A request for the format of my homegroup

An ex-president sent me an email this morning. That's what his username said anyway.

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Anywho, I sent him some info from my cell phone this morning. I'll repost that info here as well and some content that came from a prior thread here about my home group.

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Hope this info is of value to someone out there in cyberspace.

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Greetings McGowdog,

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spoke some years back on SR, was wondering if you're still in AA? Your blog seems to suggest you may not be? I am writing as I was hoping you could spare a little time to explain what your group format was previously. I remember you saying you used the Paul M format as a meeting.

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I'm in the UK and we are interested in seeing if we could get a new format going as the one you guys had sounds like its worth exploring. Be really interested in your views on it.

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Many thanks

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Thanks for the message. We're still hanging in there. I'm not happy with the vibe of A.A. as a whole and there's a lot of dogma that frustrates me but my little group steers pretty clear of it.

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We have a closed meeting format, there's a chair picker who calls on the person to chair the meeting that following Monday. That chair person brings a topic and calls on people one by one to share.

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After we introduce ourselves as alky, no andas allowed, he/she reads how it works, introduces a topic, reads a bit out of the book pertaining to the topic, relates his/her current experience in it, we meditate on it for two minutes, then he calls on people until discussion is done.

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Then we break into crossfire for the remainder of the meeting.

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Crossfire is anyone can ask anyone else a question about the topic. One minute for the question and 5 minutes for the response. The meeting shares are timed to 5 minutes as well unless we ha e 8+ people then it's four minutes.

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When the meeting is done, we end the meeting with the Lord's Prayer. We say the serenity prayer at the beginning of the meeting, but it's just to start the meeting. The serenity prayer don't mean shit and we treat it as such. It's just a way to start a meeting. The Lord's Prayer means something. It's useful to us. So is God. We don't try to hide God nor run from God in our group. If you want to worship a doorknob, then go find some other group.

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Met Paul M. at a city convention in my town years ago that Paul M. spoke at. He was an awesome dude. He promoted doing multiple 5th steps. The group that started my group did work with him. That was the group from Denver.