AA myths and misconceptions at the Unity and Service conference in Concord, CA August 18th 2017 N. from Atlanta, GA speaking on the topic of 12 concepts at the Unity and Service conference in Concord, CA

At this time, please help me welcome this morning speaker Billy N from Buford, GA with a presentation of the 12 concepts.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm Billy. I'm an alcoholic.

My Home group is the early morning A a literature discussion meeting in Atlanta, GA 730 every morning if you're around. So I have a big exciting topic this morning,

the 12 concepts. So a couple of things. I want to say

I am not some rigid person who thinks that every person in a A needs to study and know the concepts. I think they need to know they exist. I think they need to know that they're out there. And I say that because

and let's just I have till 10:00, right? Yesterday there was some. So

as I travel around Alcoholics Anonymous

and I've been sober in a a a little while, I've noticed a pervasive problem.

I'm not some kind of conspiracy theorist of any kind,

but you can help

but apply certain principles between legacies.

Our Big Book is very clear that you can't fix something unless you know what's wrong.

That is pretty much the basis of the first couple of chapters of the Big book, that until you know what's wrong with you, it is very hard to fix you.

One of the main points of the fourth step,

based on how it's broken down in the big book,

is that the individual resentments and other stuff that you list there

isn't. It's not really about those things because there's a line that says let's get down the causes and conditions.

And so you can help but be alive and notice certain causes and conditions and certain things that you notice in the fellowship.

So for me, and this is what I want to stress forward,

if there's someone here who's never been through the Big Book, with someone who's been through the Big Book,

then I would hope that you start to do that and find someone you're comfortable doing that with.

If there is someone here who has been through the Big Book

and has never been through the concepts, I want to throw out a big warning.

If you have not been through the traditions with someone who has been through the traditions, do not go through the concepts.

Some people say, you know, we get so up in arms about

this a, a group that a, a group, this meeting, that meeting. It's crazy. There's no solution. I could go on and on. Of all the things I hear.

But the truth is,

it is not the people in my experience

who are armed with none of the facts, meaning none of the three legacies who are causing us the most trouble in our fellowship.

It is the people who are armed with the first legacy facts and stop.

They have a spiritual experience as a result of the 12 steps and they're on fire. I mean, I'm sure everybody sitting in this room has stories of when they became on fire

and what they were like when they were on fire and what other people had to deal with when they were on fire, right? I mean, I think everybody has those stories of, you know, what it was like when you visited other groups when you were on fire,

you know, to let them know that they had a, a light and if they'd like something a little bit more substantial, they could come to their group right where they work. The program that the first hundred had out of the 1st 164, the big book. I mean, I know all the catchphrases and words and go on,

but that's what's causing us our trouble inside the Fellowship.

Its people armed with one legacy recovery

who have no guidelines about what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous

and more importantly, what we don't do.

And people ask me, what can we do about that?

There is something that all active members can do about that.

There is a very important thing all active members can do.

If you go to any big book retreat, any big book workshop, any Fellowship of the Spirit, go to the original one in Colorado. Go wherever you want. Any big book workshop,

pretty much. One of the things is a lot of things I could throw up on a board and say let's play Big Book Weekend bingo.

I'm going to list a couple of words and phrases and we'll see how many are said that weekend, right? I'm pretty sure I could be 80% or better, right?

I want the program the first hundred. Had anyone who's heard me speak before, I would be more like, well, which one of the first 100?

Are you implying that all first hundred stayed sober permanently forever? Or are you saying maybe you wanted to do a little bit more research and you want #73

But one of the things you'll always hear is that, you know, one of the great things about most big book weekends I've been to is how good they are about Step 12 and working with others in that chapter and, and working with a new prospect and the clear cut directions about are you wasting too much time? And are you depriving that from someone else who needs your help? And

but one of the lines that you'll always hear at those big book workshops is

you have to ask the person who has asked for your help.

