Bible-based Celebrate Recovery groups help with personal battles
By Mirko Petricevic, Waterloo Regional Record staff
Andrea Lutz isn’t spending her time in prison simply counting the hours until she can go home. Since coming to Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener 18 months ago, Lutz has embraced a bundle of Christian programs that are available to inmates.
In addition to taking two Bible study courses by correspondence Lutz, 27, has enrolled in Alpha courses in Christianity, has been working for the institution’s fulltime chaplain, and attends Saturday evening prayer meetings and Sunday evening worship services. She plans to preach her first sermon this weekend. Yet she has made her prayer-packed schedule even busier by signing up for a 12-step Christian program called Celebrate Recovery Inside. It’s a program inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous, but based on the Beatitudes Jesus professed in his Sermon on the Mount (The Gospel of Matthew 5).
