Program Overview

Program Phases

The New Heart Place program has been extensively researched and prayerfully designed to personally guide each student through the process of becoming an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ; a man or woman of God able to “stand strong in the power of His might” (rf Ephesians 6:10). It is a program sensitive to the unique healing needed on the “core level” of each person’s heart; a sensitivity that is expressed in the personal ministry of the Holy Spirit.

New Heart Place is a program devoted to preparing a man or woman in the personal discovery and realization of their unique destiny: God’s highest and best for their lives. Each student will receive personalized training and equipping in spiritual disciplines, spiritual warfare, life-giving relationships, nutrition and fitness, and vocational readiness.

Induction Phase

Preparing for life at New Heart Place

Each applicant admitted to New Heart Place Men’s or Women’s Home is welcomed into a community of brothers and sisters at New Heart Place and Westgate Chapel. Following the initial orientation, the inductee is given thirty days of an undistracted – no personal contact, no telephone calls – opportunity to stabilize physiologically (many applicants are toxic from their use of the “drug of choice”), assimilate into the New Heart Place and Westgate Chapel communities, and be initiated into the schedule, protocols, policies and procedures of New Heart Place.

Phase One

Learning to follow Jesus

Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.” | Mark 8:34 (NLT)

Through a series of New Heart Place proprietary and published curriculum, the Phase One student explores with the Resident Ministry Team and his or her coach what it means to be a genuine follower of Jesus Christ in 21 st century America.

Phase Two

Growing Strong in Christ

Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. | 1 Corinthians 16:13 (NLT)

Typically, “strength” is thought of in context of body-building competition that requires men and women to work-out with free weights until each muscle group in their body is well-defined. As valuable as muscular and overall physical strength may be, Phase Two focuses on developing men and women who are “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”

Each New Heart Place proprietary interactive workbook, published texts and workbooks, and digital curriculum has been prayerfully developed and selected to promote spiritual strength; strength of mind and heart.

Phase Three

Standing in the Power

Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. | Ephesians 6:13 (NLT)

As the New Heart Place student anticipates his or her graduation, he or she is faced with the critical issue of sustainability. Can he or she live in an intimate relationship with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit outside of the protected environment of New Heart Place?

Ultimately, it matters little how much Biblical content the student may think he or she knows if that knowledge does not translate into a faith-power to stand. The New Heart Place graduate must stand strong as a man or woman of God. They must.

The vision and mission of New Heart Place is more – much more – than recovery. The goal of every piece of curriculum, every learning experience, every personal counseling and coaching session, every Sunday or Tuesday encounter with the presence and power of God is for one primary objective: that the New Heart Place graduate would know the palpable reality of standing in the power of the Holy Spirit. If that indeed occurs, “clean and sober” will never be an issue. The graduate may – like all disciples of Jesus – be tempted but doing his or her “drug of choice” will no longer be a life-controlling issue.

Phase Three offers the student the unique experience of living at New Heart Place while focusing on “the next step:” school, apprenticeship in a trade, missions, training for ministry, or whatever purpose and destiny the Father has for that student. The student is encouraged to secure part-time employment (up to twenty-four hours a week). Throughout Phase Three, the Resident Director and Coach will focus on assessing the student’s ability to stand in the marketplace, maintain a lifestyle of spiritual discipline and understand how to engage spiritual warfare when faced with the inevitable temptations the marketplace will offer.

The New Heart Place student that successfully completes the requirements of all three phases including the Induction Phase will be graduated. A graduation ceremony will be conducted at Westgate Chapel in Edmonds.

Phase Four

Walking Whole and Free

It gave me great joy to have some of the brothers come and tell about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in the truth. | 3 John 3

From the first day our New Heart Place student entered the program, our staff has looked toward the day our “New Heart Place guy or gal” would begin to walk out the destiny that the Father has prepared for them. (rf. Ephesians 2:10)

Phase Four, while an essential part of the New Heart Place program, is not required for graduation.

Rather, Phase Four offers the New Heart Place graduate an opportunity to get established in his or her new life outside of New Heart Place. In Phase Four, the New Heart Place graduate may apply for a bed in the New Heart Place facility while establishing him or herself in a job, acquiring a vehicle, and finding a place to live.

