Bringing Things to Fruition
Corey Nieman / Director of Caring Network
Sometimes, just when you think nothing is going on beneath the surface, God is bringing things to fruition. Pre-COVID, the Opioid Crisis was referred to as hitting our nation like a pandemic. I was knee deep in training recovery coaches, a member of the Erie County Opioid Task Force, helping launch REGEN, working with the WNY Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA), etc. Suddenly, a new headline broke and stole the whole show.
Over those 2+ years, everyone was glued to the news and all the local initiatives were put on hold. Furthermore, to cope with the personal and global tragedies, many people turned back to the vices that carried them through prior. It was disheartening to hear the statistic that about midway through the pandemic, all the progress previously made to stop opioid abuse was undone. Obviously, there is more to addiction than substance abuse, however, the platform which we stood on seemed to drop out from under us.
Pre-COVID, Buffalo was getting a national spotlight shone on it through the Opioid issues and progress the Task force was making, which residually stoked the fires of recovery ministry and training. In fact, I had just finished training 10 people at Bread of Life Church (BOL) within weeks of COVID hitting. Yet, from God’s perspective He was not surprised, nor derailed, as He sees both the sins and the weights of the world as potential bondage (Hebrews 12:11). In this way we’ve continued to offer as much “recovery” ministry as possible through REGEN, TPM, recovery coaching, etc., as we see recovery as a cornerstone of the Caring Network.
Fast forward to this past February, when I was asked to speak at a recovery event at BOL church. From that event, God put in my heart that a coalition was to be formed. I was inspired to name it the ACTS 4 Recovery Coalition and invite about 15 ministry partners to join. The goal is to provide resources for families via a web page, a Facebook group to further equip coaches, and using the Caring Network app to mobilize coaches to help meet needs in the community.
At the same time, CMDA national came to Buffalo looking to adopt a new recovery model on a nationwide scale and looked to us for help. This past July we presented our plan to the CMDA at Total Freedom, a rehabilitation center in Darien, NY and then again over a Zoom meeting with some of the West Coast doctors in September. In some ways we were building the plane while flying it, but our referral network, including addiction doctors, non-profits, and churches was already strong. God took those pieces and formed the ACTS coalition. While it seemed like a surprise to me, God was bringing us together all along. He even gave me this scripture ACTS 4:32-34, to confirm that we were to pool our resources so that no needs would go unmet.
Currently, I am co-training our latest group of recovery coaches at Revive Wesleyan, and by the time they are done we should have all the infrastructure ready to launch. Once this is fully operational, I will have the opportunity to formally present this model and all its working parts to the national CMDA convention in Cincinnati this coming April. If you had told me a year ago that all this would come to fruition, I would have called it a conspiracy theory and called for a fact checker. Since it’s really real however, I give God all the glory!!