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Source: Eve M – General Service Office and the Twelve Concepts – Date Unknown.mp3 File: eve-m-general-service-office-and-the-twelve-concepts-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:37:44
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And at this time, I'd like to give you Eve M. Greetings to all of you. It's wonderful to be here with you on this occasion of the Fourth State Convention of New York. I had the happy privilege of participating in the first one, which was held in Syracuse, I guess, four summers ago. And it's wonderful to see this kind of attendance here in New York City. You know, we're very backward in New York City. We don't have the fun of conventions. We've never experienced them.
So this is a wonderful opportunity for some of our New York members to get familiar with this marvelous sharing that takes place at these annual get-togethers. And I am indeed very happy to be a part of this one. I must confess, if I had been allowed to select my topic, I don't think that I would have selected the topic that's been given to me. But I will do the best that I can, and I hope you will bear with me, because this has been an experience for me too, to learn something of these concepts of service about which most of us know so very little.
But to start out in a usual AA way, my name is Eve M., and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Hi. I like to put that in the present tense because it reminds me that my sobriety today depends upon how well I use the tools of AA which have been given to me to maintain that sobriety and to recover from the illness of alcoholism. When I came to AA as sick and hopeless alcoholic, I had no idea that I was going to find in this wonderful fellowship everything that I had always been looking for in a bottle.
I found all the faith and the confidence and the hope here in AA, those things of which I had nothing, and that was why I drank. But I had no idea that by practicing this program and that by using these tools that I would again be able to become the kind of person that I had always wanted to be, that I would be able to stand still and say, Thy will be done, that I would be able to hopefully fulfill God's will for me by practicing AA one day at a time.
I'm very grateful that as I went along in the fellowship, it was explained to me that our illness is a threefold one, that it is mental, physical, and spiritual, and that at the same time our recovery program is also a threefold one, recovery, unity, and service. Recovery, of course, are our 12 steps, and I soon found that these steps had to become a meaningful part of my life if I was going to obtain and maintain the kind of sobriety that I saw around me and that I wanted to have for myself.
I learned something of our traditions when I was working in our intergroup office. I learned how important they are as a step to unity, for our living together among ourselves in this group. But it took me a little more time to learn to understand that these traditions also have a personal meaning to me, a personal meaning to me as I practice the AA program, so they become a part of my daily living even as a step dog.
For example, tradition one, our common welfare should come first. That came to mean to me something very important, that I could no longer be special. Rather, that I was a part of a vital whole. Tradition two, that very important one about the only authority is the group conscience and that we have trusted servants to fulfill our needs. And here too I learned that in order to be a part of the group conscience, I must participate.
Tradition three, how grateful all of us are that the only requirement for membership in this wonderful fellowship is a simple desire to recover from a devastating illness. If there were any other requirements than that, I wouldn't have been able to come in. Traditions four, five, and six deal with our purpose and in fulfilling that purpose by assuring that AAs may not be involved with an outside enterprise or any internal dispute.
Tradition seven involves me personally too. For if my budgeted allotment for attending AA all went into the taxis to get to meetings and there was only a quarter left in the basket, I had to come to grips with the fact that I was not assuming my share of responsibility for AA's tradition of self-support.
[00:05:01]
Tradition eight is especially meaningful for me, for it's been my privilege for so long to work in a service job, first within the group and now at general service. And I learned that that isn't enough, that I must maintain my personal AA membership outside the job by 12-step work or attendance at my regular group meetings. In the ninth tradition, the key is the word directly responsible to those they serve.
This responsibility is a two-way street. It is not only the people in the service assignments that have a responsibility in this tradition, but the membership too. We all must necessarily keep ourselves informed and know the needs of service, otherwise tradition nine would become meaningless. In traditions 10 and 11, we all have a responsibility, a personal responsibility. So these are the traditions which involve the good name of our fellowship.
