What it means to be a trusted servant at a GSR & Trusted Servant Workshop in Minneapolis, MN

Hi, everybody. I'm still Brenda, and I'm still an alcoholic. Hi, Brenda. Hi. Before I start, there were a couple of things that, I neglected to mention, this morning when I was talking about doing GSR reports.

And I think that they're extremely important, so I wanted to, just mention them now. One of the things that what I thought was really, important when I was, talking to my group, giving my report, is that I point out the resources that are available to the group, one of them being, the area newsletter, the Pigeon. And I also know that there are a number of districts in our area that do newsletters. And the reason that I think that they're so important is there's a lot of information in these newsletters. And there's a lot of there's there's district reports, where the dis the DCMs, talk about what the districts are doing to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There's reports from all of the area committee, chairs on what they're doing to carry the message. There's reports from all of the area officers. There's just there's just a lot of information in here. And I know that, at area functions, there's always an abundance of these. Like, we have some here today over on the table.

There's always a a stack of these sitting around so that you can take extras back to your meeting. So that that's one of the resources that I think is, really important to point out, at every, GSR report. Okay. The the second thing is, I I had a request to talk about something, before I get into, my formal presentation on what it means to be a trusted servant, and that was, how to do a group inventory. And, in talking with this lady at the break, realizing that, you know, there are and and this is really I I think I've I have seen this happen in my own group, my own home group, is that there are a lot of problems that come up in the group.

And, sometimes it's just it's just how well are we carrying the AA message and that a lot of those things can be addressed and talked about at an area at a group inventory. And sometimes groups don't always do it because they it's like, well, what do I do? How do I do it? My home group takes an inventory every year. And, I know that there are a number of districts that take their take a district inventory, and our area takes an area inventory every 2 years.

We take it the 2nd year of every rotation so that we have things that we can talk about during that rotation and that there are some items that maybe the new rotation of officers can look at, to implement for the next rotation. But in the AA group pamphlet, there is some very valuable information on AA group inventories and there actually are questions in there. You can you you you don't even have to make up any questions. There are 13 questions. I think there used to be 12.

I think they added one more. There are 13 questions in there that you can just follow those questions. Now, generally, there are lots of people that you can ask to facilitate a group inventory. It is recommended that you not have somebody from your own group so that they can actually participate and you get somewhat a neutral party, so to speak, to come and facilitate the inventory. And that can be, your DCM.

That can be, any of the your district officers, area officers, committee chairs. There's lots of us that have facilitated group inventories. And there's a set of what we call, in inventory group norms, that are floating around. I don't know where they came from. I I think I got mine from, our past delegate, Jack C.

And, what those norms are, are they are they are just they're they're just basic guidelines that the group needs to follow in order to take the inventory. Like, for example, the the facilitator is there to facilitate and does not have any opinions. If you if you have, if you wanna say something on a particular question, raise your hand and be recognized so that we can keep a semblance of order. Keep your comments focused to the facilitator, not directed at any specific people. Those types of things.

And then the facilitator, if if you're if you set aside, say, maybe, an hour, we set aside an hour to do the inventory. We do it after our regular meeting on Thursday nights, and we go through, we we set aside an hour, and then our facilitator will keep an eye on the time. So if so we have, you know, we have 13 questions. We have this much time for those questions. And if it looks like we're going long on a question, they will move us on to the next question.

And if there's time at the end, we can go back to that question where there were some more comments. So those norms are available for, the groups as well-to-do the inventory. Does anybody have any questions, on doing a group inventory? Yeah, Ali? That's a good question.

Ali's question was, what do you do, when issues arise out of having the inventory? Do you address them? How do you address them? When do you address them? That type of thing.

My experience has been that we have several note takers at that we have designated at the inventory And we do not make decisions at the inventory. The inventory is not not for making decisions. The the inventory is really to just get information out, get stuff on the table. You're not gonna vote on anything at the inventory. And then those notes are put together in a document by question, like question number 1, what is the basic purpose of the group, and then the responses.

And then what we do is we take, at each business meeting, we take so many of those questions and address the things that came up during the inventory. So what our our secretary of the group will do is go through and pick out all of the questions that had some something that, like, for example, there maybe it was an idea that we're not carrying the message out into the community as well as we could. We meet in a church. Are we listed in the church directory? Maybe we should be doing more to let the members of the church know that, you know, we're there's an AA meeting in their church.

