Meeting History

COLORADO AREA 10 ARCHIVES Date Jan 30, 2016

Submitted by Judy L.

GROUP HISTORY

Town: BOULDER

Area: 10 (Colorado) District: 24

GROUP #

Group Name: Saturday Night Jive

Date Began: January 13, 1991

Registered with GSO: Immediately upon forming.

Time and Date Group Meets: Saturday and Wednesday — (two meetings at the same time on each day. currently 7:00 PM on Wednesday; 7:30 PM Saturday

First Members of the Group: Mike from Ohio ( Janitor at Church), Todd, Walt Reynolds (Bing), Don Jenson, Tom Moore, Lew Grothe, Judy Lavezzi, Janice Hall. Although not all the original founders are involved in SNJ, to the best of our knowledge, as of 2021, all are still sober.

Meeting Location: 1st United Methodist Church ( first location) 1st Baptist Church — also known now as Pine Street Church. Name Changes of Group: Saturday Night Jive; Saturday Night Jive Beginners; Saturday Night on Wednesdays closed; Saturday Night Jive on Wednesday (Beginners Open Discussion).

Group Highlights and Activities (Brief History)

This meeting was founded to bring the broadest possible AA message of Hope to the people in Boulder on a Saturday night; allowing for families to attend, and to be centrally located, so that newcomers could get access to the meeting. After much discussion, it was decided that we wanted to do this in four main directives:

1. To bring the experience of those with a bit of time and program experience to Boulder, from a wider geographic pool, due to the small town nature of our Boulder AA.
2. To provide childcare (one of the founders had a small child, was a single parent, and her mission was to assist parents to get to a meeting)
3. To maintain a central location for the drunks who would need to be close to bus transportation, and convenient to the homeless shelter and ARC facilities. (downtown)
4. To be heavily involved in AA service, and AA service structure, by encouraging a maximum number of people the take opportunity to be INVOLVED in the AA organization, with service at whatever level they were able.

At the 1st Meeting the speaker did not show due to a snowstorm, a visitor from California, Mike L., had 2 years and was asked to stand in to speak, as he was from out of town. Approximately 50 people attended. Attendance and expectation grew locally and rapidly.

This group supported local social activities for a few years, due to the social nature of the meeting, and the availability of the first church home facility. We held a formal New Years sit down dinner, speaker and dance as benefits for the new Boulder County Central Office (Intergroup). Big Success; Lots of work; Flooded the Church. We added the Beginner Discussion portion approximately 1995, following group inventory discussion of what could we be doing better.

Highlights: We always have participated in General Service; local Intergroup; and have maintained plentiful opportunities for service positions; sending representatives to the various service bodies. We have incorporated service position identification into the format to bring visibility and awareness to the greater local Boulder membership.

This meeting has tried to be stable and consistent throughout its formats and group identity. We have always been a 1 and 1/2 hour meeting, and have always had a monthly Group Conscience after our regular meeting, on the 2nd Saturday monthly. We have held workshops sporadically.

Group Inventories have been held more or less routinely each year or year and 1/2. These have always brought a new sense of unity and commitment to our groups purpose of carrying the message of various recovered AA membership to the community. Usually we have asked one of our past delegates to moderate for us. These are held in members home.

The Story of Wednesday Night Jive

Approximately March/1999, Chuck Nobles, a transplanted New Mexico AA and his AA wife Jennie felt a need for conversation and greater communication in the Saturday Night family; a better understanding of each other. They asked the group to support a new midweek discussion meeting. It was decided to begin a new midweek (Wed) discussion meeting, where all who wished would share, and meeting length would be as long as meeting needed. The meeting grew rapidly, and was made into a closed discussion-meeting format, after months of discussion, by group business meeting, and approved by the Group Conscience of the larger group..

In 2000 following yet another Group Inventory, a beginners meeting was added on Wednesday night at the same time as the closed discussion. It was to be an open discussion, strongly formatted like the other meetings of Jive, with a monthly leader chosen by a trusted servant responsible for that commitment.

It is expected that each separate meeting hold their own business meeting to handle housekeeping issues, while the Group’s Conscience is held with all meetings present on the 2nd Saturday of the month.