And that beautiful talk by the doctor had just preceded it. She asked us all to get in touch with our doctors, to let them know. They tried to help and we were grateful. That is a way in which we can involve the good name of our AA fellowship, by the active participation in doing such a thing. And finally, we come to learn that this talk tradition has an immense spiritual significance, placing principles before personality.
I used to be kind of tough, and when it got too tough, I was very glad when someone explained to me very simply, don't confuse AA with the people in it. Now the third leg of our triangle, our triangle of recovery, unity, and service, the third side are the broad scopes or concepts of service, and the relationships in our service entities as they are outlined in the Twelve Concepts. Now I'll tell you a little secret.
I thought I'd go to the source for some help on this talk, and I said to Bill, you know, I've got a talk on the Twelve Concepts. He said, do you, honey? I'm glad it's you, not me. That's all there is to it. But it meant that I had to do a pretty intensive review. And you may wonder why I spent so much time on the traditions. But actually, when I reviewed the concepts, it seems that they are really an extension of some of our traditions, especially tradition two.
Let's look at concept number one, which gives the final responsibility and ultimate authority for the whole fellowship for AA World Services to AA's collective content, the content. Now isn't this truly an extension of our second tradition? Or is it any different from the tremendous application of our group conscience and the conduct of our own business affairs? Of course, when the conference, which has become a conscience for all of AA, was first brought up, there were the familiar fears at the start, fears that politics, confusion, expense, and strife would be the result.
But tradition two, like all AA traditions, is the voice of experience. And the main principles of tradition two are crystal clear that the AA groups are to be the final authority. And it would seem apparent the same principles apply to selecting any trusted service, whether it be a secretary or a delegate. You know, the entire world today is witnessing the breakdown of group conscience. It has always been the hope of democratic nations that their citizens would be enlightened enough, moral enough, and responsible enough to manage their own affairs through their chosen representatives.
But in many cases, we now see the inroads of ignorance, apathy, and power-seeking upon democratic systems. The spiritual resources of right purpose and collective intelligence are waning. But throughout AA, there seems little prospect of such a calamity, for the life of each individual in each group is filled around the twelve steps and the twelve traditions and the compelling love that we have for our fellow members and for the principles upon which our lives are now founded.
And this ensures that our democracy of world service can rely on our group conscience and can rely on our trusted service. Now, if that were all, that would be easy, but that's just concept one. Sheriff folks, we won't be here till midnight. But, as it says in concept two, our group conscience can't be heard unless a properly chosen conference is fully trusted to speak for it, respecting most matters of AA world service.
[00:10:08]
Here again, our personal experience of tradition two comes into action. I used to be a little mad and resentful when I first came to AA. The group I belonged to wasn't doing the things that I thought it could. You know, they just weren't running it my way. But I wasn't letting myself be a part of the group conscience. I didn't want to be on the wrong side of the team. I didn't want to be rejected from my point of view.
So I didn't express my views. I didn't communicate. And so there must be a mechanic established to provide communication. So the voices of AA's trusted servants can be heard. And so concept two states very simply, when the AA group conferred a permanent charter for the general service conference, they thereby delegated to the conference complete authority of the active maintenance of our world services, and thereby made the conference the actual voice and the effective group conscience for our whole society.
Now concept three might be called the right of decision. I remember going to business meetings of my own group. It's my mind all made up that I had decided who was going to be the best secretary, who was going to have elections, and I was going to vote for Suzy too. And I got to the meeting and I discovered that Suzy just had a split. Well, perhaps she hadn't had a split, but her husband was giving her trouble and she couldn't get to the meetings regularly and so on and so forth.
Now to refuse to change my voice, my vote, in the light of newly known facts would have been pretty silly. So too with an elected delegate. If he is instructed on how to vote, he has no right of decision. He too may learn more on the subject on which he is voting and wish to change his vote in the light of this greater knowledge. But if he is instructed instead of trusted, he can't do that. This concept applies also to the trustees.