So that those types of things. So they will pick out the questions that has that has some kind of a, something that needs to be addressed and we will discuss those at subsequent business meetings. Yes. The question is, this particular group had, was doing, an inventory annually and, there were some people they wanted to do an inventory this last year and there were some people in the group that did not feel that it was they they they they did not do another inventory. So has there been any experience on that?

You know, I have not had any experience, on that. You know, we I I hear rumblings in my group like, oh, we gotta do another one of those inventories, you know, blah blah blah. But then, when something comes up, and it needs to be addressed, you know, then that that's a great place to be able to take care of that. So but we still do the inventory. Does anybody have any experience that they can share or wanna share on that?

Bob, you have any thoughts on that? One of the things that we found in our group when we did group inventories was that sometimes there are in some groups, there are some, rather strong members that have a tendency to, overwhelm some of the newer members and people who really want to say something, but they're afraid to say anything. And in answer to that, what we did at our group is we, put out a box and we had a little small opening where you could stick your we made up the the questions out of the right off that inventory. We put them on on 2 sheets of paper, and we left between each question, we left an area where you could write. And you could, you could do one of these yourself at your leisure at home, bring it back, fill it out, and put it in the box.

And what we did then was we had some, members of the group, get together, and we we compiled them all in to 1, you know, on on paper saying, what was under number 1? What was under number 2? And then we went through those as a group. And that gave the freedom of any member in the group to say what they felt like like they had to say, without having to, feel, that they were gonna receive any wrath from some of the less than spiritually developed people that are and that seemed to work quite a bit, and it took away some of the apprehension of the inventory. We took quite a bit more than 1 hour to do it.

We we had to set aside a time, and it took us quite a while to do it, but it was well worth it. Yeah. Are you are you getting that on tape? Is it coming through? Bob, do you wanna sit on that chair?

So that you can come up. Maybe maybe you need to just say all that again Because that I think that's that is really good. That's a really good idea. Okay. I'm Bob.

I'm an alcoholic. I don't think I can remember what I said. At least that's what I always claim. Yeah. Well, with this, one of the things that my home group did, in regards to a group inventory, because some people are a little bit timid about bringing things up at a group because sometimes there are some very strong group members or there's a maybe a host of old timers in there, and and they're afraid to bring things up because they feel they'll be looked down upon or they may even get, some, you know, bad comments or something.

What we did was we typed out the the questions for the inventory on 2 sheets of paper, and we left in between each question, we left a space for somebody to write what they wanted to ask or a comment they wanted to make on that question. And they could fold these up and stick them into a sealed box where there was just a small opening. They could put those into that box unsigned and then at, at a later time, like our GSR and the alternate and the secretary might take all of those and compile them into a list for question 1, question 2, so and etcetera. Then as a group, we got together and we went over this. We read them and then we discussed them if there was any more discussion on them.

And this took away some of the apprehension of the group conscience format because people were too afraid to even participate in it so they didn't wanna come. But when they could air their things and then be present to hear the answers or the discussion later, it it really did, it did help that process and people did participate more. We also do not vote on anything at a group at a group inventory. That's just fact finding, fact gathering. And then later on, if there's something that really comes up that we need to address, that goes back to our group business meeting.

Thank you. Thanks, John. I'll come there. Yeah. The yes.

I would've. I mean, I think that's an individual group decision, but, that you could have gone ahead and done the inventory or you could try what what Bob just suggested. Oh, the questions. I need the questions. What was The question was if, if the rest of the group wanted to go ahead and do a group inventory when a whole bunch of them didn't want well, some of them didn't want to, is it okay to just go ahead?

And, sometimes you can do that. And and a little bit later, we get into the concepts. I'll be talking a little bit on concept 12 about substantial unanimity within a group and maybe we'll address some of that there. Is that okay? Absolutely.

Okay. Thanks, Bob. The other thing I I would like to mention is I I know that when the area takes when the area takes an inventory, that that information does not go by the wayside either. One of the things one of the responsibilities of the, structure chair, the alternate delegate, is to take the the minutes from that inventory and to categorize, what particular comments would go to what committee that that committee needed to address. And then give that information, give those minutes to that committee for the for example, if something came up about, how the area could better, handle the temporary contact program for the treatment facilities committee, that information would be passed on to the treatment facilities committee for them to discuss at a committee meeting and, decide whether to take some action on it or not.

