In the last issue of Essay, we published requests for feedback from groups that are experiencing problems or have questions about the way in which meetings should be run. R.B. in Wichita Falls wrote asking how other groups address the problem of a high rate of dropouts, and J.B. in Chicago wrote asking how other groups manage to give everyone enough time to speak.
Since it was announced at the Los Angeles convention last December, Roy and the Central Office have been using the International Group Conscience Committee in an ad hoc temporary advisory capacity in day-to-day matters involving Central Office or SA as a whole. This is the only active representative body SA has at present, and it has been working extremely well. Following are some recent decisions made:
Dear Fellow SAs, I thought it might be helpful to let you know what our group from West L.A. is doing in response to the financial challenge facing our Central Office. We know that SA as a whole is working on ways to meet this challenge, and whatever recommendations are adopted, we here will seek to support them. However, we feel that whatever we can do in the meantime will be helpful.
Salt Lake City groups report they have hit upon a way to help support the 12th Step work of the SA Central Office. They pass the basket around a second time for loose change only—no bills—and send that to Central Office. They were surprised at what this amounted to after just one month.
From the beginning, I have followed the principle of “least possible organization” (Ninth Tradition long form) when it comes to organizational structure at the national level, which is the principle most groups follow at the group level. That’s the principle that worked so well in AA. As AA developed in Akron and NYC, then started to spread, it had no organizational structure whatever. It was a spiritual entity that grew from the inside out.
Under Traditions One and Three, each SA group has the right and responsibility to bring up issues that bear on membership, group unity, and meeting quality. The following are merely suggested for debate and feedback, supporting the idea that if we don’t look out for our unity — both group and SA as a whole — who will?
Perhaps now is the time for us not only to take an SA inventory, but for us to take our group inventories, based on the Twelve Traditions. How does my group rate when evaluated against the Twelve Traditions? Is our main purpose to carry the message of what we are to the sexaholic who still suffers?
In response to questions from members, we announce that SA is officially an exempt, non-profit organization in the same category (code 573) as Alcoholics Anonymous. This holds true for all of 1982 and part of 1981. We are using the following notice to SA members in compliance with our Seventh Tradition:
Many of us have also discovered that once we start going to meetings, certain things become apparent. Personalities want to predominate instead of the principles of the Steps and Traditions. We make all kinds of mistakes trying to relate (or not relate) to other members. All our defects come to the fore.
“Every SA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.” Some members have suggested we should tell everybody what the financial picture is at the General Service Office (formerly called SA Central), so here goes.