Are you willing to go to any

one of the most important questions in Alcoholics Anonymous? Are you willing to go to any

to keep your sobriety?

And so for me, I just have to redefine what any Lentz means. But that can only be done if the person who's being asked to take someone through the Big book

defines for that new person. What does any Lent mean,

if any? Lens means that as soon as you're finished with the 1st 64 pages and have gone through all 12 steps means that you should just immediately go on fire and do what I just described going to the whole a world.

I think we have to add to the description of any lens

that I can only agree to take someone through the big book if it includes that. Once we are done with that, we will go through the 12 and 12 and the 12 traditions. I will not say you have to have a service manual. I will not say you even ever have to own one

or even go through the concepts,

but I will say that the traditions are not optional

and I already heard someone you know jump to my term. But I'll steal her term

I did in the first place.

But the term legacy skipping is an accurate description or phrase of what I'm describing

as you go around Alcoholics Anonymous assemblies and districts.

I think one of the reasons we have some issues in Alcoholics Anonymous today

is that I have been to many assemblies. Last time I counted over 80 of the 90 something areas

at one time or another. In the last almost 3 decades I've been to that many assemblies

and some assemblies. I've been to many more,

but we seem to do a good job of talking about the concepts at assemblies and districts,

but we don't seem to do a good job of talking about the traditions.

And every two years we get a new group of GSR,

and if we're lucky, some of them have a sponsor and have been through the big book

and maybe they're going to Start learning about the concepts. Every assembly seems to have what they call AGSR workshop or a past delegate, who is often a separate room with the new GSRS. But it always seems to be focused on the structure or the concepts. And I think one of the things we need to do in Alcoholics Anonymous is bring the traditions back to our structure,

is bring the traditions back to our assemblies in our districts. Because you can't interpret the tradition, the concepts,

if you don't have a foundation in the traditions. It's just impossible

If a math equation is 2 + 2 = 4. If you remove one of the twos, you can't get to four.

If there are 24 spiritual principles between the traditions and the steps,

and then another 12 with the concepts,

you can't teach someone how to get to 36. If you're skipping the middle 12, it's it's impossible. And so I would stress here that while I am glad that this many people show up to hear about the concepts, what I would stress is if you've never been through the traditions, with someone who's been through the traditions, that before you decide to become an expert on the concepts

that you get armed with the facts of the tradition.

So that being said, let's talk a little bit before I get to concept one. And I only have a short amount of time to go through at a high level these concepts. But

let's talk about how we got here.

If you go to a big book workshop, they'll also tell you that,

you know, they make 1935 to 1945 seem like Shangri-La, an Alcoholics Anonymous, right? That it was the greatest time ever and everybody stayed permanently sober. And it's just not true.

I can't stress enough

in my own opinion

that if you have decided when you leave here today, you have never been through the traditions or the concepts that

I'm hoping that probably you have a 12:00 and 12:00. I would say that you should get an AA comes of age. And while you're going through the traditions with someone who's been through the traditions, read a comes of age.

Because Bill describes 1935 to 1945 as the flying blind period, he does not describe it as Shangri-La.

In fact, when you look up to 194647,

you can become a member of the Digital Archives at the Grapevine at www.aagrapevine.org.

If you join the digital archives, if you put in the words traditions, the first things that will pop up will be the original 12 essays that Bill wrote about these spiritual principles. The principles to guarantee A A's future they described as

How did Bill get there? What really happened between 1935 and 1961? Let's call it.

But really what really happened in 55 becomes important

is that Bill

had a lot of things going on in his mind

in his life. He was after Doctor Bob passed away. He was the end all be all for all. A a problems.

You know, I even go to sometimes trinket, drunk, junk, whatever else you want to call them areas of conferences and you'll see people. I have a Sandy Bee saying

wristband, but you'll see a wristband that says what would Bill do, right? I mean, I see them being sold, but that's really how it was at that time.