For example, the trustees do own the service entities, A.A. World Service and the A.A. Grapevine. They can hire and fire. Their authority is final. But if the trustees were constantly to exert this full and absolute authority, if they were to attempt to manage these operating entities in detail, the staff members would quickly become demoralized. There would be only one choice, either to rebel and resign or to submit and rot.
Quote, that's from Bill to the concept. They do have a right of decision, though a trusted servant is the solution. Our entire A.A. program rests squarely upon the principle of mutual trust. We trust God. We trust A.A. We trust each other. Therefore, we cannot do less than trust our leaders in service. The right of decision that we offer them is not only the practical means by which they may act and meet effectively, but it is also the symbol of our implicit confidence.
Concept number four is the right of participation. Now, this is a word we all understand. It's one of the first things we learn to do when we come to A.A. We learn to participate in group activities. We become a part of our individual group affairs in a group country, and this way we become a part of a whole. This principle has been carefully built into our conference structure, for the charge it provides that the trustees, the directors of our service corporations, together with their respective staff, shall always be voting members of the conference.
It took many years before we saw that we could never put all authority in one group and virtually all responsibility in another, and expect either efficiency of operation or harmony. There is another good reason for participation, and this one has to do with our spiritual needs. All of us deeply desire to belong. We want an A.A. relationship of brotherly partnership. It is our shining ideal that the spiritual corporation of A.A.
should never include any members who are regarded as second class. The right of participation assures us that we are truly the trusted servants described in A.A.'s tradition, too. Concept five deals with the rights of appeal and petition. A simple problem of all… A central problem of all free governments and democratic societies is how to protect and make possible the best use of minority feelings and opinions.
[00:15:12]
In AA, individual freedom is of enormous importance. As a matter of fact, Tradition No. 3 ensures us of this. For any alcoholic is a member the moment he says so. We can't take away his right to belong, neither can we force members to believe anything or pay anything. Ours is indeed a large charter of minority privileges and liberties. Indeed, our third legacy procedure of putting two top candidates in the hat ensures that minority candidates have an equal chance with the majority's choice.
At our last board meeting, we had a brand new trustee from the Southeast region, and he made a wonderful remark. He said, I came out of the bottle into AA and out of the hat onto the Board of Trustees. And that's about the way it goes. Strictly speaking, a democracy operates on the will of the majority, no matter how slim that majority may be. So with this system of ours of making it possible to accept the often-demonstrated wisdom of minorities, we occasionally may deny the democracy's cherished principle of final decision by a majority vote.
But we have actually found that our third legacy method of selecting delegates has much strengthened the spirit of democracy among us. Unity has been cemented, cooperation has been increased, and when the delegate is finally chosen, no discontented minority can trail in his wake. To increase the actual spirit of democracy by special deference to minority opinion is, we think, better than to follow blindly the rules which always insist on unqualified dominance by a slight majority vote.
Throughout his political speculation, de Tocqueville, the French student of democracy, insisted that the greatest danger to democracy would always be the tyranny of apathetic, self-seeking, uninformed, or angry majorities. Only a truly dedicated citizen, quite willing to protect and conserve minority rights and opinions could, he thought, guarantee the existence of a free and democratic society. Hence, we believe that we shall never be subjected to the tyranny of either the majority or the minority, provided we carefully define the relations between them and forthwith tread the paths of service in the spirit of our twelve steps, our twelve traditions, and this concept of number five.
Concept number six. You know, Bill has always said that one of the great good fortunes in his life, and perhaps in AA's life, turned out to be the fact that he was a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. He had a little bit of knowledge about public relations, he had a little bit of knowledge about finance, a little bit of knowledge about law, and so forth. This meant that all of this accumulated experience of his could be utilized, as it has been so magnificently in the creation of our whole AA structure.
