12-Steps & More is an independent ‘child’ of St. Michael’s, created through a grant from the Episcopal Community Services Fund of the Diocese of Trenton in 2022. Described in an article in US 1 newspaper as one of the first such stores in the nation, its objective is to prove the viability of a brick & mortar bookstore devoted to 12-step recovery programs and mental health. Having transformed itself into an independent non-profit in 2024, it will begin setting up a “missionary” table to distribute free addiction recovery literature in an effort to create new fellowships for addictive eating , gambling, and debting, relationship and pornography disorders.
Its goals include opening a cafe which opens to the adjacent St. Michael’s history park in the North corner plot, and helping to sponsor a St. Michael’s Players’ programming to senior centers, where the “Kovac’s cafe in the Upper Room” podcast continually touches on issues of addiction.
Organization of 12-Steps and More Books
The organizational will be staffed by a 10% part-time director ($10,000) and a part-time administrator ($25,000), hourly-paid outreach staff based on grants, and volunteers. We are currently partnering with Rajonta Hodges of Diesel Therapeutics, Inc to share the space for in-house counseling services.
Programming
In the summerof 2024, 12-Steps & More has sponsored panels discussing the future impacts of technology on mental health. The objective is in line with the church’s educational mission, for in answer to the questions which are raised, the creation of new person-to-person fellowships in the guise of old-time ‘clubs’ is seen as the strongest antidote. It is the LOMED Educational Outreach is seen as serving as an R&D hub to help bring a new era of clubs about.
12-Steps & More into the Future
As described in the talk “Technology & Mental Health for Tomorrow’s Children,” a healthy future can only be secured through creating more venues for face-to-face interaction, guidance, and recreation—intellectual, cognitive, and spiritual re-creation. Along with promoting the growth of 12-Step recovery (e.g. anti-addiction) fellowships as a regular part of civic life, the long-term mission of the 12-Steps & More 501c3 shall be the development of new types of clubs, modeled around the successful ‘group conscience’ structure of the fellowship meeting with the independence of the group and free coming-and-going of membership. Media Scouts, Scriptwriter Clubs, and the TOW Teacher support clubs are proposed in a short paper suggesting a “Johnny Appleseed” role for the 12-Steps & More Books model, the little brick & mortar missions of hope spread out to more communities.
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