If you or your group/meeting is still feeling unsure about how to obtain a group conscience or run a business meeting, we encourage you to reach out first to other trusted servants and groups/meetings in your district, region, or another district for support, or to your district to see if they can assist you with finding someone who can serve as a “service sponsor” to guide you and your group/meeting through this process.
This “Service Sponsor” might be someone with some experience attending or facilitating business meetings who can answer some questions you may still have after reading these FAQ, can provide more specific examples of how other groups/meetings in your district or other districts run their group conscience business meetings, and explain anything else that they have personally learned from their own experiences in holding and/or attending business meetings for groups/meetings in your district specifically, since every district and every meeting/group has its own unique characteristics that you may find helpful to learn about in the context of holding a business meeting and seeking a group conscience.
A Service Sponsor with more experience holding business meetings can even step in and assist your group/meeting with holding or facilitating the actual business meeting if the trusted servants in your group/meeting are less familiar or comfortable with business meetings. Or you might sit in on another meeting/group in your district’s business meeting to learn how they operate before you help facilitate your meeting/group’s business meeting, if you’re aware of a meeting that has trusted servants knowledgeable about business meeting etiquette and protocol.
Regardless of what you might see in other meetings/groups, or hear from your district or read hear from MA World Services, the MA Fourth Tradition states that meetings are autonomous, which means that ultimately it is MA meetings and groups who get to decide how they want to function. So MA World Services does not want anything that is written in these FAQ to change how your meetings/groups already obtain a group conscience and hold business meetings if it is working well already for your group(s)!
These are suggestions being offered to those meetings/groups seeking suggestions, or asking questions, or who may not even know where to begin. If you and/or your meeting/group still have questions after reading these FAQ, and after hopefully seeking support from other meetings/groups and other trusted servants in your district (or in another district, if your meeting is not part of a district) MA World Services remains available as a resource and to answer any questions that you may have about holding a business meeting, how to obtain a group conscience, what this Motion or vote is about, or anything else. We are here to help! [email protected]