(RNS) Fourteen months ago, a New York City congregation engaged me to lead the planning and execution of a ministry to help addicts and their loved ones seek a “God-centered recovery.”

On Sunday, we launched this ministry, called Lifeline (http://www.lifelinenyc.org), gathering at Park Avenue Christian Church. I want to tell you what we learned along the way.

We went into it with the belief that addictions are the No. 1 problem that faith communities ought to be addressing. By the time you add up alcoholics and their families, drug addicts and their families, sex addicts and their families, gambling addicts and their families — and on through more than two dozen recognized forms of addiction — you are talking about at least half the population.

We knew that a deep chasm has opened between people in recovery and the churches that rent space to 12-step groups. Addicts have felt judged and treated as moral lepers — even though the American medical community declared alcoholism and most other addictions to be diseases, not moral flaws.

Our first task, therefore, was to get real. We needed a planning team that included both addicts and non-addicts, so that together we could learn our way around that chasm and get beyond it.

We found a few examples of successful recovery ministries and visited one of them, NorthStar Community, in Richmond, Va. Their honesty and joy was inspiring.

Our 10-person team spent the fall learning about addiction and recovery. Our aim wasn’t to become experts, but to “walk the walk and talk the talk” by examining our own lives. Our venture went from a “good idea” to a compelling desire to serve.

We learned that music would be the glue for people who want to entrust their lives to God but fear the negative impact of God’s church. We learned that our weekly speakers should talk from experience: how they came to seek recovery and how they find God in it.

Lifeline isn’t a 12-step group or a substitute for going to 12-step meetings. Our goal is to support the 11th step: seeking “conscious contact with God.”

We tried to keep our expectations realistic. Recovery from addiction is a vast sea, and Lifeline is just one small boat on it. Bridging the gap of distrust will take time. In the end we must rely on word of mouth: one addict finds help and tells another.

Our first speaker could see our nervousness, and reminded us that this was in God’s hands. All we could do was make our efforts available to God.

I hear God calling the Christian enterprise forward onto uncharted ground like Lifeline, into ministries that don’t draw on familiar skills or bend to our well-practiced wills.

The world isn’t waiting for Christians to find better ways to do the same old things. The world around us is dealing with addictions, sexual abuse, domestic violence, profound inequities in wealth and health, warfare, terrorism born of religious extremes, systemic corruption, worsening intolerance and a dying planet.

If we are to serve, we must start by listening, abandoning old ways that aren’t working, and forming new alliances. We must speak new words of restoration and hope — and give it all to God.

(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.)