Wagner Hills Ministries: More on the Ministry

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/25

Wagner Hills Farm Society/Wagner Hills Ministries seems like a place of intrigue within the Evangelical Christian landscape of the Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada. To individual readers familiar with my writing, I write in a variety of attitudinal orientations, from colloquial to academic formal and exasperation to calm deconstruction. It depends on the day/night and the target topic. I don’t write for an audience. I write for self-expression. If a professional pianist, I would express myself through the keyboard. Several years ago, I wrote on the issues surrounding the foundations and critiques of the institution. They own this stature more than before.

One of the interesting things about Wagner Hills Ministries is the manner in which a Christian ministry conducts itself within an Evangelical Christian community. I find this fascinating. Not only for the fact that I’ve lived there my entire life and know the community intimately but also for the fact that I’ve been, in some matters, living on the fringes due to non-theist convictions or orientations about the world. I’ve known more than a handful of people who have been involved with or gone through Wagner Hills Ministries.

My original critique of Wagner Hills Ministries as a recovery centre and ministry was in News Intervention in the article entitled “Wagner Hills Farm Society: Christian Ministry Posed as Recovery.” This article spoke to the perspective of analysis of “a faith-based rehabilitation ministry for men and women with addiction in Langley, British Columbia, Canada” with a “number of listings and mentions in Rehab.ca, Charitable Impact, Canada Helps, Mission Central, BC211, Back to Bible Canada, CharityDir, health.gov.bc.ca, Pathways Merritt, Extreme Outreach Society, Giving Tuesday, Centra Cares, The Canadian Lutheran, Birthplace of B.C. Gallery, Global NPO, Christian Life Community Church, Sonrise Church, etc.”

It was a popular news item in the local area. News outlets and websites covered Wagner Hills Ministries in “Co-founder of Wagner Hills rehab centre in Langley falls victim to phone hacker,” “Wagner Hills plans to increase capacity at addictions facility,” “Neighbours worry about North Langley marijuana greenhouse,” “Realtors Care Blanket Drive raises thousands for Langley charities,” “Plans for Langley cannabis-grow operation raise concerns.”

It came in a wide range of recovery listing centers. It ran alongside “Burns Clinical Life Options Inc., Crossing Point – Affordable Addiction Recovery, Valiant Recovery Addiction Treatment Rehab Program, The Center | A Place of HOPE, BC Teen Challenge – Okanagan Men’s Centre, LIFE Recovery, Teen Challenge BC – Abbotsford Women’s Centre, Teen Challenge BC – Chilliwack Men’s Centre, and Union Gospel Mission Recovery Program.”

The orientation of the claim for Wagner Hills Ministries being a ministry recovery centre was the desire to make “disciples,” as this was and is traditional evangelistic language when looking to create new Christians. That would remain the ideal, probably. However, there are some adaptations to this particular orientation on Wagner Hills Ministries. After interviewing a couple of people who are deeply or intimately connected with Wagner Hills Ministries as a Christian ministry, I found that it’s non-controversial.

At the time, the leadership was “Board of Directors is Kris Sledding (Chairman), Dan Ashton, Pastor Curtis Boehm, Allen Schellenberg, Kim Ironmonger (Treasurer), and Lanson Foster. Some of these individuals are directly connected to the Canadian Lutheran Church.”

Its staff, as stated, “Jason Roberts (CEO & Men’s Campus Director), Tony De Jong (Operations Manager), Gregg Davenport (Program Manager), Stefan Kurschat (Head Counsellor), Dawn Bralovich (Director of Design), Jenifer Wiens (Program Assistant), and Kait Chambers (Care Coordinator).”

As with any organization, it is difficult to maintain, grow, and sustain one. To their credit, they succeeded on that metric. Similarly to Trinity Western University, they grew and sustained numbers. Also, akin to Trinity Western University, Wagner Hills Ministries, at the time, stated what they believe in “What we Believe”:

We believe in the Word of God as found in the Bible. This is to be the foundation for how we think, speak, and act.

God is our Creator, our Savior, and our Judge. He loves us and desires a relationship with us and wants to give us new, eternal life through Jesus Christ.