So that information does get to the appropriate committee and, so it's not like we're just having an inventory and not doing anything with it. Yes. Okay. Good question. The question was, that this particular group that has a gazillion years of sobriety is that how is that how you said it?

Okay. Okay. Does not have a business meeting. You do take a group inventory. However every few years.

However, that information is never really discussed and would like you would like to know more information on how to how to have a regular business meeting. Is that correct? I could go into that, but I think that, there there is a lot of information in the AA Group pamphlet about having business meetings, why it's important to have business meetings. You know, every group is autonomous and can do what they would like to do. Some some groups do not have monthly business meetings and, some groups do.

Some groups do and some groups don't. My particular group has quarterly business meetings. We don't have business meetings every month. So I think it's a an a group autonomy thing, but you can read more about it in the a group pamphlet. And I know that, there are many people that would be happy to talk to you more about that after too.

Yes. Did you go ahead. That's a great idea. The the that comment was that perhaps you could attend, at the district meeting that your group is in. Is do you know what district your group is?

7. District 7? And you could discuss that at district 7 and talk about how other groups do their business meetings. That's a great great options great solution. Niles?

Yeah. There is. Oh, the the question is, is there a difference between a group business meeting and a group conscience meeting? And I think it has a lot to do with what you're discussing at your business meeting. And I shared earlier, our at our business meeting at my group, we discuss the issues we discuss the things that that come up on how our meeting is doing in carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

Are we we have a church liaison. How are we doing with the church? How are how's our literature doing? We have a report from our GIR. How are we doing with carrying information to our general, our to our group institutions representative?

We have a report from a mini report from our GSR, mini report from our, intergroup rep. Now, you could have your business meeting become a group conscience meeting, and the group when when I talk about group conscience meeting, I'm talking about getting information from the group on on particular issues that affect AA as a whole, things that have come up at the district meeting, things that have come up at the area. You can have those discussions in your business meeting or you can have a separate business a separate meeting where you talk about those. Probably a lot of groups do not have a separate meeting. Our one of our big separate meetings that we have where we get a group conscience on the issues facing AA as a whole is when we call our separate meeting for the conference agenda items.

And that would be when we would discuss how the group feels about those particular items. Does anybody else have an answer that they wanna give for that? Did I did I clarify that okay? Okay. So that's that's about group inventory.

So if you have more questions about that, take it to your district meetings and talk about it and, I see that somebody from district 7 is probably talking to this gentleman right now. So that takes care of that. Okay. Be before I start, also, I would like to mention that and I I I do this every year because I think it's so important, that November is known as gratitude month in Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as traditions month. And if your group gets a chance during the month of November, it might be nice to read the long form of the traditions in recognition of the traditions and of gratitude month.

And, I you know, one of the things that, I also have, and I I have some copies with me, is I have a it's a gratitude list thing for, traditions month. And I always give that out to the women I sponsor and and, and do it as well as myself and write down the things that I'm grateful for in, Alcoholics Anonymous. So the long form and the traditions, we don't always get a chance to hear those a lot in our meetings, so it's kinda nice to do them for the month of November. Okay. So one of the things that I wanted to, I I'm gonna share a little bit on the concepts, concept 1 and concept 9.

I I really like the topic, that was put out to us for this afternoon for discussion, because I think that, we could do a lot of workshop workshops just on this topic, and we would never run out of things to talk about. I just I mean, what does it mean to be a trusted servant? And you could talk about all kinds of stuff with that topic. And you know, anybody can be a trusted servant in Alcoholics Anonymous. I, I mean, I I know that.

I believe that. But how effective we are and what we actually do is what makes the difference. You know, we talked this morning about how to be an effective, and responsible GSR. But, you know, that isn't the only service job in AA. There are a lot of other service jobs that need to be done in order for us to carry the message.

It it's an extremely important one, but there's group secretary. There's district treasurers. There's area archives chair. There's regional trustee. There's all kinds of, jobs in Alcoholics Anonymous.

