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Fountain City church offers 'Welcome Home' group for veterans

Knoxville News-Sentinel - 2/6/2017

Feb. 04--Fountain City United Methodist Church hopes to reach military veterans with a Bible-based support group held Tuesday evenings at the 212 Hotel Road church.

The Welcome Home group is based on other Christ-focused Celebrate Recovery groups the church holds Tuesdays. Those groups include confidential sessions for men and women with chemical dependencies, men with "sexual integrity" issues and a "Celebration Place" for children ages 5 to 12.

Begun at the Saddleback Church in California, Celebrate Recovery is now in numerous churches nationwide.

At the Fountain City church, Welcome Home and the other Celebrate Recovery groups meet at 8:15 p.m. after a 7-8 p.m. Tuesday worship service. People who attend groups are encouraged to participate in a companion 12-step Bible-based program.

"We say a struggle will bring you to our door," Fountain City United Methodist Associate Pastor John Gargis said. "That's one thing that's common. Everybody that comes has allowed themselves to break, and this is a place where it's OK not to be OK. The world kind of focuses on the struggle. Here, we focus on why we do what we do."

Veterans of any age, branch or service are welcome to the share group. Sessions are free; what's said is confidential. Welcome Home focuses specifically on military veterans and issues they may have, Gargis said. Fellow veterans Dan Laine and Ed Bardill are group facilitators. Both said they found help for their own post-service issues at the church's Celebrate Recovery groups.

"Basically there's magic in sitting around a room and sharing your pain," Gargis said. "We say, 'If you speak it, it loses its power.' That's what these groups are."

The church launched Welcome Home, the first in Tennessee, in November. But few veterans have come. "It's the best kept secret in Knoxville," Gargis said.

Veterans, Gargis said, may feel isolated in civilian life and "struggle alone in silence until they learn they are not alone. Some think they are terminally unique. They lost their identity. In the military you do great things for your country. Then you come home and not so much sometimes."

Laine and Bardill said participating veterans share common language in Welcome Home meetings.

"The nice thing is, we can come in and talk about things related to the military. And we don't have to spend 10 or 15 minutes trying to explain. We can say something really quick and simple. And we all know what we are referring to. It makes it easier to get some things off your chest," Laine said.

Participants "share what's on their minds," Laine said. "It's anything from something that has been bothering them that they feel the need to talk about to something that the talk (in worship) that evening sparked some thoughts in their heads. Even just to sit there and to listen to other people; you don't need to talk. It's open but it's structured enough that people are encouraged to talk about their own thoughts and feelings and to not push their own ideas on anybody else, but to express what is going on with them."

"If you are ex-military, then you have performed a service for your country," Bardill said. "If Dan and I have this group and we can help veterans a little bit, then we are still performing a service to this country and to our brothers in arms."

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(c)2017 Knoxville News-Sentinel (Knoxville, Tenn.)

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