But I must confess, I wish that Bill had had a little less of that experience with the law when he was writing these concepts. But leave the language, and you know how confusing lawyers are. I hope the actresses are still in the room. So let's take a look at concept six, which reads, On behalf of AA as a whole, our General Service Conference has the principal responsibility for the maintenance of our world services, and it traditionally has the final decision respecting large matters of general policy and finance.
But the Conference also recognizes that the chief initiative and the active responsibility in most of these matters should be exercised primarily by the trustee members of the Conference when they act among themselves as the General Service Board of Alcoholics and Non-Alcoholics. Well, now let's look at a regular group business meeting. Doesn't that business meeting delegate to its offices or to its steering committee the weekly or daily operation of the group's affairs?
Don't we feel fairly sure that the speakers will be arranged for, they'll show up somehow, and a copy of the case will somehow be available after each meeting? And as the offices of the group are trusted by the group, so are they observed and guided by the group's wishes. So too do the trustees assume responsibility for the operation of their service corporations, AA World Services and AA Grapevine.
[00:20:06]
The objective is a spiritual one, but this service aim can only be achieved by means of an effective business operation. Like any other business board of directors, our trustees must be given the chief initiative and the active responsibility to effectively manage the principal world affairs of our fellowship. Concept seven I somehow think of as being the checks and balances concept. The charter and bylaws of the General Service Board are legal instruments, while the conference charter is not, relying on the force of AA tradition and the AA purse, as it were, for its final effectiveness.
This means that the practical power of the conference will nearly always be superior to the legal power of the trustees. This superior power in the conference flows from the traditional influence of the charter itself and from the undoubted ability of the delegates to cut off contributions from the groups themselves. We can see practical applications of this in our day-to-day lives. The most obvious is the collection plate at the group.
If the program chairman is doing his job well, and there are good meetings and good AA talks, there is good attendance and a good collection. But if the program chairman isn't doing his job, and there aren't good meetings scheduled, or the schedule breaks down, the attendance fall is off, so does the collection. And even though the steering committee may have nominated the program chairman, the group conscience can suggest that he be removed.
Or an intergroup. If the groups don't feel that their intergroup is giving them enough 12-step calls to provide them with sufficient services, they can reduce or even eliminate their monthly pledge. It was out of these considerations that our present conference charter was developed. A structure which purely gives the conference the final ultimate authority, but which nevertheless legally preserves the rights of the trustees to function freely and adequately, just as any business board of directors must.
This arrangement is in strict conformity with the trusted servant provision of Tradition 2, which contemplates that our servants, within the scope of their duties, should be trusted to use their own judgment and experience. Up to the present time, our experience shows that this balance of power between the trustees and the conference is fairly workable. We believe this balance can be maintained indefinitely, because the one is protected by provision and the other by law.
Concept number eight. Long experience has now proved that our board as a whole must devote itself almost exclusively to the larger and more serious questions of policy, demand, public relations. Here the board of executives is planned to manage and direct the team, but they cannot as a body concern themselves with the daily routine. Here the board's attitude has to be that of custodial oversight. It cannot be the executive.
Hence, the trustees are the guarantors of the good management of AA World Services and the AA grapevine. They discharge their custodial obligations by electing the directors. Again, to give an oversimplified example, with which we might all be familiar, it may be the policy of the group to have only cookies after the meetings, never to serve cake. Now, that policy would be made by the group's steering committee, but the committee wouldn't feel that it had to examine each cookie purchased.
This responsibility would fall to the secretary, who would be trusted to make the selection after the getting of the money authorized by the steering committee from the group's treasurer. So too would the board and its service entities, each of which possesses its own charter, its own working capital, its own executives, its own employees, its own offices, its own equipment. So concept eight reads, the trustees of the General Service Board act in two primary capacities.
With respect to the larger matters of overall policies and finance, they are the principal planners and administrators. But with respect to our separately incorporated and constantly active services, their relationship is mainly that of custodial oversight, which they exercise through their ability to elect all the directors of these entities. Concept nine. 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 the Alcoholics Anonymous.
