We just finished up the last 2 cities on the Summer of Recovery Tour (Evansville and Indianapolis), and are already brainstorming ways to get even more people involved next year. We want as many people as possible to be able to celebrate stories of addiction recovery and get connected to the resources in their communities that could help them on their journey.
That’s the whole point of the tour – to create events that inspire people take the next step in their recovery journey, and to help them connect to local recovery resources. And in that process, we get to talk about Jesus and what it means to experience not just recovery, but redemption.
Since faith is an important pathway to recovery, we have more permission to talk about that than you might think, given that the tour is sponsored by Indiana’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction. It is amazing how often we hear that Jesus has been a crucial part of people’s recovery journeys.
This year’s tour featured the Two Eight band (of course), hip hop artist Kevi Morse, and DJ SPEAK (our friend and pastor Rashad Cunningham). We also got to help launch an artist named Chris Lewis, who performs under the name Foosie.
Calling his brand of music “All-American Ghetto”, Foosie is an engaging mixture of musician, storyteller, and poet. As a relatively unknown artist, this was his first experience doing shows like ours and with touring. Having learned the acoustic guitar while incarcerated for 20 years, Foosie now plays and raps, sharing songs and stories about the lessons he learned before, during and after his time in prison.
As an artist who is in long-term recovery himself and who has experienced spiritual transformation through Jesus, Foosie was the perfect addition to our tour. It was incredibly rewarding to use our platform to help continue his journey of redemption, and to help him find a wider audience and an expanded sense of how Jesus can use his story to help change lives.
Now, after going from the top of the state (Valparaiso) to the bottom (Evansville) and many places in between, we’re heading into the next few events, which I’ll tell you about more in our next update!