So when I took a look at concept 1 and I I really, you know even even though I've I've served as your delegate, I I still have a lot to learn in these concepts. And, I mean, I I understand them and what they're saying, but, I don't under I don't know the history behind a lot of what what is said here, and I I could not tell you them verbatim. So anytime I have the opportunity to read about and and, talk about the concepts, I get to learn. And that's that's been my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous always. Whenever I'm asked to do something, I have to dig a little bit deeper and learn a little bit more.

So thank you for the opportunity to do that. And when I look at Concept 1, I am always reminded of my responsibility to Alcoholics Anonymous and to those that came before me. And we talked a little bit this morning about a celebration that's coming up at the end of this month, Thanksgiving weekend, the celebration of AA's coming of age, that will be held in Saint Louis. And it's about 50 years ago in July of 1955 that AA came became of age. And so, the Saint Louis will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of, AA coming of it was the 20th anniversary of AA in 1955, and now we're at 50 years.

And it was at that convention that our fellowship was declared the permanent keeper of our 3 legacies of recovery unity and service. Bob mentioned this early earlier. I'd like to just read a couple of paragraphs, from A Comes of Age. And I don't wanna read a lot, but, you know, sometimes, it just says it so much better than I can paraphrase it. So I I would just like to read, this is Bill I don't I I I may not get through all this.

This is Bill recalling that event, in on July 3, 1955. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the final day, about 5,000 AA members and their families and friends were seated in the Kiel Auditorium at Saint Louis. All of the United States and Canadian provinces were represented. Some had traveled from far lands to be there. On the auditorium stage were the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, including some 75 delegates.

We now have 93. 75 delegates from the United States and Canada, trustees of AA's General Service Board, directors and secretarial staffs of our World Services at New York, my wife Lois, my mother and I. The General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous was about to take over the custody of AA's 12 traditions and the guardianship of its world services. It was to be named as the permanent successor to the founders of AA. Speaking for cofounder doctor Bob and for AA's old timers everywhere, I made the delivery of the 3 legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous to our whole society and its representative conference.

From that time, AA went on its own to serve God's purpose for so long as it was destined under his providence to endure. So concept 1 says the final responsibility and the ultimate authority for AA World Services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship. And today, I have a responsibility, I believe, to every one of those 5,000 people in attendance at that meeting in Saint Louis, to what concept 1 tells me, that I have a responsibility that my, that the AA groups today hold the ultimate responsibility and the final authority for our world services. So what does that mean? And I, I want to go back and just do a little bit of of history about, what brought this about, what brought this about in 1955.

And the reason I want to do that, and I it's okay if you don't if you stop listening. I don't because not everybody not everybody, likes to get likes to hear about the history. But, Bob mentioned this morning, about a trustee that that, who is no longer with us that, is from our area, Don Bruner. And, he used to when I was DCM of District 7, he used to sit in our district meetings, and I was always so nervous when he was there, because I was always so afraid I was gonna do something wrong. I was like, oh, my gosh.

Don's gonna talk to me now. And when he would start coming out to me, I'm going, oh my gosh, what did I do now? And, he would always say, it's really hard to know where we're going if we don't know where we've come from. And part of, I believe, part of really being a good, trusted servant in Alcoholic Synonymous is to know where we came from, because so much of our we have such a rich history and and everything, all everything that we have, our steps, our traditions, and our concepts were all written, mainly our steps and our traditions, were all written out of experience, you know, that of of what happened. And, you know, of course, as alcoholics, we always try to reinvent the wheel.

I mean, I do too. I want my mark on everything sometimes, you know. But I I have to remember that there's a reason. There's a reason for what we have today and why we have it. And that I need to be a guardian of that.

And so, back in 1938, doctor Bob and Bill, started putting together so this was a long time ago. This was you know, AA wasn't very old then. They started to put putting together some kind of a structure, and they did this out of response to the growth that was happening in our fellowship, and they saw that there was a need for some type of structure to be able to communicate to the groups that were forming, because there were groups popping up all over the place. And they were they were starting to have problems. You know?

I mean, remember when they asked for groups to write in what their membership requirements were for the group? If we had adopted all of those requirements, well, I wouldn't be here. I mean, you know, I they're they're just I think one of the requirements was no fallen women. You know? I mean so there would be a lot of, you know, there were just a bunch of requirements and we wouldn't be we wouldn't a lot of us wouldn't be here today if we had put all of those into place.