We all have intrinsic value and are worthy of respect. We all are self-aware, knowing our emotions, thoughts and actions. We all have a conscience and have a sense of right and wrong. We all have the ability and freedom to make personal choices and are responsible for those choices. Therefore, we all live with the consequences of our choices.

God intends for us to be relational. Our choices affect our relationship with God and with other people. So we are responsible for how our choices affect others as they relate to them (i.e. friends, family, etc).

Real and lasting change occurs when God changes our hearts and better choices become our lifestyle. We co-operate with God in changing our lives by obedience to His principles.

The vision was to make disciples of Jesus Christ, reiterating the devotion to Christian theology. The idea is to cooperate with a common Canadian delusion in the belief in a deity or an intervening divine intelligence. That’s the straightforward, impolite way to state it.

The indirect dancing way to stipulate: The concept is prayerful devotion and obedience to God’s Law and adherence to God’s Will in building a personal relationship with their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to a healthier life leading to eternal life, as described and promised in the Word of God “as found in the Bible.” Something like that.

They had an online presence, somewhat, in the YouTube market. Thirty videos at the writing of the first article. There are more now, more focused on personal testimonies. Those will be covered. The endorsements listed at the time were “Mark Warawa (former Langley Member of Parliament), Jordan Bateman (former Councilor, Township of Langley), H. Peter Fassbender (former Mayor, City of Langley), Kurt Alberts (former Mayor, Township of Langley), and Bob L. Friesen (Sales Manager, BC Christian News, The Shepherd’s Guide).”

I ended the article recommending some secular alternatives and still consider these important and valid alternatives for those whom Christian ministry isn’t a positive for them, as in Wagner Hills Ministries. These were the ones.

• LifeRing Secular Recovery
• Moderation Management
• Rational Recovery
• SecularAA
• Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS)
• SMART Recovery
• Women for Sobriety

There may be others now. Obviously, the resources online about Wagner Hills Ministries provided a clear message of sincere Christian belief and recovery methods rooted in the Bible, in the God of Abraham, and in prayerful submission to His Will. My critique came from a rugged, non-theist perspective; thus, within the Township of Langley, it can seem harsh. My subsequent article acted as an addendum entitled, appropriately, “Addendum on Wagner Hills Farm Society/Ministries.”

The orientation continued with the view that “These people were missing God, missing the Gospel, missing the saving grace of Christ, the Saviour. I get it. Within the religious sentiments of much of the public here, it feels like the right things to have present in the community…

…Why not have the evangelization to help heal sinners, while loving the sinner, hating the sin, and bringing them into closer union with God Almighty, Jesus Christ the King? Yet, imagine, if a local group of Satanists did the same, they opened a recovery centre decidedly self-defining, even calling itself, a ministry.”

A footnote, which would have been helpful, would have been an additional commentary on the demographics of Langley. Certainly, only about half of the population identifies as Christian. Those individuals vary in their commitment to the Gospel of Christ, in church attendance, in prayer style and frequency, in portions of the Bible emphasized, and in theological doctrine taken as primary versus secondary.

These impact the narrowness of the perceived narrow road through Christ. Some churches make LGBTI people’s lives hell; others make it heaven, relatively speaking. Some believe LGBTI identities are lifestyles individuals choose or do not choose to engage in. Others admit to the reality of the naturally arising developmental identities arising in bisexual and gay youth becoming adults. Christians differ.

The issue in the Township of Langley is the political versions of religion. Highly educated, well-to-do, and savvy Evangelical Christians who, as a small group in Canada, can be politically effective actors. Religion becomes politics. Thus, the language of disciples in Wagner Hills Ministries matches the language of Evangelical Christians here. As one later testimonial, Julia stated, “I am His daughter.” “His,” the God of the Bible’s daughter, was found through Wagner Hills Ministries.

