LSR Convenor Roundtable and Local Intergroup Meeting Held in Oakland May 27, 2000

A LifeRing Secular Recovery Convenor's Roundtable and local Intergroup Meeting was held Saturday morning May 27, 2000, at 969 Broadway in downtown Oakland. Thirteen people attended, of whom eight were convenors of ongoing meetings and five were relative newcomers interested in starting new LifeRing meetings. Marjorie J., past convenor of the Thursday night Oakland meeting, chaired the session.

The first part of the meeting consisted of open discussion of the convenor's role and of issues and problems that arose in the meetings. Discussion opened with the issue of whether meetings should use the topic format or the check-in format. Among issues participants raised and points made were the following:

• Whose job is it to decide which format is used, the convenor or the group?
• The opportunity to speak at the meeting is key for participants.
• Sometimes a topic arises out of the week's events and takes precedence over a topic decided on the previous week.
• It would be helpful to new people if the convenor gave them some orientation at the outset about what we are doing and what the process is supposed to accomplish; maybe this could be added to the opening statement or could be subject of a new brochure.
• Should we have space on the sign-in sheet for people to indicate if they want time to speak? Or should we play this by ear?
• Reading the opening statement in a conversational way rather than reciting it in a monotone gets people to pay more attention to it.
• Another way to handle the format is to have a quick check-in all the way around the room and then go back for a second round with more detail.
• A useful method is to ask people if they want feedback about what they have shared.
• We encourage everyone to talk at least once at our meetings, it's not required but it's definitely expected.
• This is one big difference between how our meetings run and how the AA meetings run; you would have a hard time remaining passive in our meetings.
• It's really important to stress the confidentiality of meeting discussion - that what comes out in the meeting stays in the meeting. This is important to put people at ease and allow them to talk freely.
• What is the role of the different styles that convenors feel comfortable with? Provided the "3S" philosophy is maintained, convenors and meetings have tremendous latitude.
• The convenor does have to nudge people to relate their conversation to sobriety somehow.
• The convenor is not a counselor and it is not their job to give advice or have the answers.
• Convenors have the job to facilitate the process and handle problem situations, but convenors should not talk too much.
• Convenors can kill meetings by trying to have the final word on every topic and the answer to every question.
• Allowing long moments of silence is OK.
• Convenors need to be sensitive to the group; what the group wants to do and what the appropriate format is may vary from week to week.
• The most important thing is not necessarily that the convenor should feel comfortable with the format but that the group should feel comfortable.
• It's important to have an atmosphere where people can give each other feedback in a productive, helpful way; that's one of the key advantages of our process over the AA process.
• If a convenor runs into a problem person, someone who insists on monopolizing the time or on bringing up inappropriate subject matter, the convenor's most useful tool is to change the subject and call on another person.
• It's rarely necessary to confront a problem participant directly, and if that does become necessary, it's best done outside the meeting in private.
• While the convenor has responsibility to facilitate the meeting process, convenors shouldn't forget to be participants also; after all, they're there for their own recovery the same as everyone else.
• Is it better to address the concerns of first-timers early in the meeting or late? The convenor can direct the order of check-in around the room (clockwise or counter) and can take the needs of first-timers into account.
• In meetings where we regularly see a large number of newcomers the convenor's role usually involves doing more basic educational work than in the others.
• It's important to put our brochures into newcomers' hands at the meetings and be sure they know about our book literature, and to keep the literature racks at the treatment centers supplied with our handouts and meeting schedules.

After a short break, the session proceeded to the second part of the agenda, intergroup issues. Marty N. reported that the Court of Appeals had just affirmed the earlier decision of the federal district court regarding rights to the name "SOS" and that the legal situation in Northern California therefore was unchanged. The appellate decision also tended to unsettle rights to the "SOS" name in the rest of the country, and people still using "SOS" were liable to face further legal issues.

Also this past week, the St. Petersburg FL SOS meeting, one of the oldest in the country, had disaffiliated from SOS National and voted to affiliate with LifeRing Secular Recovery. Some other meetings in the U.S. and abroad had done so earlier and others were in the process of joining. Thus, one year after its founding as the Northern California chapter of SOS, LifeRing Secular Recovery was becoming an independent national organization in its own right.

The trademark litigation had brought to the forefront long-simmering dissatisfaction within SOS over the organization's lack of any internal democratic process and over the role of SOS as a permanent dependent of its financial sponsor, Council for Secular Humanism. Intergroup meeting participants felt that we ought to draft up a formal statement of disaffiliation from SOS National, and there was consensus we would circulate a forthcoming statement to this effect from Tom Shelley in St. Petersburg and probably add our names on to it. We will quietly remove references to affiliation with SOS National in upcoming reprints of our LSR handouts.

The priority now is to get LSR properly organized along democratic lines, and toward that end we will soon be proposing a date and a place for a constitutional convention.

In other matters, there was discussion of publishing a print newsletter to supplement the existing online convenor's newsletter at www.lifering.org and/or the public newsletter at www.unhooked.com. Although the number of people who still did not have online access was small and shrinking, and although some other organizations are dropping print newsletters altogether in favor of their online offerings, it was felt that a print newsletter might be a useful addition for us. Anyone interested in taking part in this project, please contact the LSR Service Center.

In conclusion of this segment of the meeting, Marty circulated and reported on progress with the draft of a recovery workbook tentatively titled "My Personal Recovery Plan" and asked for and got volunteers to participate in a Focus Group to evaluate this project. There was general discussion of intergroup issues.

Marjorie J., in her capacity as CFO of LifeRing Inc., then circulated copies of a written financial report and presented an oral summary. Thanks to past donations, sales of literature, and contributions from meetings, LifeRing Inc. has current assets of about $12,500, of which a little over $7500 is cash or securities and the remainder represents book inventory. The LifeRing Service Center has received to date about $1200 from LSR meetings, representing surplus funds collected in the meeting basket, and has spent about $900 to produce handouts, for telephone charges, and as rent startup loans for new meetings, for a current surplus of a little over $300.

In the concluding portion of the three-hour session, there was discussion of starting new meetings. G from San Francisco indicated an intention to start a new meeting there, probably at lunch time; this would be the third S.F. meeting. K from Oakland inquired about starting a youth meeting for older teens, and this met with much interest and support. B from the Southern peninsula indicated interest in maybe getting something going there. There was discussion about contacting the press to try to get some coverage for our efforts.

Finally, it was decided to have a third introductory convenor workshop similar to the ones we had Nov. 6 and Feb. 26. This one will take place June 17 from 9:00 to noon, again at 969 Broadway. All persons interested in learning more about the LifeRing Secular Recovery approach and possibly becoming convenors are invited. There is no charge to attend.

-- Marty N. 5/28