Call
To Action • PI Suggestions
• Service
By Mail/Email
In Overeaters Anonymous, the Twelve Steps serve
as the spiritual principles that support our personal recovery from compulsive
overeating. The Twelve Traditions aid
us, individually and collectively, in maintaining unity of purpose within the
Fellowship. The Twelve Concepts of OA Service, adopted by the World Service
Business Conference (WSBC) in 1994, help us apply the Steps and Traditions
in our service work, which is an important part of the OA program. The Concepts
define and guide the practices of the service structures that conduct the business
of OA.
These Concepts depict the chain of delegated
responsibility we use to provide service throughout the world.
Although they focus on OA world services, the Concepts direct
all OA's trusted servants to well-considered actions for group
participation, decision making, voting and the expression of
minority opinions. The Twelve Concepts support our primary purpose
of carrying OA's message of recovery to the still-suffering compulsive
overeater.
The Twelve Concepts of OA Service
- The ultimate responsibility and authority
for OA world services reside in the collective conscience
of our whole Fellowship.
- The OA groups have delegated to the
World Service Business Conference the active maintenance
of our world services; thus, the World Service Business Conference
is
the voice, authority and effective conscience of OA as a
whole.
- The right of decision, based on trust,
makes effective leadership possible.
- The right of participation ensures
equality of opportunity for all in the decision-making process.
- Individuals have the right of appeal
and petition in order to ensure that their opinions and personal
grievances will be carefully considered.
- The World Service Business Conference
has entrusted the Board of Trustees with the primary responsibility
for the administration of Overeaters Anonymous.
- The Board of Trustees has legal rights
and responsibilities accorded to them by OA Bylaws, Subpart
A; the rights and responsibilities of the World Service Business
Conference are accorded to it by Tradition and by OA Bylaws,
Subpart B.
- The Board of Trustees has delegated
to its Executive Committee the responsibility to administer
the OA World Service Office.
- Able, trusted servants, together with
sound and appropriate methods of choosing them, are indispensable
for effective functioning at all service levels.
- Service responsibility is balanced
by carefully defined service authority; therefore, duplication
of efforts is avoided.
- Trustee administration of the World
Service Office should always be assisted by the best standing
committees, executives, staffs and consultants.
- The spiritual foundation for OA service
ensures that:
(a) no OA committee or service body
shall ever become the seat of perilous wealth or power;
(b) sufficient operating funds, plus an ample reserve, shall be OA's prudent
financial principle;
(c) no OA member shall ever be placed in a position of unqualified authority;
(d) all important decisions shall be reached by discussion, vote and, whenever
possible, by substantial unanimity;
(e) no service action shall ever be personally punitive or an incitement
to public controversy; and
(f) no OA service committee or service board shall ever perform acts of government,
and each shall always remain democratic in thought and action.
For more information about the Twelve
Concepts, read the pamphlet The
Twelve Concepts of OA Service, available from our
online catalog. |