And

if you read the book, it's not an A A book. But I'm not afraid to read not A A books

besides Not God, which is one of my favorites. There's also a a book called

The Soul of Sponsorship, I believe it's called. It's the relationship between Father Ed Dowling and Bill W where it really goes into describing because what we hear in a A

is that Build did this miraculous thing in 1955 and gave over control of the fellowship to the groups.

But if you read the relationship between Father Dowling and Bill,

you will see that Father Dowling was able to get Bill to realize that as long as he was the end all be all, he would never get the freedom promised in Alcoholics Anonymous. That as long as it all rested on his shoulders, he would never be one among many. Now, Bill, probably no one lost more individual freedom

in their life as a result of being an A A member than Bill

couldn't walk away from it.

Everybody knew who he was,

but Father Dowling was able to convince him that he couldn't be the end all be all on a a policy.

So around 194546,

Bill's getting all kinds of letters to the office,

letters that started out with Dear Bill.

Everything is great at our group.

Couldn't be going better. Lots of people, lots of newcomers

were bringing meetings into the local jail and hospital detox. The only problem we have is this group across the street. You won't believe what's going on there.

And a couple of weeks later, Bill would get another letter from the group across the street. And guess what? They were on fire. They had lots of newcomers. They were bringing meetings to the county jail, into the hospital detox. And their only problem was this group across the street. They didn't understand how anyone was staying sober there. And Bill in the 40s realized

that Alcoholics don't really operate well without shoulders of a road. Let's call it

that. Alcoholics need a shoulder,

and after the shoulder, they need a little gravel.

Like the shoulder is not good enough for people like us, right? We get into the shoulder. We think they meant for us to use this shoulder. That's why they paved it.

So we have gravel

to wake you up that you've now left the shoulder. You're on the way to leaving the reservation, right? Bill was a master at realizing that we needed some shoulders, some guideposts.

And if you read, the great thing about reading a comes of age as you're going through the traditions is that

you will realize the traditions didn't materialize out of Bill's head.

My favorite name of the traditions is The 12 Worst Mistakes of Alcoholics Anonymous between 1935 and 1945. Bill was able to take every problem

and he was able to drop him in 12 buckets.

Many of those mistakes his, especially in the last two, anonymity, but many of those mistakes were his own.

And so Bill decided to put pen to paper. And the traditions were not eagerly adopted by the Fellowship.

There are records, there are letters in the archives where Bill would be invited to speak and they would add a little PS on the letter. By the way, we only want to hear your story. Don't talk about those 12 tradition things, you know,

but the 12 traditions get adopted. And the reason I talked about the A, a digital archives on the Grapevine website is because I love those original 12 essays.

They're almost, they're probably 95% of what's in the 12:00 and 12:00,

but obviously by the time a book was published, it was edited a little. Those 12 essays are very raw, and there's a message weave through those essays that I don't find

as well in the 12 and 12, which is the reason for the traditions

is that we are such broken people who don't operate well with other people that we need to make sure that that door is open today and tomorrow like it was when we arrived. That's what we owe the future of Alcoholics Anonymous. We owe them that door,

we owe them a welcome once they come in that door,

but if we keep going down the path we're on, that door is starting to close. So the traditions

come into a A and in 1950, at the first International Convention in Cleveland where Doctor Bob gave his last message, they're adopted.

Go to 1955 and that's the term comes of age in Saint Louis

and that's where we run into the conference charter. It's really hard to talk about the tradition, the concepts. And like I said, if you gave me 6 hours, I'll give you much more than you ever and you'll be sick over what I have to say about the concepts right today. I'll be able to give you a few minutes on each, but you can't talk about the concepts without the charter.

The charter is basically the Declaration of Independence of the groups of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't care about the politics involved, that's an outside issue. But as an example, a long time ago there were a bunch of colonies in this country who broke off from another country.

They call that a couple of things, but the three probably most important documents would be the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the US Constitution.