That means that Bill and Dr. Bob step down and turn fellowship over to you and me. Now, good leadership cannot function well in a poorly designed structure. But weak leadership can hardly function at all, even in the best of structures. Good leadership can be here today and gone tomorrow. Furnishing our service structure with able and willing workers has to be a continuous and continuing activity.
[00:25:06]
Now, here, too, we can see the relationship of our traditions to the concept. The tradition one says our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Now, the long form of that tradition, as it was originally written, says each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live, or most of us would surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first.
But individual welfare follows most afterwards. Let's look at that long form of the tradition in the light of the great many group elections we've attended. How many times have we heard someone say, let's make Mary the GSR. It'll do her good. Now, Mary and the group's strength will come from AA's survival and unity. And the group will best be served by a GSR who can serve the group. And along these lines, let's remember that the basis for our complete service structure rests on the dedication and ability of the GSR, on the committee members, and the delegates.
These are the direct agents of the AA group. These are the indispensable links between the fellowship as a whole and its world structure. These are the primary representatives of AA's group conscience. Without their support and activity, we could not operate permanently at all. So in keeping with tradition one, good leadership comes from selecting those individuals to serve at any level. We should always ask the question, who are the best qualified people that we can select?
Somewhere in our literature, there is a statement to this effect. Our leaders do not drive by mandate. They lead by example. In effect, we are saying to them, act for us, but don't force us. A leader in AA service is, therefore, a man or woman who can personally put principles, plans, and policies into such dedicated and effective action that the rest of us want to back him up and help him with his job.
And there is the old important attribute of vision. Bill says, vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates, both for the immediate and for the more distant future. Now, a lot of us get hung up on the 24-hour program, and we may not think that we should look ahead. But let's not forget that in 1939, when there were approximately 100 members in our fellowship, Bill wrote in our big book, Someday we hope that every alcoholic whose journey will find a fellowship of alcoholic phenomenon at his destination.
Now, I don't know whether Bill really believed that the day would come when there would be groups in 90 countries sharing AA in 17 languages with over 13,000 groups all over the world. I don't know whether he believed it, but he had the vision. So when we talk about AA leadership, we only mean that we ought to select that leadership on the basis of obtaining the best talent we can find. And this is true in 12-step work, too.
Every sponsor is a leader. The stakes are about as big as they could be. A human life, and usually the happiness of a whole family, hangs in the balance. What the sponsor does and says, how well he estimates the reactions of his prospects, how well he times and makes his presentations, how well he handles criticism, how well he leads his prospects on by personal spiritual examples, these qualities of leadership can make all the difference, often the difference between life and death.
As Concept 10 says, every service responsibility should be matched by an equal service authority. The scope of such authority should be always well-defined, whether by position, resolution, by specific job description, by appropriate charges, or by bylaws. There's Bill, and he's read the language again. But actually, an outstanding characteristic of every good operational structure is that it guarantees harmonious and effective function by relating its several parts and people in such a way that none can doubt what their respective responsibilities and corresponding authorities actually are.
Unless these attributes are well-defined, unless those holding the final authority are able and willing, properly to delegate a suitable operational authority, unless those holding such delegated authority feel able and willing,
[00:30:00]
and Unless There Exist Some Destinant Means of Interpreting and Deciding Doubtful Situations, Then Personal Clashes, Confusions, and Ineffectiveness Will Be Inevitable. The Influence of Ultimate Authority Must Always Be Felt, but It Is Perfectly Clear That When Delegated Authority Is Operating Well, Leave It Alone. Let's Go Back to Those Cookies Again. It's fine for the secretary to have the responsibility to go and buy the cookies, and with this responsibility to make whatever selection of the cookies she wants to, but she must also know the limits of her responsibility.
