Our daily online ACA meeting finds ways to support the members who perform service. This article describes a practice that works for us, and it may offer ideas for your group as well.
The Strengthening My Recovery group gathers every day on Zoom. To allow more people to share, after a meditation we go into Breakout Rooms. Each room has a Host who follows a script, calling on members to share on the reading. The Host may be asked to keep time or may need to lower raised hands and mute the unaware.
With 7 or 8 breakout rooms per day, 7 days a week, we have a need for quite a few Room Hosts. To become a Room Host, we ask that members go through a ‘training’, which is more of a certification. Beyond the technical aspects such as muting and screen sharing, the training also touches on practices approved by the group. How to time shares; addressing crosstalk; being comfortable with silence – these challenges are touched on in the training.
These practices have worked well for our meeting. However, after completing the training and joining the schedule, members doing service were generally ‘on their own’. Nowhere could Room Hosts, as a group, look for guidance, confirm their instincts, or offer their experience. We needed a forum for discussing solutions to challenges that arose while performing service.
Typically, a group scheduling an extra meeting like this would choose a set monthly day and time – the third Tuesday, for example. But for a group that meets every day, this could eliminate lots of participation, if members had conflicting personal schedules.
Our solution is ‘Service on the 7s’. After our regular meeting, on the 7th, 17th, and 27th of every month we create a breakout room where members doing service may join in an informal discussion. By creating this schedule, the Session rotates naturally between the different days of the week, ensuring an opportunity for everyone to participate. And a discussion session happens about every 10 days. Presently there is no set agenda. Someone in the group will raise a question or pose a recent situation in search of clarification. While it’s not a business meeting, per se, the atmosphere is solution focused. Recently we identified a need for quick communication between the Tech Hosts that open the Zoom Room daily. The solution was to create a What’sApp group where the Tech Hosts could turn to each other for guidance and help. And it works.
The Service Sessions that take place on the 7s have been an instantly utilized resource. One that has been received with camaraderie and gratitude.
To learn more about our meeting, Strengthening My Recovery, visit our website at acamorning.org or join us at our daily meditation meeting.
Jim R