Run the A.A. Affairs

When the building runs the meeting, the group has another authority, and Tradition Four allows it none. A.A. learned this from its early clubs, separate corporations that rented rooms to groups. Bill W. wrote (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 20): "if an A.A. rotating committee tries to boss the club corporation or if the corporation tries to run the A.A. affairs of those groups who may meet at the club, there is difficulty at once." His answer was to keep the two apart: "If an A.A. group wishes to use a given club, let them pay rent or split the meeting take with the club management." Now look at a recovery centre that houses a dozen meetings. It prints them on its own calendar under its own name, bars people from the building and so from the meetings, and tells the groups what they may put on the wall. It is running the A.A. affairs of whoever meets there. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563) says a group answers to "no other authority than its own conscience." A meeting whose rules come from its landlord answers to the landlord, however warm the room. A real group can rent any building that will have it and still run itself. Test it tonight: ask who could change your meeting's format tomorrow without a vote of its members.