That limit might be that she had to function on a budget, and therefore it would not be her decision as to whether she could buy three dozen extra cookies that week. So let us always be sure that there is an abundance of final or ultimate authority to correct or to reorganize, but let us be equally sure that all of our trusted servants have a clearly defined and adequate authority to do their daily work and to discharge their clear responsibilities.
All of this is implied in A.A.'s Tradition 2. Here we see the group conscience as the ultimate authority and the trusted servants as the delegated authority. One cannot function without the other. Concept 11 outlines the relationships of the standing committees of the General Service Board, the corporate service structures, the staff, and consultants. The composition of these underlying committees and service boards, the personal qualifications of their members, the manner of their induction into service, the systems of their rotation, the way in which they are related to each other, the special rights and duties of our executives, staff, and consultants, together with a proper basis for the financial compensation of these special workers, will always be matters for serious care and concern.
In all of these relationships, we find the importance of the previously outlined concept, the delegation of authority to the director, the advisory function and capacity of the board's committee, and the rights of decision, participation, and appeal on the part of all. Ultimately, only the sustained willingness to practice spiritual principles in all our affairs can accomplish the harmonious working of the whole.
So here we are, right back to the 12th Tradition, ever reminding us to place principles before personality. Concept 12 is a restatement of the general warranties of the conference. In 1955, the General Service Conference was adopted as the 20th anniversary of the convention of AA, which was held in St. Louis over the Fourth of July weekend of that year. At that time, a resolution was passed that set in part that AA's General Service Conference should now become the permanent successor to the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, inheriting from them all their former duties and special responsibilities, thus avoiding at future times all possible striving for individual prestige or personal power and also providing our society with the means of functioning on a permanent basis.
The resolution said further, neither the 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous nor the warranties of Article 12 of the conference charter should ever be changed or amended by the General Service Conference except first asking the consent of all registered AA groups throughout the world. The warranties themselves, which are the basis of Concept 12, have a high and permanent importance to AA's general welfare.
They are a series of solemn undertakings which guarantee that the conference itself will conform to AA's 12 Traditions, that the conference can never become the seat of great wealth or government, that its financial policy shall ever be prudent, that it will never create an absolute government, that the principle of substantial unanimity will be observed, that it will never take any punitive action, that it never will incite public controversy, that it can serve AA only, and that it shall always remain democratic in spirit.
These warranties are guides for the relationship of the conference to all of AA. But aren't they also guides by which we in our own group can function? Certainly our system of rotation prevents any small group of persons from becoming a kind of government within the group. They don't move over, we kick them over. Prudence is generally the word as far as money matters is concerned. As a matter of fact, we're sometimes a little bit too prudent, finding it a little difficult to get that extra 50 cent piece out of our pocket.
The group does not give absolute authority to its trusted servants, it just trusts them. The group conscience is the principle of unanimity.
[00:35:03]
In our relationships with others, the key is sharing and caring, rather than punitive action. The group, bound by Tradition 10, has no opinion on outsider issues, and hence the AA name is not drawn into public controversy. The warranties say that the conference can serve AA only. This is in keeping with our Fifth Tradition, which says that AA's primary purpose, the primary purpose of every AA group, is to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to the alcoholics who still suffer.
And this is an extension of the Twelve Steps, with which we're all familiar, which says, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of practicing these steps, we try to carry the AA message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all of our affairs. Which brings us back full circle to recovery, the faith of our kind. And with our recovery, we've been given a freedom from bondage we never dreamt possible.
Through the practices of steps, we have the continued freedom to grow, to serve, and to love. We of AA believe that our freedom to serve is truly the freedom by which we live. So the Twelve Steps call is the first service. And the Twelve Steps call keeps us sober. And sober, we stay free. So let's go back to the beginning, to that book which was written so many years ago, and which was the forerunner of all that has been given us over these years of growth, success, and service.
Give freely of what you find, and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit. And we will surely meet some of us as you stride the road of happy destiny. Good night. Good night. Thank you.