Helpful Guidelines For New Meetings:

1. STARTING A NEW MEETING
   • The program grows because someone has a need to begin a new meeting and tries to meet that need.
2. LOCATE A FACILITY
   • A group needs a safe place to meet. Groups have found space in recovery centers, churches, parks, schools, hospitals, wellness/health centers, recovery book stores, or public service organizations at reasonable rents. Some meetings have started in someone’s home, but usually found the need to move into a larger, “neutral space” within a few months.
3. GETTING STARTED
   • If possible, you may want to get a commitment from two or three other program people to show up for a few meetings to insure the new group’s early survival. Meetings registered with the ACA WSO will be published in their online international fellowship Meeting Directory which will help people find the meeting. Once registered, reach out to acaoregon@gmail.com to have this meeting information published to our meeting list as well.
4. MEETING FORMATS
   • You can find a number of handouts and a meeting sample format on our Resources & Links page, or from this page on AdultChildren.org. You may also refer to the ACA Fellowship Textbook for other format examples.
5. MEETINGS ARE AUTONOMOUS (TRADITION FOUR)
   • Each meeting makes its own decisions on policy in keeping with the 12 Traditions. The Traditions provide guidelines for group conduct just as the Steps provide guidelines for individual recovery.
6. MEETING OFFICERS
   • Each meeting provides opportunities for service which keeps the meeting operational. In a healthy meeting, several people take on a number of small responsibilities or a service role to make sure the work to maintain a meeting gets done.
7. LITERATURE
   • Each meeting determines the books, tapes, flyers, or pamphlets appropriate to its literature table as each meeting is autonomous. In keeping with Tradition Six, “An ACA group never endorses, finances or lends our name to any facility or outside enterprise lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.” Always keep the Newcomer in mind and select appropriate literature to provide ACA information to any new member. You can find more information on where to locate or purchase ACA literature on this page.
8. ATTRACTION
   • Ours is a program of attraction, not promotion. If ACA meetings already exist in the area, you may want to distribute a flyer announcing your new meeting at them. If they don’t, you may want to distribute flyers with permission at other 12-Step meetings and invite a few close friends.
9. NEWCOMERS
   • The love and respect we offer to Newcomers is a reflection of the love and respect we are learning to offer ourselves.
10. ANONYMITY
    • Anonymity allows us to share our feelings and to experience an “Identity” apart from a “label”. “Who you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here,” is a good rule to follow in creating a safe place to share our feelings and recovery without fear of gossip, retaliation, or of our anonymity being broken.
11. CROSSTALK
    • Crosstalk is interrupting, giving advice, or making comments about another person’s sharing. It is also talking to someone or making distracting noise during sharing time. In ACA, we don’t crosstalk. When others listen to us, just listen, our reality, our truth, our ideas, our feelings, our self-image, our beings are affirmed. When we focus only on our own recovery (keeping out of other people’s), we are taking responsibility for our own lives. We do this by presenting all statements in the “I”, first-person, form.
12. SAFETY POLICIES
    • At a regular business meeting draw up your meeting plan for what to do with disruptions at meetings according to group consensus. Some ideas you may consider:
      1. Keep Tradition One: "Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on ACA unity."
      2. Ask those who disrupt to leave.
      3. Ask those who disrupt to take one week (2 weeks, 4 weeks…) away from this meeting.
      4. Offer those who disrupt an opportunity to earn their way back into the meeting by making amends to the group and by performing a designated service.
      5. Ban individuals who continue to disrupt the meeting.
      6. Escort a person who is disruptive from the meeting. Escorting is done by a group of meeting members designated to do this as determined in a Business Meeting.
      7. Shut down the meeting immediately and have all members depart for the common welfare.
      8. Call emergency services if there is clear and present danger to members' lives or health.
13. OTHER PROBLEMS
    • When problems occur for which this text has no answers, check the Twelve Traditions and present the problem in a Business Meeting for a group conscience. The ACA Fellowship Textbook may offer some insight as well.
    • If your group is still unclear on what to do, you may contact your local Intergroup or ACA WSO for suggestions. No matter the source of where you obtain your suggestions, it is ultimately your meeting that will decide what is best to do for it’s own welfare.