Servants of Your Group

The committee that runs A.A.'s business is made of servants, and the co-founder sat in the second row to prove it. Dan K. sat on Akron's Central Committee — "the steering committee for the office" — and remembered a night the words flew "like you were in a barroom" (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers). Dr. Bob stood up, put up his hands, and said: "Gentlemen, please. We're still members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Let's carry the principles of A.A. into these business meetings. You are servants of your group, here to take the ideas formulated by the committee." Read the order. First what they are — members, the same as anyone in the room — then what they are for. Servants. Not managers. Joe P. remembered the same man at meetings: "He'd go to a meeting, and he wouldn't sit up on the stage. He'd always sit in the second row or someplace like that." That is the whole Tradition, lived before it was written, by a man who never held a title in A.A. and never needed one. So look at where the people running today's rooms sit, and what they hold. A clipboard at the front is not a chair in the second row.