Inside Alcoholics Anonymous up until Saint Louis, a small group of people predominantly in New York were the end all be all of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was Bill and a hand-picked board of trustees

in 1955, when then conference charter was adopted,

the groups took over control of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometimes I don't think we give that enough significant thought.

It didn't say the trustees were in charge of Alcoholics Anonymous. It didn't even say the general service conference was the end all be all. It said the groups

and what that charter really is, is a spiritual handshake between the groups of Alcoholics Anonymous

and the board of trustees, the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that spiritual handshake says

that while the trustees are the legal owners of Alcoholics Anonymous, the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous AWS the Grapevine

that the groups

are the spiritual owners

and that the groups always supersede.

Now there's a couple of carve outs in certain concepts and the bylaws of the General Service Board

when you go through the concepts that you can find out, but

the groups were supposed to be at the top.

And

when you look what happened between 55 and the early 60s, Bill decided to write the concepts

and the concepts are additional shoulders of the road, additional guideposts to make sure that as we're carrying out these services,

we're doing it the way we were supposed to inside our 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. But that conference charter, most people don't now I realize it painfully. I'm sure Paul realizes it painfully. Sometimes people would ask me what's it like being chair of a, a world services? And I would say, well,

you know, that upside down triangle with the point at the bottom, it's like waking up every morning with that stuck in your head.

That's how painful some days are.

That's truthfully how it is,

and a lot of people don't realize the authority given to our boards

and what our boards need from that authority to carry out the work every single day, 365 days a year.

Even when I hear people get really upset about things

at a forum at an assembly somewhere else,

the difference between them and the people that are working at the office and the and the people that are on the board is it just don't get to leave the forum.

Tomorrow morning I'll be on another conference call with some trustees committee and maybe our auditor and maybe at the end of the week, our legal team about God knows what problem that just came down the road. And sometimes listen, Bill Wilson was the board's largest critic. That's a fact proven by our archives.

Bill just didn't give it over

and turn his back.

Bill had a lot of discussions with the board, many of them be memorialized in writing, and was not afraid to speak up when he thought they would go in the wrong direction.

But it's important to understand that relationship where the legal and spiritual meet.

Now I'll quickly talk about advisory actions of the conference, which are binding on the General Service Board.

If 2/3 of the conference votes and it's passed by the conference, it's binding.

The service manual actually says that if a majority of conference delegates votes a certain way that it should be a strong suggestion to the general service board. To me, that is a problem in our structure right now. We do not, we do not give majority votes at the conference enough credit. We almost just say it failed.

A majority vote at the conference should not be in a bucket of it just failed.

It should be in a bucket of passed by a majority

but did not reach 2/3.

The last important vote I saw about that was a floor action,

and it's not listed that way, so I'm not going to go on that tangent here, but I would just say we we have to honor the service manual. If we don't mean it, we should take it out of the book. That's always my view of guidelines.

When we start ignoring what's in writing, it sets a precedent

like it becomes optional.

And what I've noticed in Alcoholics Anonymous is we like the easier, softer way, so it's much easier to ignore

and let people think it's optional. Then they go through the proper channels to change something.

So Bill creates these 12 concepts for World Service.

The first one, the final responsibility and ultimate authority for a World Services, should always reside in the collective conscious of our whole fellowship.

That's basically what the conference charter says

that at the end of the day the AA groups.

Now I will say this,

I do think as we go on in the next 20-30, forty 50 years,

we're going to have to really take a look at what do we mean by the groups

who do we serve?

Do we serve the groups who have a GSR

and who contribute and are part of our structure,

or are we in office that just serves everybody who calls themselves a A and gets a group number?

Because at the end of the day, it's a math problem.

It comes down to economics.

If only 40% of the groups are participating in contributing,

but you're serving another 60%,

how can you make that work?

If you have a house with 10 roommates and only four pay rent,

but you allow the other six to live there and you provide them services,

are you ever going to be right side up when it comes to being fully self supporting like our 7th tradition says?