I claimed in the addendum: “It’s not a ministry…” I was wrong on the level of inclusion of the Bible talk, the God concept, and emphasis on Jesus Christ, as per the quote above. It makes this a proper ministry, but the style of delivery happens to be different. In that, there may be a chapel service at Wagner Hills Ministries. However, the main farm work, prayer, chapel, and recovery work are ministries with an emphasis on recovery. So, in a sense, the original perspective is correct, but the style of delivery is the recovery work.

It makes total sense given the community, the locale, the municipality, the history of the area, and the contingencies of other recovery programs at the start of recovery development with Alcoholics Anonymous and so on. Helmut Boehm, the founder, was working within the cultural and historical frame available at the moment. There have been re-orientations since the last articles, too. Those will be covered, too.

There are a number of positive reviews of Wagner Hills Ministries, which is great. Positive work for people within the frame of Christianity who feel this fits their recovery preferences. Yet, there is a critical analysis referenced about AA, too. We can never forget the history.

Dr. Lance Dodes, “Review: The Sober Truth – Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12 Step Programs with Dr. Lance Dodes” said:

AA started in the 1930s, when Bill Wilson wrote Alcoholics Anonymous, it was actually widely panned by the American Medical Association and everybody else. But what happened over the years was there was a remarkable shift between roughly 1935 and 1945.

Bill Wilson encouraged people to join his program, and most importantly, he encouraged those people to talk about their successes. When people didn’t do well, they disappeared, which is still true today. We don’t hear about those people.

But eventually he got the ear of one of the major writers in the country, a columnist, Jack Anderson, who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post.

And he wrote what became a famous article extolling the virtues of AA and saying, “It’s marvelous. It’s a miracle.” And he justified that by talking about several people, individual cases, where people had transformed their lives.

Almost overnight, everybody bought into this…

…People were desperate to find something, and they latched onto [AA] the way people do with a lot of ideas which turn out to be not actually useful, but they’re exciting.

By the mid-1940s, the AMA had reversed its position and [the 12 Steps] became the standard in this country. Many people came to believe that AA was the treatment or the best treatment for alcoholism without any evidence, and that’s been true ever since….

…Now when we studied it in The Sober Truth …. we looked at all those studies and we also tried updating newer studies, and what we found was that if you accumulate all the data the success rate [of 12 Step programs] is between 5 and 8%, something like that

The subjective preference for a Christ-centered recovery process should be respected in individual choice on the one hand, as canada gives more leeway to patient preference in treatment in a number of medical arenas. It’s about free prior informed consent, in general. This is the language and style of consent influencing reconciliation talks with Indigenous communities, for example.

While, at the same time, we have to remain realistic about success rates of faith-based recovery processes. As in the 12-step programs, and as I know within the family – not me, personally, but I have a close family member who went through AA and similar recovery programs, they have been and remain an alcoholic. They were part of this statistic of the 95-92% failure rate repeatedly. I’m not speaking from a platform or a distance.

The next interview was followed by the single longest email ever sent to me. Jeremy Boehm is the son of Helmut Boehm, the founder of Wagner Hills. His email was candid, reflective, and sincere. I responded to the email and offered an interview. This became an article entitled “Interview with Jeremy Boehm on Concepts of God in Recovery.”

The exploration was the concept of God within the context of recovery. This seems interesting, with a non-theist sincerely inquiring a theist on this idea. Boehm noted a background of trauma in cases of substance use and misuse. He describes how there is something that is kind out there in the universe. An entity that stepped in to help someone avoid an issue.

He finds the construct or the concept of God comes to people when in a time of crisis. It is the proverbial rock bottom of the substance misuser. God finds them, or they find God, or they meet one another, finally. The passive and distant construct becomes an immediate reality for them. He describes the reactions of some who would identify atheists in times of crisis, where, in fact, they go to reach out to something, especially in those deep, dark, despairing moments.

Boehm made a subtle comparison in the end between trauma and the God concept. Perhaps that’s the point, from a different angle. Individuals in desperate circumstances collapse the Self in search of an Other to help the Self reintegrate, and then religious ideology and recovery methodologies fill the gap. The Self becomes reborn with the Other’s ideology and methodologies.

