Most people who show up to an AA meeting don’t need to be convinced they have a sin problem. Christians should show up to church the same way, but with an even deeper hope. We don’t need to expect perfection or even social grace from all of our brothers and sisters all of the time. Humility says for every time we suffer “church hurt,” we may just as easily have inflicted it ourselves.

On a recent episode of actor Dax Shepard’s Armchair Anonymous podcast, he solicited calls about the craziest things folks had seen at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. A recovering addict himself, Shepard said these meetings are always good for drama. One woman told a story of a man taking up a collection for some kind of kickball league. After gathering the cash, he proceeded, in full view, to stuff it into his backpack. The group kicked him out.

Rather than sounding scandalized (“Look how toxic these meetings get!”), the woman telling this story seemed almost amused, like a mom shaking her head at her kids’ harmless mischief. These addicts and their hijinks, am I right?

My mind wandered. What if that had happened at church?

There are many similarities between church and AA, even beyond the not-so-subtle “Higher Power” stuff that only really makes sense in reference to the God of the Bible (although AA effectively “secularized” a few decades after its thoroughly Christian founding.) Like church, AA is also supposed to welcome everyone. People are supposed to share deep, uncomfortably intimate and unflattering details of their lives with a group of people they may have absolutely nothing in common with outside of their addiction.

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