Our Personal Efforts Now to Update and Expand Participation in the Portland Maine A.A. History Conference Sept 6-7

Help us grow in understanding, knowledge, and enthusiasm for helping suffering drunks and drug addicts; in defining the niche in recovery for those who depend upon Almighty God for help; and in sharing the many ways these open ideas are growing and can grow today.

We now have groups and individuals of one persuasion and area of service or another all over the United States and in other countries. Many have graciously listed themselves as participants in International Christian Recovery Coalition. But that list needed more details, more accurate identifications, more useful contact information, and more ways in which it can be used to serve.

Now with the International Christian Recovery Coalition Conference in Portland Maine in September  6-7, we saw a great need for updating our participant list. This is so that people in one state or country can readily reach and identify those in another .Another reason was to make available the wide variety of those deeply interested in recovery matters, in Alcoholics Anonymous History, in the Christian Recovery Movement, and in showing people today exactly how present-day A.A. and its conference-approved literature fully support our widespread and growing effort to carve out the niche in recovery for the thousands who want to depend on God for recovery, to learn how it was done in early A.A., how its roots preceded A.A. by almost 100 years, and why those pieces of healing, recovery, spiritual, guidance, and reliance information should be readily known today.

And should be applied by those who finally learn--in the midst of more and more secularization, idolatry, and just plain nonsense gods and "spirituality"--that the A.A. Solution (on page 25 of the Big Book) has always offered hope to the suffering; has charted the path for those who want God's help, and is as applicable if known today as its has been since A.A.'s founding in 1935 to and including 2013.

To that end, my son Ken is contacting each of the individual asking them for renewed and updated listings; showing them the needed mission; and inviting widespread participation in the Maine Inernational Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference.

Quite rapidly, the diverse contributions of the history conference participants are growing day by day. We have doctors, psychiatrists, clergy, pastors, recovery pastors, recovery leaders, treatment program owners and directors, counselors, sober living leaders, impaired professionals groups, leaders familiar with the Salvation Army, the Rescue Missions, the Young Men's Christian Association, the great evangelists like Dwight L. Moody, Congregationalism, Christian Endeavor Society, the Christian upbringing of A.A.'s founders, how  those men got sober, where the original A.A. program came from, the successes it achieved. And how the field is wide open for those who are thankful for what they have received and given in 12 Step work, positive about God's role in their work, and desirous of having freedom of viewpoint, belief, expression, and techinque returned to those things which put A.A. on the map beginning in 1935.

We will have speakers, leaders, and particpants telling about Quiet  Time, about Conference-approved approaches to the Big Book--Steps--and Fellowships, about eliminating the barriers of anger and distrust that arise when people in our fellowship try to judge, censor, and eliminate those who have different backgrounds and beliefs than they do today.

Please respond when you hear from my son Ken, phone him at 808 275 4945 if you like, contact me when convenient, and let us have your believing, wisdom, experience, solutions, techniques, and support based on A.A.'s own, rich history--so long resting in the shadows and in dire need of revival today.

God Bless, Dick B.

Gloria Deo