The methodologies don’t have to work in a traditional sense. They have to provide fame, and they then can be interpreted as working for those individuals who make the rounds to the promotional videos of Wagner Hills Ministries. Again, those will be covered. Boehm found most people are open to God, to prayer, and even evangelization of one another. He understands the image out there of a divine punisher. That’s true because that’s accurate. Don’t ask me; ask the Amalekites.

It’s also true the other way. People are open to God, to prayer, to evangelization. It depends on the context. In a recovery context, what do people want out of it? They want to get better. Of course, they will look for anything to help them.

Divine Love.

Eternity.

Union.

These conceptualizations of the God of the Universe inform and motivate a belief in God. It brings about utilization of the internal resources of a person to get better because it is the ultimate anything that works with absolute concepts of love and me, togetherness, through Christ Almighty.

Boehm said, “The interesting this I’ve witnessed, is, this image of a divine bad guy out to punish us, slowly melts away as people heal, open their hearts, or open their minds, or whatever you call it, in prayer, and they allow this higher power to just reveal Himself or Itself. They find the openness to allow this being to being to reveal the character, apart from all the religion and negative imagery that was attached with that construct. As a person finds more revelation or experience with God, I find that they’re experience is a lot like my experience was, and they will come to the conclusion that, ‘Oh, this isn’t a bad guy. This person cares. There’s love. There’s healing. There’s something really good here.'”

Terminology becomes familiar, and terminological associations become less important at the same time. These people want a cure. They want peace of mind and body. They want to be better, to be free of addiction. When it does work, these get the responsibility. When they don’t, which is most of the time, they should rely more on the concept of God. It doesn’t have to be traditional religious concepts. It could be spiritual ideas, too. He references some First Nations interpretations of an eagle flying overhead. It becomes a spiritually significant event for the person.

It is interpreted within the frame of the First Nations’ spiritual background. In this sense, the Euro-Canadian and First Nations interpretations of benign events and experiences revolve around the same idea: Becoming healthy and, er, better. Anything can be the conduit; merely, the cultural products of the era act as filtrates for it.

A general scientific idea would be neutral on the concept of God but not on an intervening God, as this would indicate a breakage of the laws of nature or a violation of the laws discovered by science. This doesn’t fit the naturalistic view or the empiricist findings of the universe. Yet, as a religious person, Boehm took a different, interesting view.

“…I actually believe in a discoverable reality of God. I see a measurable reality in spiritual things, just like I think you can measure the realities of math, physics, and science and so on. In the same way I think you can find ultimate reality about our origin and Creator, and the all the rest,” Boehm said, “That is if you are, open to the higher power, and warm up to the idea, and let down the guard, set aside the negativity, relax the resolve, or whatever you want to call it, that pushes back against the idea or construct of God. The biggest part of this process is to allow that deity to separate itself from all of the human experiences of evil that have populated our brain with a bad impression or a bad feeling towards that deity, then the deity’s true colours will come through. You have to be open to it, and let that experience happen. But in the instance that a person is open, I believe a person can uncover the reality of the true deity, the Truth that I understand.”

He takes the orientation of neurological sciences or the discoveries in neurology as a means by which or a tool to know a discoverable God. This means the hiddenness of God. Then Boehm orients this within his sincere Christian belief in Christ as a redeeming saviour figure and contrasts with the Pharisees.

Boehm stated, “When God presents Himself in the world, He’s not rich. He doesn’t hold the stereotypical kingship that people expected him to, in how they interpreted prophecy. He role-modeled this, this serving, this washing of feet, this dying on a cross, this love… That character is what, I think, will come out to someone who is searching. And those who are in substance use disorder are often searching very deeply for God and using substances or alcohol to medicate or soothe the pain that they wish God could heal. I think what I’ve said about Jesus isn’t a politically-correct thing to say. When I speak this way, some will only hear it said that everyone else is wrong.”

Certainly, the dominant tone set in Canadian culture, especially British Columbia, is against the ideas of the Gospel as a huge portion of the population is non-religious, and a significant amount doesn’t adhere to Christian ideology. Politically and socially – going further, Boehm is correct. His exclusivism there is politico-socially incorrect. As Pastor Mark Driscoll of Trinity Church and others have noted for a solid decade almost, the problem of the modern church, perceived or actual (both, in reality), is the following: Intolerance.