But for now, that's a discussion for another day. But I do want to stress that the first concept. I also want to say I should have said this before I said this.

The most recent least read page of a a literature in my experience of even people who read a literature is this page called the Introduction to the concepts. The introduction to the concepts. It is found directly before

concept one.

It is a note from Bill.

It is very, very, very important.

There is a line in here when people say we can never change the structure. That is not true.

We have three boards today. We had four boards. Most people don't know that

we had a board up in Canada for a while of a company that we owned, but today we have the General service board, a World Services in the A Grapevine Inc. But it says here concern has been expressed.

The portrayal of our internal structure might not later harden down into such firm tradition or gospel that necessary changes would be impossible to make.

Nothing could stray further from the intent of these concepts. That is a strong statement. Nothing.

The future advocates of structural change need only make out a strong case for their recommendation, a case to both the trustees in the conference. This is no more than would be required for the transaction and passage of any other important piece of a a business, save for an exception or two. It is noteworthy that the conference charter itself can easily be amended. Bill laid it out there very clearly.

So as I talk a little bit a minute or two more about Concept One, let me just say this.

Here's another pattern that I have noticed in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The General Service Board gets accused of it all the time.

We don't allow things on the agenda at the conference,

but I go to assemblies

and I am amazed that now assemblies, a lot of areas have steering committees or officer meetings

where things need to go through them to get on the floor of an assembly.

And what I have noticed in Alcoholics Anonymous is we've kind of veered away from the groups being in charge.

If a GSR has something that their group feels is important for the area,

they should be able to put it on the floor at their area.

If it fails, it fails. But what I've noticed is we've kind of stolen the Congress model

where it's not about the vote, it's about getting it to the floor. And we've created all this bureaucracy about how to get something to the floor,

and that was never the intent. Read anything an A, a comes of age, anything that Bill wrote. The intent was that if a group had an issue, they should be able to be heard and get a fair hearing.

And so I just throw that out of that concept one, but I want to read it again. The final responsibility and ultimate authority for a World Services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship

concept two, when in 1955 the AA groups confirmed the permanent charter for its General Service Conference, they thereby delegated to the conference complete. I would ask you to look that word up when you're going through this book, but it is the word complete authority for the active maintenance of our world services and thereby made the conference accepting for any change in the 12 traditions or an article 12 of the conference Charter, the actual vote

and effective conscience of our whole society.

I always say I sat next to somebody in Seattle. I was traveling on business in 2003.

I just rotated out as being a delegate and they said to me, I can't believe they changed the big book

now for me who had been in service,

I couldn't believe we were still talking about it in 2000 and 2001. Seemed like the idea came in 1996 that we should have a 4th edition. And every place I went it was all we talked about. But here was an active member who did not know, and they were very upset,

very upset that their favorite story by Doctor Paul that the title was changed. How dare they.

Very upset if you're a third edition variety

alcoholic like I am. Between 1976 and when they published that book in 2002. You grew up with a third edition big book.

If you went to any conference or any international conference and went to a junk drunk junk section, there would be all these magnets about four 49449 this, 449 that, 449 calendars, refrigerator magnets, wristbands,

everything 449 about acceptance. Acceptance is the answer to all your problems and you'll be fine.

I am so glad they changed that page. But that's just me, right?

I come from. I come from a line that believes for a person like me, that page should be ripped out

because the page is 2 before and the page is 2 after. That person describes that action is the answer, that once you accept what an idiot you are, we take action.

But but this woman was upset.

And I say that because

when we have so many groups,

NAA, that don't participate,

you're giving up your say,

you're saying I'm going to let the rest of AA decide what to do and I'm just going to complain about it later. That's what you're effectively saying. And again, I go back, we have so many meetings that aren't groups, these kind of often not connected to the center of Alcoholics Anonymous, to their local district, their local central office or in a group.

Delegated to the conference complete authority.