Curriculum  Tracks

Four Tracks

Each man or woman the Father graciously entrusts to the New Heart Place program for a season is accepted and valued for the “one-of-a-kind” creation they are. Each come to the program with a unique – though often similar – family of origin profile, learning style, thinking style, and personality. The Resident Ministry Team and Coaches prayerfully and carefully “seek to understand, then to be understood” (rf. Steven Covey) as they seek to fully cooperate with the Holy Spirit in all He desires to accomplish in the life of an individual student.

The curriculum has been designed to displace years of lies, half-truths, and the “stinkin’ thinkin’” that has been ingrained in the minds and hearts of the typical New Heart Place student. It is a combination of proprietary interactive workbooks, published texts, and workbooks.

Each phase of the New Heart Place program has curriculum distinctive to that phase and has been created to provide an interactive learning experience for every student regardless of that student’s academic achievement or ability to learn. Every phase has curriculum that is presented through four tracks.

Track One

Spiritual Formation Track

Under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Prophet Jeremiah (rf Jeremiah 18) paints a word picture describing the forming of a clay vessel on a potter’s wheel. The word picture aptly describes the experience of a New Heart Place student as he or she moves through the New Heart Place program. The Holy Spirit will shape, mold, and squeeze the student until He has created a “vessel unto honor prepared for every good work” (cf. 2 Timothy 2:20-21).

Every New Heart Place Council member, professional or volunteer staff member, coach, intercessor, and pastor is passionately committed to one goal: the formation of a man or woman of God; a “man or woman after God’s own heart” (rf. 1 Samuel 13:14).

The curriculum of the Spiritual Formation track has been prayerfully written and selected to fully cooperate with the Holy Spirit in creating a spiritually mature man or woman of God.

Track Two

Emotional Wholeness Track

Above all else, the Holy Spirit expressed through Solomon, guard your heart, for out of it proceed the issues of life. | Proverbs 4:23

As a gender, women tend to be more willing to process their emotional struggles, their heart issues. On the other hand, emotions – heart issues – are often very difficult for men to discuss. Some – men or women – simply refuse to acknowledge the pain of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, or abuse. Their years of being socialized in a dysfunctional family system taught them not to talk, to feel, or trust. Yet, it is precisely those issues of the heart – those core issues – that often drive the addiction or life-controlling issue.

Within the curriculum and personal one-on-one ministry of Track Two, the New Heart Place student is gently guided through a process of understanding, accepting, and finding healing for toxic heart issues. Personal ministry, experiences in the presence and power of God, combined with selected curricula are prayerfully and lovingly presented to each student seeking emotional wholeness.

Track Three

Nutrition and Fitness Track

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. | 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Research and practical experience indicate prolonged drug and alcohol abuse will profoundly impact physiological health (e.g. malnourishment, anemia, loss of teeth). Few, if any, New Heart Place students have given much thought to “honoring God with their bodies.”

Track Three validates the New Heart Place conviction that healing must be holistic. Our wellness must embrace our whole being: mind, heart, and body. Within the curricula and practical training of Track Three, the New Heart Place student is taught how nutrition can promote healing in his or her body and the importance of developing a large-muscle-aerobic exercise regimen as a means of releasing the toxins stored in the soft tissue of their bodies as a result of prolonged drug or alcohol abuse.

Track Four

Vocational Readiness Track

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. | Ephesians 2:10

Men and women emerging from lifestyles of failed marriages, failed jobs, failed recovery attempts, and years of living with a chronic life-controlling issue find it difficult to imagine that their life could have meaning and purpose…a destiny. Yet, the record of God’s story, articulated in scripture and expressed in contemporary history, validates the simple truth that when a man or woman surrenders their life to Jesus Christ, everything changes including their destiny. Suddenly, shepherd boys become kings, murderers become apostles, losers become leaders.

The desired outcome of Track Four is that a New Heart Place student would emerge at the end of his or her twelve-to-eighteen-month program not only healed and whole but envisioned with what God has for him or her to do with their life. The “next step” beyond New Heart Place graduation is not simply getting a job. But rather, stepping into a destiny.

Throughout their New Heart Place experience, the student will have an opportunity to explore a variety of potential career paths, receive practical help in preparing a resume, conducting an interview, creating a project, as well as researching additional training or educational possibilities.