The quiet hijacking

Sobriety tests are just one “step” to lifesaving change | Andrée Seu

I started going to church and to A.A. meetings at roughly the same time—to church because I was a new Christian, to Alcoholics Anonymous with a family member. I liked the church services; I loved the A.A. meetings.

It was the parallels that rocked my new boat. A.A. meetings had everything the church had—but better. If the church had confession of sin, A.A. had it more convincingly. If the church believed in God, A.A. folks trusted Him desperately. If the church talked about fellowship, A.A. people planned their daily lives around "step meetings" circled in the newspaper. The church endorsed discipleship in the abstract, but A.A had a system of "sponsors" and "pigeons" where a new guy could grab the hem of an old-timer in sobriety and phone him day or night when the urge came like a raging locomotive.