So when you're going through this someday, just take out a dictionary and and look up complete when someone says

you got to look at what the principle is. If it's a legal issue, the trustees have to respond for sure, but respond

starting litigation is much different than responding to litigation. I've been the chair of AWS twice. Actually.

I was a trustee for four years, took that responsibility very seriously.

My duty to the fellowship spiritually, my duty to the state of New York as a fiduciary of a registered nonprofit in the state of New York, that the attorney general expects them to act in a certain way like they expect every nonprofit. And I'll get to that. When I mentioned Concept 6. Sometimes we think there are special rules for a A we we mold the spiritual and illegal together.

Well, we're a A. I use the driving scenario for that.

There was a time in my sobriety where I believed that if I had a good purpose to drive, like to a meeting, it should override that. I don't currently have a drivers license, right?

I figured that out myself, right? Like

the end justifies the means, and I have a good spiritual end here.

But I learned in First Legacy Recovery

that following the Motor Vehicle Code of the state of New York is part of getting sober.

So the trustees have certain things they need to do. If we get sued, there's not a choice. We have to respond,

but starting litigation is a complete different matter

and that's where it says complete authority

Concept 3

as a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly defined working relation between the groups in the conference, the A a general service board and service corporations, Staffs, committees and executives and thus ensuring their effective leadership. It is suggested that we endow each of these elements of World Service. What a traditional right of decision. I could talk about this for hours, but here is what I'm going to stress to the A a group body,

the most important right of decision that you have as a group

and as a member is who you're sending to the conference. When it comes to complete authority,

how important is it who you're electing to be your GSR?

How important is it as who those GSR's are electing to be the delegate?

Once you elect the delegate, you're locked and loaded for two years.

You can tell that delegate how your area feels about something. A whole bunch of other stuff.

That delegate shows up in New York and they have the right of decision, much like the trustees and the directors on the corporate boards have the right of decision to carry out business during the year. But again, it should be inside parameters.

I don't think sometimes that we take

that right of decision

serious enough when it comes to voting.

Voting is your participation in the right of decision.

You're deciding who should make decisions for you.

And sometimes I think we let that slide a little bit. We just think about, Oh my God, I can't wait. They'll probably have an awesome PowerPoint presentation of all the places they visited in New York and stepping stones and and and and all this stuff when at the end of the day, that stuff is nice, but it's not what the conference is about.

At the end of the day, a delegate's job is to go there, do their best, and come home and adequately report it.

We vest a lot of trust with the right of decision in our trusted servants.

There is something here though.

That I want to read.

I believe

that in the business world, see, business has become a bad word. Naye,

when we think of business, we think of all the criminal business enterprises. And I'm not talking about the ones with family names. I'm talking about the ones with corporate names who we see in the paper and read and watch on the news.

Business is never supposed to be bad.

Business is supposed to be ethical, honest, responsible, and transparent. I'll say that again. Ethical, honest, responsible and transparent.

The end of concept three has a warning for us.

The right of decision should never be made an excuse for failure to render proper reports of all significant actions taken it or never be used as a reason for constantly exceeding a clearly defined authority, nor as an excuse for persistency for persistently failing. Consult those who are entitled to be consulted

before an important decision or action is taken. I don't have time to talk about recent decisions by the General Service Board,

but it is amazing to me that one of the largest and most critical decisions

made by the General Service Board in the entire history of our conference structure was made less than 20 days after last year's conference ended.

The conference costs about $800,000 a year. If anyone doesn't know that, just give or take 7 or 800. All in all, your chips in the middle, travel, parking, trains, planes, food, hotel, everything.

That's a lot of a a money and I'm glad we spend it. I want those 90 something delegates to come to New York and exercise their right of decision and their right of participation.

But how do you make the largest, one of the largest decisions in a a history less than 20 days after the conference ends and you never disclosed or reported to the conference that something like that was going on in the background?

