Welcome to the Sam Shoemaker Community (SSC)

Our Story

We are a small, widely dispersed group of men and women active in our 12-Step recovery Fellowships and living changed lives through the practice of Two Way Prayer lived within the Christian tradition. We have come together in community to share God’s love and to seek God’s will for us in the world.

We hope our website will introduce you to what excites us, unites us, and guide us. Should theses coincide with what you’ve been searching for, perhaps, in time, you’ll wish to join us.

Please be aware that we are in the early stages of our own formation. And being as small a community as we are, we’re not yet positioned to guide new members through an individual discernment or structured formation process. In the future, we hope this will change.

But for now, if you’re interested in joining us, we encourage you to engage with the following before seeking formal admission to our Leader’s Circle:

  1. Thoroughly explore our website to see if we are traveling in a direction to which God may be guiding you.

  2. Spend time in prayer as well as reflecting on each of our Four Pillars. These form the shared values of our community. Study the recommended literature for each Pillar and watch the videos prepared by some of our past and present community members.

  3. After practicing daily Two Way Prayer for three to six months (either alone or with a Prayer Partner,) and active in your 12 step community for 3-5 years, we ask you to test your calling by engaging in either one of the two Service Fields the Community presently supports. These include:

  • Starting a weekly Two Way Prayer Meeting      – or –

  • Starting a weekly contemplative service known as Lectio Devina (Recovery Lectio)

We’ve developed formats, templates and videos to help you with each of these and we’re happy to answer any questions you may have regarding them. But our expectation is that you will have begun one or both of these forms of outreach before applying for formal membership in our SSC Leader’s Circle.

 So, let’s begin with the core beliefs and practices of our community. We refer to these as our Four Pillars and we’ve developed a reading list and a short video for each.