2019-05-27 Courage Roundup Planning Meeting

2019 Courage Roundup Planning Meeting

2019-05-27 6:30pm, at St Matthew's United Parlour

Present: Dan M, John B, Alan, Judy, Michelle, Mike, Dale, John, Norman, Barry, Mark.

Open Vs Closed Meetings

Discussion: having meetings that are closed, to only LGBTQ.

Agreement: announcing it Friday evening and Saturday morning, should be sufficient.

But how would we do this? We’ll do “Option 1” — having closed meetings for those who identify as LGBT2 and an open meeting for others. A) put it in the schedule and B) read it out loud on the Friday night and the Saturday morning together session, for example, “This is closed to those who identify as male and gay.”

We could also do B - have the chair at each meeting to announce that it is an LGBT2 space.

Higher Power Word

Whomever is chairing can use whichever word they use for a Higher Power / God they want to use.

We can use the phrase, “We recognize and celebrate Higher Power in all its forms.”

So in the Friday evening announcement we’ll encourage the chairs to use whatever word for their Higher Power — and gender for God — that they want.

As usual, we’ll be closing the meetings with the Serenity Prayer, not the Lord’s Prayer.

Or we could use the Statement of Responsibility

JUDY will send some secular examples to John.

Workshops

• Coming Out In Recovery
• The meaning of “Higher Power”
• Aging In Recovery

Agreement, these are great topics for workshops.

Speakers

Ask Mirabel again maybe. It would also be fine to have some more local people.

We should leave one space open for an amazing speaker who will probably appear.

Promotions

• Social media
• Dan is going to ignore protocols of NA vs AA being invited and will invite the NA people, making it clear that this is an AA Round Up, not an NA one.
• DAN will ask Radical Faeries Canada, Mainely Men, Maine Gaynet to announce it at their meetings.

JOHN will send information about inexpensive rooms.

EVERYONE should gently spread the word to their social media networks and ask 12-step people in those to spread the word to their groups.

Dan has words that he uses in a variety of situations if you're having trouble coming up with invitation words.

Q: Do we want this event to grow beyond what it is? 100? 250? No. 50 probably should be our max, with some wiggle room for those that register and don’t show up.

Other Business

Registration start time: as currently on the schedule is probably good.

Decorations: Yes - we want some. But too many balloons is a little tacky and not environmentally great. We’ll have some pride flags.

MARK will bring the self standing Pride Flags.

Planning meeting closed at 7:35