I have a lot of beliefs about that situation, but the one that bothers me the most

is that

even if they were right in doing it,

if I'm at the conference, it is about the same amount of people in front of me as would be at the conference.

It's easy to adjust the conference schedule. Painful, but easy because people have the right of decision to do it.

Why not just get in front of the conference and say we want to give you a heads up?

This important issue has come to us in the last couple of weeks.

We think we're going to have to take action. We don't know what action we're going to, but we think we're going to. And we want you to know that I think if that had happened, a lot of the fallout would have been much less. People might not have been happy with the decision, but they wouldn't have felt like one of the most critical important issues in Alcoholics Anonymous

was kept from what Bill called the permanent Successors to the Founders.

Concept 4. Throughout our conference structure, we ought to remain ought to maintain all responsible levels of traditional writer participation, taking care that each classification of group of our world servants shall be allowed a voting representation in responsible proportion to the responsibility that each may discharge.

That's why we let staff members vote at the General Service Conference once a year.

That's why directors who would not trust ease get to vote.

All trustees vote at the conference.

There's an important note I just want to reference inside the bylaws of the General Service Conference

about how important that week really is.

Look at that door and pretend it's a door going into this room at the Crowne Plaza in New York City.

It has doors exactly like that with the same exit. Sign

the bylaws of the General Service Board

Say that every member of the conference will be referred to as a delegate.

So what that means is when I cross that carpet in the Crowne Plaza,

the last general service conference I attended, I was a trustee, a class BA non trustee, a director on the a World Services board, the current chair of AWS. But when I cross that threshold,

I'm a trustee delegate to the conference. There are area delegates, staff delegates, non trustee director delegates and trustee delegates. I might have some other duties at that conference because I'm a trustee or the

OR the chair of AWS, but inside that room I'm one among equals. That's how important the annual conference is. That's why the right of participation is so important

throughout our World Service structure. Concept 5 says a traditional right of appeal ought to prevail, thus assuring us that minority opinion will be heard and that petitions for redress or personal grievance will be carefully considered.

All I'm going to stress is this. It does not say that every issue needs a minority opinion, because it doesn't. It doesn't say that every issue requires a personal grievance. I would just stress that you should read this section because they use the word grave and look up that word

when something is considered to be in grave error. You can make an appeal to the General Service Conference or the General Service Board,

but if you do it every time, no ones going to take you seriously.

If you are the person who's given the minority every single time and take it from someone who's been in the minority

80% of the time, let it go.

If you want your words to be taken seriously, save them for grave matters. Save them for things that are super important. Let the other stuff go. Believe that is God talking through group conscience. A A is self corrected itself so many times. It's the world champion of self correcting societies I think. Just look at the General Service Conference report of Final actions

and Agendas

and you will see that The agenda while it looks fresh, the topics not so much. They've been to the conference before.

Concept 6. The Conference recognizes that the Charter and bylaws of the General Service Board of Legal Instruments that the Trustees are thereby fully empowered to manage and conduct of all of the World Service affairs of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is further understood that the Conference Charter itself is not a legal document, that it relies instead upon the force of tradition and the power of a purse for its final effectiveness.

My favorite line and all the concepts is in Concept 6.

I will read it. I thought I did. I

Of course

our objective is only a spiritual is always a spiritual one, but this service aim can only be achieved by means of an effective business operation.

I would ask you to look up the word solely.

Solely is defined quite well in the dictionary,

but this service aim can only be achieved by means of an effective business operation.

That means that just saying and doing God's work doesn't mean the money keeps rolling in.

It doesn't mean if you have a good mission, preamble, whatever your God's work is,

it says you have to run a responsible business first.

I mean, I know the trustees get a ton of God knows how much they take.

I know I've been there. The Flack, the criticism,

but it's time to take the mirror in some areas around the country.

It's time for a lot of areas, districts, central offices in a groups to look themselves in a mirror. Because I can tell you what I see. I see where it's readily acceptable to have a deficit budget