In August of 2001, the host church decided by Church Board decision, to reclaim their space for their youth group on Wednesday nights. A quickly formed ad hoc committee began a search for a new facility. It was a time of uncertainty, as we did not know if both nights would move, or if only Wednesday night would find a new home in the allotted three weeks. We worried about the outcome. At the same time, the meeting space for the larger Saturday night meeting was also becoming uncertain.

In early spring of 2002, we found our new church home to be a welcoming and gracious 1st Baptist church at 13th and Pine, in Boulder.. Moving here was a grace-filled event for us, as real estate costs in this town are extremely high, and space is at a premium. We had been able to fulfill our desire to remain close enough to the downtown to serve the population of the area. We have always been a resource for the local detox center, the homeless shelter, and street people; being close to the center of transportation was our wish.

We began at our new location with a pot luck celebration and received enthusiastic response. A year later, the pastor greeted the group at the beginning of the meeting, and we were thanked for our work to help in the church community. The Church itself has now renamed itself as the Pine Street Church, but has continued to be warm and extremely generous to our meeting, even with ongoing parking tensions and sometimes unruly members.

Wednesday night Jive was given both an upper floor room for the beginners meeting and both meetings struggled with the week to week communications between floors and efforts to remain unified between what was now 4 partially separate meetings. Our unity efforts have had to work hard to keep dissension and leadership issues in balance. The beginner’s meeting grew so rapidly that the beginner’s portion of Wednesday jive asked for a larger space, and got it. They moved into the basement large meeting room, and exploded into a meeting of 40-50 people seeking a solution and sponsorship.

The September 2002 Group Inventory discussed the problems related to success size-parking-coffee-commitment-communication-sponsorship-format changes-noise during the break-irresponsible members. No new meetings were started, but some fine-tuning was suggested; to be carried out through later group consciences.

Our problems with having four meetings and one group were:

1. The separate group business and the unified group conscience questions- aware of the 1st tradition striving toward unity,
2. and the separate need for business to be conducted particular to each of the 4 meetings has been brought up; and we are currently discussing ways of clarifying our history for newer members, maintaining the integrity of the purpose of the Saturday Night Jive, and ironing out the details of good relationships with each other and our host church.
3. The largest problem seems to be educating our own members in this town where so much of the population is young, and ill informed about the membership and nature of the fundamentals of Alcoholics Anonymous, and a relatively high level of transience in the general AA population.

Our largest asset is also those same youngsters with a passion for the future of AA, and a willingness to show up with enthusiasm.

January, 2004- January 2005:

We tentatively have sponsored a dance. We tentatively sponsored a pot luck for the beginners meetings; as our membership continues, and changes, we hopefully go forward in God’s own grace.

January 2008

Due to the evolving nature of the 2 Wednesday evening groups, we formally separated into three autonomous groups in the first month of 2008. One of the meetings is a part of Saturday night Jive, and the others are independent, gone with the blessings of the meeting. There is now a 7:00 PM autonomous meeting, still part of the original Jive group, called our 7 PM Closed Discussion meeting (Jive). We have moved around the church, just grateful for their having us, even in the overly cold/hot little chapel in the back. The separate Wednesday Night Beginners meeting is at 7:30 in the basement. That meeting is going to continue the potluck tradition. All meetings are currently contented, and enjoying ongoing popularity in town.

In 2011 We remain vital and busy with sponsorship and involvement in Intergroup, Night watch, District and we hope to continue to be a welcoming Group to those who suffer from alcoholism.

In 2014, we remain at the same church, and continue our traditions of hosting a workshop once or twice a year for the benefit of the district AA members especially, and for group identity and community. The church itself has been renamed as the Pine Street Church. 1327 Pine, but their commitment to us has been steadfast and generous to our space needs. Entrance around the alley.

2016

We are having our 25th anniversary as a group this January, and while many of us are is various stages of sobriety, and although we have sometimes thought that the light we carry grew dim, (usually when people didn’t fulfill their commitments ) we have somehow come through intact and enthusiastic for the future of our meeting under God’s own grace.