Ops in attendance:  Amy, George, Sassy, and Tim
Non ops in attendance: Chuck, DougN, and Marigold
Partial attendance: Bob and Petite

George opened meeting with prayer at 11:08

Old Business

Approval of minutes
Tim pointed out that the minutes need to be changed to indicate that the suggested time limit for feedback meetings does not apply to noon meetings.

Amy moved that the minutes be approved with the above change.
Tim Seconded
The minutes were approved 6 (+)

Committee Reports
Jenel Gave the following summary report of the Web Committee Meeting held on September 2nd.
     1. Change of address for the website. A display page will be put up containing the new address to redirect you to the   
         web page. After 30 days, the display page will be discontinued.
     2. A Suggestions and Complaints section will be handled by email under a heading and link called, "For Suggestions 
         and Complaints" to go on the main page.
     3. A permanent announcement about 1st step shares will be posted on the main page of the web site.
     4. Text versions of scripts for downloading. A link to a script download page with instructions will be incorporated into 
         the main page.
     5. Email system. The current emailing system will be researched for setting up auto responses and redirecting mail to 
         personal addresses.

Tim gave an update on speaker meetings.  He has contacted JohnR to see if he would like to be one of the speakers but he hasn’t heard back yet.  He has a list of many other possibilities including both people from our group and nationally known people like Carnes and Weiss.

George gave the following update on the Steering Committee meeting:
     1. We met Sept.11 and are in final stages of finishing guidelines.  We will repost them and ask everyone to review on 
         website and provide feedback.   After a week or perhaps two of feedback, we will ask you all to vote on accepting  
         them.
     2. The next topic was our next venture, which is extracting the bylaws from the early minutes of our formal meetings.  
         This has been divided so all committee members get a fair share and I will do final organizing.  Once again we will  
         ask for comments and then vote so these become part of our consensus of operation.  So in next month and a half 
         or so we will have guidelines for meetings and Bylaws organized and posted at our website.
     3. Next topic was setting up automatic mailings replies to those who ask for directions to meetings and help with 
         mIRC.  As you heard the web committee is working on this and hopefully will have a solution soon.
     4. Last item was how to introduce speakers for step one and I’ll write a pop up that should do it.  David was to compile 
         suggestions as I recall.

Tim suggested that we spend some time discussing how the new time limits during feedback meetings were working out since last month we agreed to try them out for one month and then discuss the issue again.  George opened the floor for further comments or suggestions on the feedback meetings.

Amy stated that she thought the new system was working out well and that it appeared that for the most part everyone who wants to share has had an opportunity.

George reported that we have been getting seven to eight shares in which is one or two more than before.  He plans to change the format script to include the time limits since it seems to be working out well.  We will still remain flexible and make further changes if we need to down the road.
 

New Business

Chuck shared a concern about seeing a lot of references to religion in the meetings.  He thinks that references to God should be kept generic as it is done in the SLAA literature.  He feels that terms like “Lord” are specifically Christian and should be avoided.

George shared that in SLAA each individual may share any way they like.  This includes making references to religion or using the term “God” or “Lord” in their shares.  All members are free to “take what we want and leave the rest”.

Petite shared the following “I wanted to support the concept of take what you like in leave the rest.  When other's spiritual concept and terms do not match my own, I substitute words that fit for me.  The idea is for me to connect spiritually.”

Tim suggested that personal references to an individual’s HP be limited to their personal shares and not used in any opening or closing prayers made by the trusted servants.  He thinks that the serenity prayer is more appropriate than a personal prayer.

George stated that he did not feel that using the word “Lord” in his prayer made the prayer particularly Christian.  He said “we have had Jewish people and atheists and agnostics in this room and none of them has objected to our way of running meetings.”

Jenel shared the following:  “I think the phrase used in the 12 steps says it all..."God as we understand Him" and we each understand God a different way and that's okay.  We should respect that about each other and we should respect how others feel about religion too.  Some may wish not to talk about it.  Some may choose to talk about it but we each have our own personal relationship with a higher power and we are all here for the same reason.  We need to be united in recovery and not argue religion.

George asked if the group thought his prayer was too “Christian” and wanted to know what the group consensus was.

Doug, Petite and Amy all said they were fine with the prayer.
Tim said he was used to it but still feels it could upset others.
Chuck said he’s learned to accept the things he can not change and will keep coming back no matter how we pray.

Tim moved to close the meeting at 12:15
Jenel Seconded

George closed the meeting at 12:15 with the Serenity Prayer