OXFORD – A new faith-based, 12-step recovery program has begun meeting Friday nights at the Oxford Advent Christian Church on Route 26.

The program, called Celebrate Recovery, meets from 7 to 9 p.m., and is geared to help people with any type of addictive or compulsive behavior.

A national program, Celebrate Recovery started in 1991 in Saddleback Church in Lake Valley, Calif. It has been brought here by an Oxford Hills couple who have been actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous for many years, and went through months of training to bring the program, for the first time, to Maine.

“There’s a lot of Christians in the halls of AA that are looking for a place to worship and have recovery with Jesus as the higher power,” said the woman, who, in the tradition of 12-step groups, remains anonymous.

At the same time, said her husband, most Christian churches have not embraced 12-step recovery groups because of the open-ended concept of a higher power.

Yet recovery is for everyone, he says, “because everybody’s got hurts, habits and hang-ups” that can interfere with living.

“This is a safe place to get real,” he said.

Celebrate Recovery has grown in the past 12 years to more than 2,500 churches, as well as prisons and rescue missions. It blends the 12-steps of traditional recovery programs for alcohol, drug addiction, overeating, codependency, and other compulsive behaviors with the Beatitudes of Jesus.

The meetings offer prayer, worship, readings, testimony, and a time of sharing.

“It is a ministry of the church, but it is open to everybody,” she said. There is no admission charge, and refreshments are served. Child care is provided.

For more information, phone the church at 743-7310.