Driscoll wants to dig his heels and set a conservative tone on the Gospel as the True Gospel. Others like Reverend Gretta Vosper want to see tolerance emphasized more liberally in the Gospel, as the True Gospel. Both have value. Boehm is a sincere, interesting, and intelligent man. He sits somewhere between this and the spectrum of contemporary Christianity. As a son of the founder, Helmut Boehm, this stands, no doubt, as a framework for comprehension of the work and influence of Wagner Hills Ministries within the larger ministry landscape of the Evangelical Christian community in the Township of Langley.

“It will sound intolerant to say that there is a singular reality in spirituality as there is in chemistry for example. It can be offensive to say that only one thing is true. Could it say that someone’s spirituality isn’t true? It’s much easier politically to be subjective,” Boehm continues, “and even to relegate the whole topic to one that can only be considered subjective. I don’t spend time arguing that one religion is right. I say that religions may point to truth. Instead I look for Spirituality that connects us with God, and the way that I derive the character of that God, is that He visited us and showed us. It may be hard to accept for many people that Jesus was God visiting us.”

He speaks to the universality of cultures across time for a sense of an Other or an outside source for meaning and purpose. My critique would merely invert the referent for an accurate perspective of the world, wherein the world of inner life comes in percepts of scientific exploration of an electro-colloidal organism and system capable of approximations of a world. An internal simulation of an external. An external world is modelled internally and observed over time, thus mistaken for the outside itself.

God becomes an imposition on the world in reference to the world from the aforementioned referent. Meaning comes in relation to the world, and the world lives in us secondarily, never primarily, and the reality of God, then, becomes non-direct reality as a secondary experience of this world in an internal model. In some sense, we are little gods perceiving a singular God while the entire dance becomes a dance macabre as gods seeing God(s) mistake the impression for reality.

As this God lives in us in modelling of that world, we learn this reality lives in the mind, and to live in the mind is to comprise something without spatial or temporal dimensions, non-infinite spatial and temporal dimensions with each dimension set at 0, and something with 0 on these dimensions amounts to the equivalent of non-existence. Nothing exists in zero time and zero space, thus the illusion. An illusion is mistaken for true. We carry God on our backs the whole time, the desire for God on our shoulders the whole time, and so we come to the disagreement. That’s apart from charlatans.

Boehm commented, “To be fair, there have been many charlatans over time who have made false claims and deceived people. How a person like me, or like a recovering substance user, comes to these conclusions about God has a lot to do with personal experience, learning history, and taking their time as they ease into the ideas. I don’t assume that everybody will come to the same conclusions that I have because everyone has their own experiences that influence their views. I understand that not all people will find the truth because their experiences or desires may not lead them to the truth. They may choose to deceive themselves. A refusal to believe in climate change might be a good example of that. It can be comfortable to remain ambiguous about certain realities in an effort to dodge responsibility. Or they may have been deceived on a mass scale, or by simply not having the experience to discover the truth.”

The orientation around a desire for this God, for this Other, is true. The proper perspective eliminates the belief in the illusion, not the illusion, hence the continuing power of music and art to inspire, where the inspiration comes with the same feeling while the illusion no longer holds sway. For Boehm and others to take the next step, freedom sits there. The practices of faith can remain while the belief withers and fades to its natural state.

In a side commentary, this may explain the enduring appeal of some existentialist Christians like Dr. Jordan Peterson, spiritualist Christians like the Roman Catholic Pope, or the continuance of ritual and ceremony attendance without a sincere belief by believers, even former believers. They like the service; they don’t adhere to it. Boehm gave a thoughtful conceptualization of a deity conceived by individuals who endured horrific abuse. It’s a good point. The idea of a benevolent creator in spite of trauma. Indifferentist gods emerge from abuse.