So in 1948, they created a trusteeship for AA and they called it the Alcoholic Foundation and that was renamed, the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous back in 1954. And this trusteeship was designed to maintain the special services for AA as a whole that could not be done by any single group or any AA member alone. We can't you know, we couldn't there are lots of things that we can't do as individuals or that we can't do as a group. And so this was designed this trusteeship was designed to maintain the special services for AA as a whole. Services like the writing of uniform AA literature.

And I mentioned this morning that, you know, I served on the, literature committee when I was delegate. And I'll tell you what, it when you're when you're changing a piece of literature, it is not an easy task because you you really have to look at is it the message of Alcoholics Anonymous? I mean, our literature needs to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it needs to be consistent. And when we when we pull apart our literature and make changes here and make changes there, there's no consistency. And pretty soon, you've gotta and that's what happened to our our group pamphlet.

We added stuff over the years that pretty soon there was no no flow to it. I mean and so, you you know, the writing of uniform AA literature and to really be able to to have the fellowship have an input in what we say in our literature, that it's our message. It's not the literature committee's message. It's not the trustee's message. It's our message.

A sound public relations policy and some means of responding to the large number of inquiries that were coming in, not only nationally, but internationally. Publicity, like the, Saturday Evening Post article and and just daily articles that were appearing in local newspapers. We needed to have some kind of cohesiveness to be able to respond to those things. They also saw the need for new groups to get information that would benefit from the experience of older groups. That's why a lot of groups, when they have stuff going on, sometimes it's suggested that you call the general service office.

They will never tell you, well, this is what you should do. What they will say is, well, this is what a number of other groups have done. You might find it helpful. There was talk of the need for a monthly magazine, which is now The Grapevine. The Grapevine has been published every single month for the past 61 years.

And the need for translations of literature into other languages, alcoholic foundation, things were going pretty smoothly. We had this trusteeship. We had Alcoholic Foundation, things were going pretty smoothly. We had this trusteeship. We had some people, you know, active helping out.

The aid traditions had been written and adopted, after much, much grumbling. You know, Bill Bill used the grapevine as a forum to talk about the traditions. And, you know, people would ask Bill to come to their group and speak, and and he writes about this. He said, you know, they would say to him, you know, Bill, we asked you to come and tell your story. We don't wanna hear anything about those damn traditions.

And and but he knew he had a vision. He had leadership. He had a vision and he knew that we needed something to safeguard a bunch of drunks like us. Membership in AA had jumped in 1950 from 50 to a 100000, and unity was being established. However, there's always a however or a but or if only, there was a growing concern about what would happen if the services that had been established would break down.

What would happen if something if the office would go under? And what would happen if we didn't have the trusteeship to help make those decisions that the groups and individuals couldn't make alone? 1,000 would go and helped. So the question was what further, precautions could we take that would definitely guard us against a collapse like that? And of course, there were many AA members who believed that nothing could possibly happen to our society because God was protecting AA.

And many said, why change? Things are going fine. We don't we don't need to have a change. But in 1948, an event took place that really, really scared everybody, and that was that doctor Bob became fatally ill. And this made the facts much more apparent that the only link between and most of the groups did not know these trustees.

Our founders did. Our people who worked at the office did, but the groups didn't. So what was our link between these unknown trustees and the groups? The only link between them was doctor Bob and Bill. And so the trustees relied on doctor Bob and Bill for advice.

They never went to the groups. And so the groups would look to Bob, and then the the groups would look to doctor Bob and Bill for help. So there there was, like, there's there was, like, a gap in between I mean, when if we knew with doctor Bob going, what would happen? So this really made, AA at that time totally dependent on our cofounders to function. And, but the fact had to be faced, that that our cofounders were not gonna live forever.

And so, when they were gone, who would advise the trustees? Who would link the board to the thousands of groups that were starting to form? Who would do that? And the answer was the General Service Conference and that the AA groups had to take the final responsibility for our world services. We as AA members had to step up to the plate and take responsibility for the well-being of our fellowship.

We could not rely on our cofounders and our trustees to do that. So exactly, you know, how do we do that? And we do that through our trusted servants. That's that's what it means to be a trusted servant. We do that through our trusted servant, through through our GSRs, through our district committee members, through our delegate.

