church is a transparent, encouraging, raw, and authentic place for those in recovery to find love, acceptance, and freedom from addiction through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. “Recovery Church is not a perfect place for perfect people, but a healing ground for those who want to get well.” BB: One of Recovery Church’s values is “raw” can you elaborate a little bit on what the vision behind that value is? PD: Oh, absolutely! The heart of it is this: we are going to choose people over perfection, we are going to choose people over profit, people over performance. Sometimes if things are too shiny and too perfect and too clean, for the addict and alcoholic in their early recovery, that doesn’t represent their life very well. And so, by allowing a person to get up, and maybe they’re a stutterer or they’re not the best communicator, but it’s their time to share. We’re going to choose them over their performance. And the second part of it is, we’re going to choose people over perfection or refinement. So, you might come into a Recovery Church and someone’s giving their testimony and they might slip a word that you’ve never heard in a traditional church out in the middle of their testimony. And we’re not encouraging that, but we’re still going to choose that person and their journey over the fact that they cursed, over the fact that something was a little more graphic than maybe the traditional church would feel comfortable with. The focus is going to be the life change. And so sometimes, the attitude and the culture of Recovery Church 16 MKR Magazine February 2022
can be a little more raw. We allow for a place for people to be real and honest and transparent. At the same time, we’re not using it as an excuse AP STOR PHILIP DVORAK for them to be dishonoring of The Holy Spirit, or dishonoring of God or dishonoring of what a worship gathering is supposed to look like. BB: When you grow up in the church you learn from the beginning what is considered acceptable and what is not. Entering into church culture for someone wasn’t raised in the church, and seeing how people often act a certain way, I’d imagine that’s strange. We sometimes forget that Jesus wasn’t just sitting in the temple doing what church culture of His day thought was normal…He was out in the mud with the people. PD: Absolutely! And that’s at the heart of this! Jesus friend of sinners, that’s the idea here. When a person starts out, we can’t expect them to come in, a prostitute two weeks ago and be the preacher this week, or be the Sunday school teacher, or step in two weeks later and be perfectly refined and understand all the cultural norms that we expect in a church setting. Sometimes people in the church forget that when people are far from God, there is going to be a journey of