“I don’t know why. For whatever reason, it seems that tragic abuse from a parent can somehow co-exist with a benevolent view of God. I suppose, in the same way that people believe that good and evil both exist, people can believe in a good god even while their neighbours are burned alive. They are able to see how evil and good can be at war, and can both exist. So yes, some people who come to a recovery centre, and who are deeply wounded from trauma, have a view of a God who doesn’t care. What is so interesting to me, is those who despite their experiences believe in a benevolent one. It’s really puzzling,” Boehm said.

Bohem made more thoughtful statements about the symptomatology. Where an individual could be using the substance in an overdose way; they use the substance too much. They abuse or misuse the substance relative to their tolerance level. They mask trauma or pain with these substances, including alcohol. With that abuse of the substance, they can find themselves, eventually, trapped because of the overuse of the substance and then derivative effects of it. Those stop numbing the pain as a coping mechanism and then become part of the problem. Addiction occurs. Other negative health outcomes happen.

Boehm described, though buffered responses with a qualification of limited education and experience on the subject, “The trauma story occurs generationally. The substance-use provides enough consequences in the family to cause disturbance, I think, in the oxytocin systems in a baby’s developing brain, so that rather than developing a sense of safety, of being soothed by the parent, the baby adapts with the instinct to self-soothe when the cycles of attachment with the parent are interrupted. Those basic cycles in the first 7 months, as I understand it, are so disturbed when a mother and father, are involved in substance use disorder. And this has the effect of passing this trauma from generation to generation. I think I am repeating myself, so I think I should finish with that.”

People want out. People want that God. They want peace of body, of mind, of soul. For them, AA provides them. Boehm took a bargaining time of substance misusers with the purported deity. These individuals look for a means by which to propitiate sufficiently for forgiveness, love, and a sense of fixedness. He expresses this as forgiveness and love as not something to be bargained, as in “I am doing this to get something.” Boehm finds when people in treatment reach a bankruptcy or a bottom point. They come to the realization.

Boehm said, “They gain the sense that they are worth something, simply because God made them and loves them, and not because they do anything, or perform anything, or become moral, or have the ability to flawlessly follow all the religious rules. They transition from wondering, ‘Am I moral enough?’ to recognizing, ‘I am loved.’ At that point, they experience the benevolence of God and I think, they make a deep connection.”

They speak to a sense of presence with God and unconditional love and forgiveness. Yet, we come the point elucidated earlier. They were the ones carrying the God along with them the whole time. The resources were internal and needed to be found within the right context. For a single-digit percent of people, as per the studies, that’s in AA or similar treatment modalities. For those who don’t get it, whose fault is it? An all-powerful, divinely loving, transcendently forgiving entity or its flawed, created being who happened to fall into an addictive cycle. The greater the power, then the greater the responsibility: the fault lies with the manufacturer.

It’s touching, though. The sentiments are real.

The people do suffer. Addicts exist. Genetic predisposition plays a part. In a sense, neither of those matters. The fact of their suffering and the desire to mediate and reduce this suffering is the purpose behind centers like this. The question arises in the efficacy compared to alternatives and the end result in “disciples.”

God exists, but in internal generativity, reacted to external information processed and then projected outward. A projection of sentiment in an open search, thus invisible to the senses. God becomes everywhere, every time, subtle and pervasive in presence.

Boehm concluded, “When you find out, you can’t meet the conditions. What could you do anyway? Especially, you feel helpless with substance abuse disorder and the hopelessness of being unable to change. There is such a vivid picture of helplessness, especially there. I believe that the transition to a belief in God’s malevolence occurs just at that point when a person realizes that God’s love is unconditional, it’s the love, that’s the ticket. Well put.”

A long journey to justify that which does not need justifying: self-acceptance, whether in the presence of the finite projected infinite of God or the need to feel benevolence towards one’s authentic self without the need for the illusion.

In the in-depth letter from Jeremy, the son of the founder Helmut, he noted giving him a lot to think about from the first article. This raises the question, since writing it, what has changed, if anything? That brought forth the original idea for writing this meandering exploratory article. We can explore this in the next installment of the fascinating encounter with the founder’s son based on a critical evaluation of Wagner Hills Ministries as a Christian rehabilitation facility or centre.

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