Alcoholics Anonymous History
The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference
The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History
Conference
September 6-7, 2013
Portland, Maine
[A.A.’s Dr. Bob was a
member of Christian Endeavor (Big Book, 172), founded here 2/2/1881]
Featuring A.A. Historian Dick B. of Maui, Hawaii, and
Special Guests
Conference Theme:
“The History of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Another View Which
Includes Its Christian Beginnings in New England”
Meetings, Roundtables, Speakers, Research, and Workshops in
Portland, Maine
[Plus: (1) Possible
A.A. history research tour of Dr. Bob’s birthplace, St. Johnsbury, VT, 9/8-10;
(2) Free At Last Group A.A. meeting, Wed., 9/11; 5:30 pm potluck dinner;
7:00-8:30 pm speaker discussion meeting; guest speakers Dick B. and Ken B.]
Main Conference Location:
The First Baptist Church of Portland, Maine
360 Canco Rd.,
Portland, ME 04103;
http://www.firstbaptistportland.org/
Conference Schedule
Friday, September 6
6:30 pm to 7:00 pm:
Conference registration:
FREE, but Required
7:00 pm to 7:10 pm:
Prayer by Ken B., welcome, and conference introduction
7:10 pm to 9:00 pm:
Conf. speaker presentations, or Celebrate Recovery mtg.
Saturday, September 7
9:00 am to 9:45 am:
Conference registration (cont.), coffee and tea, hospitality
9:45 am to 9:55 am:
Conference introduction and prayer by Ken B.
9:55 am to 10:00 am:
Welcome by Wally C.
10:00 am to 10:50 am:
Session One: The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
11:00 am to 11:50 am:
Session Two: A. A. Origins, History, Founders, and Facts
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm:
Lunch Break: On your
own
1:15 pm to 2:05 pm:
Session Three: Sponsorship Today
2:15 pm to 3:05 pm:
Session Four: Orienting and Informing Newcomers
3:35 pm to 4:15 pm:
Session Five: A.A. History: Past, Present & Future
4:15 pm
Ken B. closes conf. w/prayer; networking, dinner (optional)
Conference Mission
The mission of this conference is to present an accurate and
comprehensive picture of Alcoholics Anonymous history which includes the roles
played by God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible in early A.A.’s astonishing
successes.
Of alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got
sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses; and
among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement.
[Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., xx]
Records in Cleveland show that 93 percent of those who came
to us never had a drink again. [DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 261]
Your Heavenly Father will never let you down! [Dr. Bob in
Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 181]
Bill [W.] looked across at my wife and said to her,
“Henrietta, the Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible
disease, that I just want to keep talking about it and telling people.” [AA #
3, Bill D., in Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 191]
When we [Bill W. and Dr. Bob] started in on Bill D., we had
no Twelve Steps, either; we had no Traditions.
But we
were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. [Dr. Bob
in The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last
Major Talks (item # P-53), 13]
Conference Audience
This conference is for members of 12 Step Fellowships
(including old-timers, speakers, sponsors, newcomers, and garden variety drunks
and addicts); other International Christian Recovery Coalition “participants”;
physicians, clergy, recovery pastors, and other Christian leaders and workers
in the recovery arena; and professionals working in the fields of intervention,
detox, treatment, sober living, counseling, psychology, and psychiatry.
Conference Registration
Admission for the First International Alcoholics Anonymous
History Conference is FREE! Registration
is required. For more information about the conference please contact Ken B. by
email at kcb00799@gmail.com or by phone
at 1-808-276-4945. To register for the conference, please send to Ken B. by
email at kcb00799@gmail.com: (1) your
name; (2) your postal mailing address; (3) your email address; and (4) your
telephone number. Ken B. will send you by email a confirmation as to the
acceptance of your registration.
If you would like to make a donation to help offset the
costs involved in putting on this conference, please contact Ken B. by email
at kcb00799@gmail.com or by phone at
1-808-276-4945. Thank you!
Ongoing Conference Developments: Expansion!
