Committee No. 1
Question
2:
“Would
the Fellowship ask itself the question: “Are there too many
meetings and not enough groups?”
Background
Pamphlet
‘The AA Group’
The
Home Group: Heartbeat of AA
Consider
the contribution to the carrying of the message, financial and
practical implications when deliberating each question.”
Extract:
“To
clarify my comment in my post on page one, (Sun Jan 08) regarding the
amalgamation of local meetings into groups as geographical units
named by town, village, or urban district. This is not to suggest
that small meetings are amalgamated into large meetings, but that
these meetings are served by a district committee. This is in effect
sub-division of intergroups into district committees. I give the
following reasons for this. Experience appears to show that:
“…a
group should not get too large—that it begins to lose a little of
its effectiveness when it does.” (Extract from Dr. Bob and the Good
Old Timers page 287).
The
reason for the loss of effectiveness in a large group appears to be
the result of an imbalance in the participation of the two
personality extremes which Bill W described as the “promoters”
and “conservatives”. In a large group the naturally reserved “do
nothing” conservatives can evade participation by becoming
spectators; while “do everything” promoters do most of the
talking, then group together to organize and power drive. Effective
AA policy in the past has been achieved through the inclusion of, and
drawing together of a balanced compromise between the extreme
opinions of both the promoters and conservatives.
“Today
we can see that the conservatives would have rotted us by doing
nothing. On the other hand, the promoters would have surely ruined us
by doing everything.” (Bill W. The Language of the Heart page 219;
AA Grapevine November 1947)
The
lack of a locally co-ordinated structure between large intergroup
assemblies and meetings allows both these personality extremes to
come to the fore. I think there is a pattern developing reminiscent
of the chaos and unsound public relations of the 1940s. The answer to
this problem, at least in part, appears to be sub-dividing large
intergroups into local district committees. The formation of local
committees to co-ordinate services brought together cohesive and
effective functioning of groups in the 1940s and there appears to be
no reason why the same effect would not be achieved today.
Going
on the local intergroup archive material in my post on page one (Fri
Jan 21), whereby there were 10 GSRs in my intergroup assembly in
1990; it appears to me that an effective operating unit size for an
intergroup would be an assembly of GSRs representing around 10
subdivisions. It would appear that effective geographical
sub-divisions of the intergroup would be of local district committees
serving a unit size of between one and ten meetings. Possibly there
could be some proportional representation at the intergroup assembly,
for example, groups/district committees comprising of 1-5 meetings
represented by one GSR, and groups/districts committees comprising of
5-10 meetings represented by two GSRs.
The
effective operating unit size of meetings in my view, appears to be a
number of around 15-25 people. If meetings are much smaller than this
then they tend not to be financially viable to make contributions to
support the service structure. They can be dominated by one or two
strong personalities, or attract cliques of certain personality
types. If meetings are much larger than this, then conservatives
become non participating spectators while promoters organize the both
meeting and the group against the spirit of Tradition Nine.
More
information of the “promoters” and “conservatives” can be
found in the following articles by Bill W:
“Tradition
Nine” The Language of the Heart pp 88-89
“The Book is Born” The Language of the Heart pp 9-12
“Respecting Money” The Language of the Heart pp 218-221”
Cheerio
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
