Places of Service

A.A.'s own service offices cannot govern the groups, because the groups pay for them and can stop. Bill W. wrote about A.A.'s clubs, local offices and the New York office in 1946 (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 28): "These are places of service; they cannot really control or govern A.A. If any of them were to become inefficient or overbearing the remedy is simple enough. The average A.A. would stop his financial support until conditions were changed." Overbearing means bossy. The members hold the purse, so the office answers to them. That is the Long Form at work (Big Book, p. 563): "For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience." Now turn it around. A room inside a treatment facility runs on the facility's budget. Nobody in the chairs pays for it, so nobody in the chairs can stop paying. The program decides the night, the format and who may come, and it calls the hour an A.A. meeting. Bill's remedy can't reach it, because the members never held the purse in the first place. A room like that has been captured before anyone in it says a word. Test it tonight: ask who pays for your room, and what would happen if the members stopped.