Substantial, valuable, expansive changes are here announced
as to the First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference in
Portland, Maine, and related events over the seven-day period from September 6
through 12, 2013.
We are delighted to see many valued and distinguished
registrations for this admission-free conference pouring in. Dick B. and Ken B.
will be available to meet with many leaders and speakers before and after the
Friday and Saturday conference events.
And a number of Christian leaders and workers in recovery
arena from around the world will be giving 10-minute presentations in which
they will tell us about what they are currently doing in the recovery arena;
how well the work is going; how others can help; and their vision for the
future.
We are looking forward to having speakers and others
attendees from throughout the United States and from other countries
participate in the First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference.
Conference topics will be diverse; e.g., Quiet Time and the Eleventh Step;
Sponsorship; Focus on Newcomers; the real, historical, Christian roots of A.A.;
and how “old-school” A.A. ideas can and should be applied in today's recovery
fellowships and programs as a powerful opportunity for those who want God's
help in overcoming alcoholism and addiction, and who are willing to go to any
lengths to get it.
As our list of speakers grows to include in such areas as
the Wilson House, Burr and Burton Seminary, the YMCA, Rescue Missions,
Evangelists, the Salvation Army, and Christian Endeavor, so also will our
topics.
Are you one of those would like to learn more about the
following topics:
· “Old-school”
A.A.—particularly as it could be observed in Akron and in Cleveland during
A.A.’s earliest days;
· How much
A.A. has changed since Bill W. included what he called “the new version of the
program, now the ‘Twelve Steps’” in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous
(“the Big Book”) published in April 1939 (see Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of
Age, 162); and
· How
“old-school” A.A. principles and practices--which drew on the power and love of
“the God of the Scriptures” (as Bill W. called the Creator of the heavens and
the earth on page 284 of The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine
Writings)—may be applied today. Using A.A. General Service Conference-approved
literature, and without “violating the Traditions.” Even in a Fellowship that
certainly today includes Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, atheists,
agnostics, unbelievers, and those with no belief at all.
There is room in our Society for all when one heeds both the
spirit and the letter of key statements in the Big Book, such as the following
one about the Twelve Traditions:
. . . [W]e had to evolve principles by which the A.A. groups
and A.A. as a whole could survive and function effectively. It was thought that
no alcoholic man or woman could be excluded from our Society; that our leaders
might serve but never govern; that each group was to be autonomous . . .
This was
the substance of A.A.’s Twelve Traditions, . . . [N]one of these principles had
the force of rules or laws. [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., xix]
There is no room in our Society for those who try to
blockade free exercise of rights and privileges by any particular approach so
long as that free exercise maintains the primary purpose of carrying the
message to alcoholics and addicts who still suffer. There is plenty of room in
the Fellowship for the individual who wants to share with the newcomer
. . . in his own language and from his own point of view the
way he established his relationship with God. [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed.,
29]
And who wants to make known the major role that God, His Son
Jesus Christ, and the Bible played in early A.A.’s astonishing successes
(according to A.A. General Service Conference-approved literature), and can
play in recovery today. Room for those who want truth, not opinion. Room for
those who help, instead of criticize and hinder. Room for those who want
healing, instead of in-and-out bondage, temptation, and relapse. Room for those
that recognize that the heart of A.A. was and is “the Solution”:
There is a solution. . . .
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty
that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed
miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could
never do by ourselves. [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 25]
Sound familiar? Of course! That was the message Bill W. said
his friend Ebby T. had carried to him:
But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank
declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His
human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. . . . Then he had,
in effect, been raised from the dead, . . .
Had the
power originated in him? Obviously it had not.
. . . It
began to look as though religious people were right after all. . . . My ideas
about miracles were drastically revised right then. [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
ed., 11]
The “solution” set forth in the Big Book of Alcoholics
Anonymous is grounded on the Creator’s entering into the hearts and lives of
those who have come to believe that Divine Aid is the solution for their
alcoholism; and those who have recognized that they can't help themselves, that
probably no human power can, that God can and will, and that they can choose to
exit from the "medically incurable" category and enter into the
“recovered” category.
Tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands--of
Christians and potential Christians are currently involved in, or will soon be
entering the rooms of, Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 Step Fellowships. They
are puzzled by talk of nonsense gods, higher powers, spirituality, and atheism.
They are often intimidated by remarks in meetings to the effect that talk of
Jesus and the Bible (and sometimes even talk of God) is against “the
Traditions,” and/or that the Bible is “not Conference-approved.”
They need not be puzzled or intimidated! A major purpose of
the First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference is to educate
those who want to know about the facts of A.A.’s history and A.A.’s Christian
predecessors who were successful in healing alcoholics and addicts. You will
meet Christian leaders and workers in the recovery arena who work with
garden-variety alcoholics and addicts; as well as those who are knowledgeable
of various disciplines and areas of study, including religion, medicine,
psychiatry, “old-school” A.A., the origins of A.A., the founding of A.A., and
the original “Christian fellowship” of A.A.
Many of the conference speakers have had the opportunity to
observe what both Bill W. and Dr. Bob stressed: (1) Love and tolerance as our
code. (2) Love and service as the essence of the program--old and new--and the
form it took in A.A.’s early days and is taking today.
A Further Conference Update
The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History
Conference will be held in Portland, Maine, on September 6-7, 2013. The
conference itself will run from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Friday evening,
September 6; and it will continue from 9:00 a.m. until about 4:20 p.m. on
Saturday, September 7, at the following location:
The First Baptist Church of Portland, Maine
360 Canco Rd.,
Portland, ME 04103
http://www.firstbaptistportland.org/
Dick B. and Ken B. will be staying at the following hotel
from September 5-12:
Hilton Garden Inn Portland Airport
145 Jetport Blvd.,
Portland, ME, 04102
1-866-767-0278
Dick B. and Ken B. check in Thursday, September 5, and check
out Thursday, September 12. Dick and Ken will be available for pre- and
post-conference personal, small-group, and workshop meetings with Christian
leaders and workers in the recovery arena. These meetings will cover:
· Dr. Bob’s
wife, Anne Smith, and Quiet Time-Eleventh Step practices and resources, and
other subjects being formulated as speakers emerge. The meetings are broadening
in number and topic as Christian leaders and workers in the recovery arena are
registering right now; and
· Working with
impaired physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, attorneys, and other
licensed workers. **
We may also offer a side trip to St. Johnsbury, Vermont
(about three hours away)—birthplace and boyhood home of A.A. cofounder Dr.
Robert Holbrook Smith—leaving Portland, Maine, on Sunday afternoon, September
8, and returning Tuesday evening, September 10, and allowing for two full days
of research and touring with Dick B. and Ken B. Here is the schedule of
meetings:
Other Meetings and Events with Dick B. and Ken B., September
6-11, 2013:
Fri., Sept. 6, 10:00 am to 6:30 pm:
Pre-conference personal and small-group meetings, meals, and
workshops available with Dick B. and Ken B.
Sun., Sept. 8, to Tues., Sept. 10:
Portland: Personal meetings with Dick B. & Ken B.;
and/or Possible side trip to Dr. Bob’s birthplace, St. Johnsbury, VT.
Wednesday, Sept. 11:
Portland: Morn./afternoon: pers. mtgs. w/Dick & Ken B.;
Evening: Dick B. speaking at regular A.A. meeting
To register for “The First International Alcoholics
Anonymous History Conference” (Admission is FREE!), or for more information
about the conference, please contact Dick B.’s son, Ken, via email at kcb00799@gmail.com or on his cell phone at
1-808-276-4945.
Please join us in Portland September 6-7, 2013!
Contact:
Dick B.
P.O. Box 837
Kihei, Hawaii
96753-0837
Ph/fax: (808)874-4876
dickb@dickb.com
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Paradise Research
Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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Disclaimer: ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS®, A.A.®, and Big Book® are registered
trademarks of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Dick B.'s web site,
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neither endorsed nor approved by nor associated or affiliated with Alcoholics
Anonymous World Services
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