RICHMOND, Va. — In the multipurpose room where Bon Air Baptist Church holds its contemporary service on Sunday morning, a guitarist played Christian music as people gathered for NorthStar Community’s Saturday evening recovery service.

A veteran of the 10-year-old ministry stood at a microphone, gave a brief witness about his own recovery from addiction, and said a prayer.

The ministry’s founder, Teresa McBean, stood to teach on boundaries. McBean told a family story and deftly wove it into a teaching on how we are responsible for our own feelings, attitudes and behaviors, but not responsible for other people’s. We are responsible to them, but we can’t take away their freedom or impose our issues of performance and perfection onto them.

Heads nodded in recognition. Been there, done that, they seemed to say. Even the many who aren’t in recovery from addictions knew about unhealthy relationships and the need for restoration and renewal.

Six of us were there from New York to learn from McBean and her ministry as we consider launching a similar recovery ministry back home.

The hour-long service was simple, warm, and tightly focused on singing, teaching and prayer. Some engaged Teresa in dialogue; most sat quietly, and yet, from their faces and body language, we could tell they were taking in every word and relating it to their own problems with relationships, boundaries and self-defeating behaviors.

The same service is repeated on Sunday morning, this time in an elementary school gym and with a television camera beaming it out on a CBS affiliate.

Over the past several years, McBean said, nearly 300 church-based recovery ministries have started in the U.S. Most have remained small, but a few, like NorthStar and Mercy Street, in Houston, have grown dramatically.

Some use the standard 12 Steps developed for Alcoholics Anonymous and used in other recovery groups. Some use the so-called “Christ-centered 12 Steps,” which are more overt in naming Jesus as the “God of our understanding.”

Some recovery ministries follow a model developed at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California. Others, like NorthStar, develop their own format, based on the needs they encounter.

In the early years, when McBean and her small team were learning the unique “language” of recovery, the ministry centered on addictions such as alcoholism. Over time, many have come to this nontraditional ministry because it seemed more authentic than the standard Sunday service.

“Nobody knows any church rules,” she told us. “They aren’t religious, and we don’t train them to be religious. It is relationship-driven, not content-driven. There is no offering, no counting of people, no shaming, no judging. We tell people, `Find your freedom.”‘

I found myself wondering whether the language of recovery might be a way forward for modern Christianity. Only one person on our team knows much about recovery; the rest of us are learning as we go. But what we saw, I think, was a contemporary version of the scene described in the Gospel of John, when people followed Jesus and brought their sickness to him.

Everyone who came to Jesus drew strength and hope from the encounter. When Jesus laid hands on a leper or healed a child, every person’s needs were placed into God’s hands.

Even though NorthStar’s focus is on recovery and the 12 Steps, the impact is broader. “We deal with the 3 H’s: Hurts, Habits and Hang-ups,” McBean said. “Who doesn’t have these?”

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)