FAQ & Guide

A safe place means 100% confidentiality. You can take off your "mask" and be real without fear of judgment. Our guidelines protect everyone from being "fixed". You are always in control of when and how much you participate.

CR groups are NOT led by pastors, teachers, or counselors. They are facilitated by compassionate volunteers who have walked through their own process of recovery from hurts, hang-ups, and habits. They are fellow travelers on the journey.

The Beacon is a sponsor-matching tool built for Celebrate Recovery communities. It helps connect people looking for a sponsor with available, verified sponsors in their network.

It does not replace your CR group, your step study, or the relationships you build in person. It handles the logistics of matching — collecting the context that matters, surfacing it to the right people, and opening a secure line of communication once a connection is made.

Intake starts on your organization's Beacon page. You will see a form asking about your recovery context — things like your pace preference, conflict style, relational instincts, and any life experience that might help the team find a good match.

If you are signing up as a sponsee, your form goes through an encrypted submission process. Sensitive fields are encrypted in your browser before they ever leave your device.

If you are signing up as a sponsor, the process is similar, but your profile also needs phone verification and admin approval before you appear in the matching pool.

You do not need to create an account to submit an intake form. Account creation happens later if you choose to claim your profile.

Beacon does not decide your match. It generates a matching score based on the context both people provided during intake — things like pace and lane, relational style, cadence preference, conflict approach, and shared recovery experience. That score is one input among several.

Admins review availability, current load, and activity before opening a connection request. The score is context for that review, not a verdict.

If a sponsor is unable to accept, the system moves to the next eligible person. No one is locked in by a score.

After you submit, a matching workflow starts automatically. The system identifies eligible sponsors in your network based on the context you provided, then sends a connection request to the top candidate.

That sponsor receives a notification and can accept or decline. If they accept, a private encrypted conversation opens between the two of you. If they decline or the request expires, the workflow advances to the next eligible sponsor.

Your request is waiting for a sponsor response during this time. You do not need to do anything else.

When you submit an intake form, a profile is created but it is not yet linked to an account you can sign into. Claiming is the process of connecting that profile to a participant account.

To claim your profile, you will verify your phone number through a one-time code and create an account. An admin at your organization then reviews and approves the claim. Once approved, you can sign in to view your connection requests, update your profile, and access your conversations.

Yes. Once a sponsor accepts your connection request, an encrypted conversation is created for the two of you. You can access it by signing in to your Beacon account.

Messages are end-to-end encrypted. The server stores message content as ciphertext — it cannot read your conversation.

Messaging is available to participants with a claimed, linked profile and at least one accepted connection.

You can opt in to receive notifications by SMS, email, or in-app when something needs your attention — like a new connection request or a new message.

Notification channels are optional. You add and verify each one separately, and you can turn individual channels on or off at any time. You are never signed up for notifications automatically.

What you see depends on your role.

As a participant, you can review your profile, view and respond to connection requests, access your encrypted conversations, manage your notification preferences, and update your account settings.

Admins can also review profiles across their network, manage matching workflows, approve claims, and see activity across their organization.

If you are a sponsor who has been promoted to an admin role, you will have access to both sets of tools.

Sensitive fields in your intake form are encrypted in your browser before they are sent to the server. The server stores these fields as ciphertext and cannot read them directly.

Matching metadata — the non-sensitive context used to calculate scores — is stored separately so the system can run matching without decrypting your private information.

It means your messages are encrypted on your device before they are sent, and only you and the other person in the conversation can decrypt them. The server stores the encrypted content but does not hold the keys needed to read it.

Your private keys stay in your browser memory only after you unlock them. If your session locks due to inactivity, you sign in again to unlock.

Server-side exports are disabled for encrypted data.

It depends on how the number is used.

If your phone number is only used for login verification (MFA), it is stored as password-sealed data. The server sees it only briefly when sending a login code, then discards it.

If you opt in to receive SMS notifications, a separate delivery endpoint is stored so the system can reach you later when you are not actively signed in. You control whether this endpoint exists and can remove it at any time.

These are two different storage paths for two different purposes.

Admins in your organization can access profiles within their network scope for the purpose of reviewing matches, verifying sponsors, and managing connection requests.

If you are a participant, you can see your own profile and update it through the encrypted edit flow.

Profiles from outside your organization are not visible to admins in a different organization. Access is scoped to the network you belong to.

A sponsor is a volunteer who has walked their own road of recovery. They guide you through the steps, share what has worked for them, and walk alongside you. They are not licensed clinicians and do not provide therapy or clinical advice.

A therapist is a licensed professional who diagnoses and treats mental health conditions in a clinical setting. If you are working through trauma, anxiety, depression, or other clinical concerns, a therapist is the right person to see that work through.

A pastor or spiritual leader provides theological guidance, discipleship, and spiritual care. If your questions are rooted in faith, doctrine, or spiritual direction, pastoral staff are equipped for that conversation.

Each role is an expert in its own lane. You may benefit from all three, and that is a sign of health, not weakness.

The Beacon helps with sponsor matching. It does not provide therapy, pastoral counseling, diagnosis, crisis support, or emergency response.

If you are in crisis, please contact a licensed professional, your local emergency services, or a crisis hotline. Beacon is not equipped to respond to emergencies.

The matching tool is one part of a broader recovery community. It works best alongside in-person meetings, step studies, and the relationships you build at CR.

Admins manage the matching workflow for their organization. They review sponsor profiles, verify readiness, scan availability and load before opening requests, approve or reject profile claims, and manage connection requests when needed.

Admins also handle organizational settings, team invitations, and encryption key access for their network.

Admin actions are scoped to the organization or virtual network they belong to. An admin at one church cannot see or manage profiles at another unless those networks are explicitly affiliated.

An organization is typically a local church running Celebrate Recovery. It is the home base for sponsors and sponsees who attend that location.

A network can also be a virtual group — a regional collection of organizations that share a matching pool. Sponsors can request affiliation with networks outside their home organization if they want to be available more broadly.

Your profile, your matching, and your admin's access are all scoped to the network you belong to.

The intake asks about things like your recovery pace preference, how you handle conflict and repair, your relational instincts, your preferred meeting cadence, and areas of shared life experience. These are used to calculate a matching score that gives the admin team context when reviewing potential connections.

No single answer determines your match. If you marked "unsure" on a question, it is simply excluded from the score rather than counting against you.

The score is a starting point for a human review, not an automated decision.