It seems the
Crossing is mixing it up a bit. We haven't heard of anyone being kicked out the back door in awhile, not hearing talks of how we should submit to their authority and apparently a recent sermon was even from the bible. How nice.
So did the Crossing get a wake up call after all the bad press and people speaking out against how they were playing church? We'd like to hope that, at minimum, they took an honest look at how they were treating people.
This leads us to CR. CR, according to the Crossing, is Crossing Recovery. They refer to this as a program they started in 2006 to help the addicted. CR is there to help you through your "hurts, habits and hang ups". Sound familiar? It should. That phrase is from
Celebrate Recovery; a program started at Saddleback church in 1991 and it is now in
17,000 churches worldwide. Yet the Crossing is insinuating this is their own program that they created as they are now having
conferences to promote what they have done.
Saddleback does make some allowances for churches incorporating their own style but the issue lies in that the Crossing does not disclose where the true program came from and instead markets it as their own. When the Crossing began their program in 2006 it was called Celebrate Recovery and utilized all the literature from Saddleback's original format. As of
2009 they were still promoting it as Celebrate Recovery. Sometime between late 2009 and early 2010 they changed the name to Crossing Recovery. Nothing wrong with this but give proper credit where it is due. True credit belongs solely to
Bill W. for creating Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 steps but we also acknowledge Saddleback's contribution of bringing additional biblical backing.
Crossing; simply own up to the real creators. There will be ample opportunity for you to pat yourselves on the back about something else.
A critical part of the 12 steps is to look at where you still have resentments, own up to your part of those resentments and make amends. I have to wonder if the Crossing doesn't have some resentments. Considering any critical comments towards them are deleted from their Facebook page within minutes I'd have to suspect they resent that. I'm sure there is resentment towards those that spoke out against them. I'm sure there is resentment towards those that went on the news to say their truth of what happened to them. So what's your part Crossing? If you follow the bible, and this 12 step program you claim, then shouldn't you make your side of the street clean?