How will the voice of my group be heard? And how will I be able to step up to the plate and take responsibility for the well-being of the fellowship that saved my life if I don't have someone to represent it at district meetings and area meetings in West in our West Central region and the conference. And so the we we developed the structure and we the first General Service Conference was held in 1951, and I believe it was held in Cleveland. Is that right? It's held in Cleveland.

And we really had to test the main principle of tradition too. The AA groups are to be the final authority. Their leaders are to be trusted servants with delegated responsibilities only. And we really had to look at that that tradition too. And if you look at, concept I mean, when when Sonia was reading the concepts, I had never heard this before today, how many times the traditions are mentioned in these concepts.

And tradition 2 is mentioned a lot in concept 1, because it really had to take that tradition and and we had it had we had to look at tradition too on more than just a group level. We had to look at it on a worldwide level. And it had to be determined if the A groups could and would assume the ultimate responsibility for our world service operations. And it took until 1955, so the first conference was in 51, it took until 55 for us to be convinced that tradition 2 tradition 2 was for everybody, not just the AA group. And so on that day, that 3rd day of July in 1955, AA became of age.

We knew that our General Service Conference was going to work and that it was going to represent the conscience of AA worldwide. I wish I wish that I could tell you today that I truly believe that the conference represents the conscience of AA Worldwide. I wish I could tell you that with 100% a surety. And I say that because I see that there are so many groups that are not being represented at our service functions where serious matters are being discussed. And I see a breakdown in our group conscience.

I you know, I I we were talking about this earlier today about, you know, I I feel that sometimes this comes up a lot. I get the sense sometimes that there are some in AA that don't trust the groups to make decisions because, many many of us are showing that we we don't want to, and we'd rather not get involved. And then there are all those that say, you know, that the trustees have too much power and don't bring things to the fellowship. So it's kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg? You know, I I I say it, you know, I I think it's time that we start having more of a stronger effort, here, right here, in our districts and in our area, that we we get our act together out here in in AA and that we start reaching the groups.

Because if we don't do it, who will? You know, if our districts are too big and we can't communicate them, we should make smaller ones. You know, we should like like Bob was talking about, what a great idea. I mean, I'm gonna listen to this tape again and again because, when he was talking about how his group doesn't just have a meeting, You know? A group is more than than just having a meeting from 7 to 8 o'clock.

It's about being, an a group 247. And that they meet, on a night when their meeting doesn't meet and they have dinner and they go and they go to another group. And they do that together and and, you know, try to carry the message together. And, it's stuff like that, that that I think is just so important in, how we can communicate in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I talked about the LCM thing and how that was so helpful to District 7, back in the nineties and how it helped us to restructure because we made those districts smaller.

You know, that, that LCM information is in our service manual today because of the efforts of our area. You know, be I think Dennis, was our delegate then then and, put together an article and and it was, or put together some information to to have that be a part of an option in our, service manual as a way that districts could redistrict and that we could, we could handle the growth in Alcoholics Anonymous and still be able to communicate. There were a couple of other positive actions that I wanna talk about in, the district that really helped. And and all of this, really, I mean, you're probably thinking, okay, now what does this have to do with what does this mean to be a trusted servant? I think it all has something to do with being a trusted servant.

We established a workshop committee, and we held more workshops around the district. We got con we got people communicating with each other or better communication. We started talking about stuff that mattered in AA, like we're doing here today. You know, we organized a 3rd legacy committee And, this this group had, we went out to and contacted groups that had no GSRs in the district and that were not connected to AA as a whole and ask if we could have 30 minutes after their meeting, 30 minutes after their meeting to show a video and talk a little bit about the district and our 3 legacies. And it amazed me.

I I was part of that committee and it amazed me. That was like in the late eighties, the early nineties. It amazed me how many people didn't even know what our 3 legacies of AA were or what a district was. But we had a good response to that. So I I think those are just some of the types of things that we can talk about and start implementing in our, our districts and our groups.

You know, I have to remember and I, and I have to be reminded, that my life and my recovery are built around the 12 steps and the 12 traditions and the 12 concepts, just like every other AA member. And and that the penalty for not adhering to these principles, for me personally, is death. And that the penalty for my group is that it will ultimately fall apart. If we're not connected to the whole and we're not carrying the message to the alcoholic to the alcoholic who still suffers, it will it will fall apart. You know, I know that that most members of Alcoholics Anonymous, love our fellowship as much as I do and, that many just don't know that there's more beyond the walls of their group.

