What do you personally see as the difference between a home group, a group, and a meeting?
Is there a difference in your responsibility or behavior with each of these?
In what ways do strong home groups contribute to our common welfare?
How does a home group help you to gain a sense of belonging and purpose?
We proposed the topic of Infrastructure in 2004 because of the input we continually heard from members, groups, areas, and regions about the challenges they were having in providing services to their local communities. These challenges seemed to be a result of committees trying to operate in a service structure that doesn’t necessarily allow for things such as the ability to easily communicate and cooperate within that structure. We asked members to first look at what is working in the service structure, in local groups, and with individual members. The solutions identified seemed to point to the need for our service structure to operate in a more cooperative and efficient fashion. The goals of an area service committee, for example, were not listed as the problem. The problems that seemed to be challenging local service efforts were subcommittees duplicating service efforts (e.g., three different people, who haven’t talked to each other, responding to a call from a local high school) or members volunteering for commitments and then becoming so frustrated and overwhelmed that they leave those commitments after receiving no support or training. The next step in these discussions really started to ask members to examine the system in place for carrying NA’s message. We asked members to think about whether or not the current service structure in their local NA community is best suited to carrying the message, and what about the current structure could be better suited to carrying the message. Again, it became clear that our challenge is not in clarifying the goal of our service efforts; it’s in how we reach that goal. Members reiterated this by listing the need for more attractive service meetings, stronger groups, frequent inventories, stronger communication, open-mindedness, and knowledge of the traditions and concepts.
Most of us in Narcotics Anonymous are passionate about carrying NA’s message to suffering addicts. What we seem to need is guidance about how to focus that passion so that our service efforts can be more productive, creative, and attractive.
This is where the topic of Our Service System came from. There seemed to be a need to have a “holistic discussion” about how the various “levels” of service (groups, areas, regions, and zones) relate to each other, the ways in which subcommittees operate within an area, and how neighboring areas communicate and cooperate with each other. The Area Planning Tool, presented with the Public Relations Handbook, is one way world services has tried to help areas address this need for more effective planning and coordination of services. Yet, this tool cannot be useful without local discussions about how we can better work together to carry NA’s message.
The theme of this cycle’s Issue Discussion Topics is It’s All About Carrying the Message, and asking ourselves who is not getting NA’s message seems to be a necessary question. Our discussions about a group’s atmosphere of recovery already identified the need to reach people from various racial and ethnic groups, as well as young people, professionals, and people with clean time, but how can we do this? And how can we begin an ongoing discussion about how to reach more people in our communities who aren’t in our meetings? The discussion questions for this topic focus on ways groups can begin this discussion and start addressing this important aspect of the way we carry NA’s message.
The conversations we’ve had over the past four years about a group’s atmosphere of recovery have reinforced the need to build on our existing strengths. We know that there is a need for basic tools at the group level, but the importance of strong home groups really seems to resonate with what members are actually doing to carry NA’s message.
The discussion questions ask us to take a closer look at what we are already doing and how we could possibly do it better. Having a conversation about what a strong home group means to you, how you are building strong home groups, and how those groups are functioning can only help us better carry NA’s message.
What is infrastructure? Basically, it is our service structure and the system in place to help us carry the message of recovery. It is the group, area, region, and committees and how they relate to each other. It is the framework that supports what we do in NA.
In our efforts to coordinate discussion within the fellowship, we thought this might be a good opportunity to share a unique global perspective with you. It has become especially clear that our fellowship’s infrastructure is in need of some attention. We have common problems—whether in rural communities or large metropolitan areas, whether our local fellowship is made up of newly clean members or members with longtime recovery. We hear the same things from members throughout the world as we heard from delegates in their regional reports to the World Service Conference:
We all know that if there were easy answers to our infrastructure weaknesses we probably would have found them already. Discussing local infrastructure with other members may not produce immediate solutions, but as we know—not everything of value is quick or tangible. Sometimes the creativity we need to actually solve our problems can come from having a real discussion outside of the normal business of our group, area, regional, or committee meetings. Just think about the ways our personal recovery has evolved through honest sharing and listening to what others have to say. Solutions come over time and instant gratification does not always serve us in recovery or in service. This much is clear: in order for us to make NA’s message truly available to any addict seeking it, our fellowship’s infrastructure will have to become steady and reliable. It will take all of our many ideas, and our various perspectives to begin the hard work of strengthening our infrastructure.
quoted from: http://www.na.org/infrastructure.htm
NA’s public image is often directly dependent on the strength and stability of our fellowship’s infrastructure. When we conducted the Public Relations Roundtable meetings with professionals who interface with our fellowship, their concerns sounded familiar:
These are only examples of how professionals see us and don’t even include the difficultly most of us face with NA’s public image when trying to find a meeting facility or start a new H&I panel. Whether it’s a professional considering sending an addict to one of our meetings or a high school administrator taking a chance with a presentation to their student body, a positive public image is crucial to our primary purpose. We feel that it is time to begin squarely facing some of the messages we’ve been putting out to the public. Our relationship with the public is something we cannot avoid. We are not a secret society—we are an effective and viable solution to drug addiction and it’s time we consistently behave that way. The first step is being honest about the challenges we face in our own local communities, which is the place where practical solutions can arise. As our literature says, “if a solution isn’t practical then it isn’t spiritual.”
quoted from: http://www.na.org/publicimage.htm