Preparing for a Quality Study Group

Our Forthcoming Web Suggestions for 12-Step meetings, Christian Recovery Fellowships, and Recovery Study Groups

Dick B. © 2014 Anonymous. All rights reserved

Shortly we will be posting for your use a page of what you can do to establish a group for study of the Big Book, Steps, Beginner approaches, Christian fellowships, prayer discussions, Bible discussions and A.A. origins, A.A. History, Christian predecessors, Christian upbringing of Bill W. and Dr. Bob, how the first three got sober, what the principles and practices of the Akron AA Christian Fellowship were, how Bill’s “new version” of the program the Twelve Steps left these out, and how the compromise ousting God from the Steps came about in 1939 just before the Big Book went to print.

Some Starting Thoughts

(1)   Select a name and purpose– such as Step Study, Big Book Study, History Study, AA Roots Study, Prayer Guides, Literature Study, Sponsoring the One Who Still Suffers, Meetings for Beginners,

(2)   Gather a small group – AA friends, Fellow Sponsees, Step Students, Big Book Studies,

Literature Study, History Seekers, A.A. Conference-approved books and pamphlets,

Guide books.

(3)   Pick Studious Leaders - Devoted students like Joe McQ. and Charlie P., Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, Jr., and such diligent, prepared “teachers” are needed to lead studies.

(4)   Cover Meeting Needs – Location, officers, dates, times, Format, literature to be used.

Learn and Read Applicable Traditions

Tradition Two – For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

Tradition 3 (the Long Form) Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.

Yield to no Bullying, Attempts to Silence, or Know-it-alls

Groups meet to help themselves and other stay sober and help newcomers to get sober and stay healed. Shout-downs, discourteous claims, and suppression should open the door to another meeting where such conduct does not occur. Vote with your feet!

So you would like to start a recovery group. . . .

So You’d Like to Form a Recovery Group. . . .

Dick B.

This introductory snippet will be brief. And we’d like to have you begin by telling us why you want to form a recovery group, what you are opposed to, what you favor, and your suggestions.

Day in and day out, we receive phone calls in Maui (808 874 4876) or emails (dickb@dickb.com) at our residence.

In which the caller says he wants to start a recovery group and asks what to do.

We have a number of books and guides that can be helpful and often send along some of these to be read by the inquirer. But this is a grass roots series of articles

We will start with several suggestions and questions: (1) What people do you want to be members of the group? AAs or NAs or believers? (2) Are you willing to ask a small group of friends, some folks from your church, some “members” you’ve met in A.A. or in treatment or in prison or in church or at school or at work? (3) Is your purpose to learn how to help those who still suffer? (4) Are you willing to acquire, read, and discuss the tools that truthfully report the facts—the newly reprinted First Edition of the A.A. Big Book, The Co-Founders of A.A. Pamphlet P-53, DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, and The Language of the Heart? (5) Are you beginning this quest because angry at a member, a sponsor, a leader, or motivated by anger with a meeting or a member or a church or at a treatment program, or the fellowship? (6) Are you willing to select as the leader of the group someone who is known for his or her knowledge of the Steps, the Big Book, the real origins of A.A. ideas, the religious ideas that produced A.A., the parts of the Bible like the Book of James, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 that were the heart of the basic ideas of early A.A.? (7) Will you freely read, study, and discuss “non-Conference-approved literature” that helps understanding of A.A., its origins, its co-founders, its original program, and the substantial changes and new version of the program adopted four years after A.A. was founded? (8) Are you willing to start with a small group?

Again! Let us hear your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions before you ask us questions or begin to form your group.