Hello Area 46!
Our pre-conference assembly is fast approaching and there is much work to be done to make sure Eloy, our Area 46 Delegate, is prepared for the 73rd General Service Conference (GSC). You can help prepare him. Yes, you!
Ways You Can Help Prepare Your Delegate for the GSC
- Attend your district meeting and discuss the agenda item assigned to your district.
- Attend your group conscience and talk about any agenda items important to your group.
- Talk to your GSR about any agenda items that are important to you.
- Attend the Pre-conference assembly (March 25-26)
- Attend the Saturday night Delegate session to discuss specific agenda items.
- There is a specific time set aside on Sunday morning for GSRs to share their group’s conscience on specific agenda items.
Life of a Conference Agenda Item – Virtual Workshop
Join myself and Eloy on Saturday, March 4 at 2 PM for an online workshop on how an agenda item becomes an agenda item. We will discuss who can submit a proposed agenda item, how to submit them, how items make it to the final agenda and the possible outcomes of agenda items. The workshop will be an hour. It will be recorded for DCM’s for audio playback at their district meetings. A PDF version of the presentation will posted on the service site after the workshop.
Removing Information Silos
The upside-down triangle is completely reliant on communication between each of the levels of service. Often times, those of us in service operate in information silos. Our program is a “we” program. It is a “we” program in every aspect of our Three Legacies: Recovery, Unity and Service. All service work in A.A. exists to make twelfth step work possible.
Photo credit: Doc Searls.
When we work together, we can accomplish so much more than we can on our own. If you are not doing so already, I strongly encourage you to collaborate with other trusted servants while serving in your current service role.
Some examples of powerful collaboration include area/district committees working together such as Public Information and Cooperation with the Professional Community; Corrections, Bridge the Gap and Treatment Facilities. Another example of collaboration is the Technology Committee working with the host district to produce hybrid assemblies. Yet another is District 6 and District 17 working together to start an online bilingual A.A. meeting.
My challenge to you – find a way to start a new collaboration with another trusted servant that helps carry the message to the still suffering alcoholic. Our fellowship and countless newcomers may benefit from your collaborative effort.
Leadership Note from Bill W:
I am reading the book Our Great Responsibility with my service sponsor. The book includes 16 talks Bill W. gave at the General Service Conference. We just read his 1966 talk. The very last part of the chapter really struck me as very relevant today when thinking about “principles before personalities.”
“You are not all here because you are the acme of meekness. You are here because you are individuals, and each of you has a personality. But the difference between these personalities here and so many in the world around us is this: we are operating in a frame of principles, truthful enough under God’s grace to cause us to survive, to live, to love and to grow.
So, we must leave room for something called leadership. Let us never be hasty to say that when somebody is loudly in the minority that they are necessarily wrong because they belong to the cult of personality. Let us not say because we try to persuade each other that we are out of order. After all, this the way of democracy. This is the way of the group conscience; this is the way of trusted servants. This mean debate. The means the exercise of such gifts as each has. This sort of exercise of personality within the framework of the principles is the very essence of our life and growth. This we know from thirty years of experience. So let us trust our servants and let us trust each other.”
--Our Great Responsibility, pp 56-57. Excerpt from Bill W.’s 1966 talk at the General Service Conference titled: “Personality in a Framework of Principles”