[Businessmtg] (no subject)

[Apryl Schneider]

As the former greeter committee chair I will mention that we do, in fact, provide all of the information a new member needs in order to participate within the ASP guidelines at the time they become members. The problem, as I see it, is that most folks do not read all of the info. Again, I'm of two minds. 

1) If we make it so easy that there is no real work involved in beginning one's own recovery is it genuinely possible for a person to reach a point of actual recovery? Much like the alcoholic has to make their own decision for change and do the work to follow through for the rest of their lives, so do we Al-Anons. There will be lots of missteps along the way but those, too, are part of the process. My concern is that if we ease the way too much are we robbing folks of the ability to reach their own serenity by shielding them from the consequences of not working the program as it was designed?

2) The above said, I do believe the welcome letters and instructions could easily be pared down and be much less wordy thereby rendering them less overwhelming which by rote should increase newcomer awareness of the process by which we practice and keep ASP going. 

It's been mentioned repeatedly that in f2f meetings we do things differently. Obviously that's true. I'm not sure how we could mirror them more than we do other than to create a newcomers meeting, which frankly, I'm beginning to see might be helpful. The thing is, OL meetings may have started out as a way to supplement f2f meetings or, in worst case scenarios, be THE recovery meeting for folks with literally no other access. It has, however, become much more than that and is the only meeting a lot of folks will ever attend as we have entered the digital age of instant gratification. So we can either roll with these types of punches and consider implementing such things as a separate newcomer meeting, or we wind up having these types of debates endlessly if we refuse to consider appropriate levels of change.

Now admittedly, I haven't looked on our website in a while, but it seems to me that sponsorship info as well as all kinds of newcomer info is all readily available for those willing to reach out and do the work of finding it. These are folks who won't hesitate to Google who has the best hot dogs in town or how to properly bathe a cat; we can't assume it's too much work for them to cruise around our very navigable website for info they need. 

Apryl :)