You know, we're pretty much I mean, this is pretty much the choir here today. But, you know, there's a lot of groups out there that just don't know. It's not it's not I I'm not saying bad anything bad or pointing fingers. They just don't know. And that's my responsibility, not to be afraid to talk about general service and the structure that keeps our fellowship together.

And I can't do that if I don't know about it and I don't understand it. So that jumps me to concept 9. And concept 9 reads, good service leaders, together with sound and appropriate methods of choosing them, are at all levels indispensable for our future functioning and safety. The primary world service leadership, once exercised by the founders of AA, must necessarily be assumed by the trustees of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. However, keep in mind, the groups still have I'm adding this.

K? The groups still have the final responsibility and ultimate authority for AA World Services through the voice of their group conscience. So I I really I like the first sentence of this concept. It says, no matter how carefully we design our service structure of principles and relationships, no matter how well we apportion authority and responsibility, the operating results of our structure can be no better than the personal performance of those who must man it and make it work. What I'd like to do is I I've picked out I used to keep this I used to keep my service manual in the in the desk, bottom, desk drawer of my office, when I was, working for a company, in downtown Minneapolis.

And I I used to I used to have lots of meetings with clients, and and I used to keep this in in the bottom drawer. And when I would go into those meetings, before I would go into those meetings, I would read the portion in concept 9 on leadership. And I would pick out the stuff that I thought was pertinent and helpful to me just just as a a business person. And I I just wanna share some of the qualities that I think, are important to being a good trusted servant that are found in this, and then I'm gonna shut up. I and Niles read about this this morning, when he talked about leadership and he read about what it means to be a good leader in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, I pulled out some of the the things that he read, but there's a lot more in here, in concept 9 that talks about what we can do to be better trusted servants and be better leaders in Alcoholics Anonymous. Do not drive by mandate. Talked about that. Lead by example. Act for us, but don't boss us.

Mandate means a command or an order. And you know how we handle that. Example means one who serves as a pattern to be imitated or not to be imitated. The other thing is help initiate plans, policies and ideas for the improvement of our fellowship and services. But in new and important matters, consult widely before decisions and actions.

Always remember that good plans and ideas can come from anybody, anywhere and give credit to the source. Never pass the buck. Make decisions, put them into into action, provided that action is within adherence to my defined authority and responsibility and within adherence to the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Do not be afraid to speak to the minority when something vital is at stake. Sometimes, you know, we need to take a stand against the storm if there are specific good reasons to do so.

And that's why we have the minority opinion. And be careful that I don't become prideful, This is a good one for me. And behave in a manner of having it my way or no way. The majority prevails regardless of whether I agree or not. I have to remember principles before personalities, and that doesn't mean yours.

It means mine, my personality. Remember that sometimes even prideful and angry people can be right. Be willing to give and take. Compromise cheerfully. We were talking about that this morning.

I've never compromised cheerfully. I mean, I'm learning how to do it, but I don't do it gracefully. And it's not all or nothing. And compromise, like it says, is not always necessary when my convictions are based on fact. And then I need to stand steadfast.

If I have all the info, information, and I can back it up with fact, then I have a responsibility to speak up. Be open to constructive critics. This is a good one. They are my friends. Listen to them carefully with an open mind and be willing to modify my opinion or change it if needed.

But be willing to disagree with reason if that is needed. Remember, I don't have to be right. If I am wrong, take my inventory and admit my wrongs. Develop patience and listen to what is being said whether I agree with it or not. Don't be afraid of vision.

Use the resources around me to estimate the future. Look at the past experiences and and and then, if there's something that might work, try to help implement it and talk to people about about that. Look at a short and long term look at the short and long term effects. Continue to strive for tolerance, responsibility, flexibility and vision. Bill writes in concept in the concept, maybe this seems like an attempt to stake out a specially privileged and superior type of AA member.

I mean, all of those qualities are wonderful, but but it really is he says it really is not so. We simply are recognizing that our talents vary greatly in Alcoholics Anonymous. So when we talk about AA leadership, we only declare that we ought to select that leadership on the basis of obtaining the best talent we can find. And I I just wanna, end on at first of all, one one experience and then I wanna ask you some questions. It recently came to my attention when it talks about the best leadership that we can find.