Saturday Nite Jive is a group of Alcoholics Anonymous that has meetings on meets on Saturday and Wednesday nights in Boulder, Colorado.  We fully participate in our local Intergroup/Central Office and the General Service Structure of AA.

We have been meeting continuously since January of 1991.

The following information is as generally provided by Judy L. in a group history project she undertook a while ago:

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 the church where we planned to meet), Todd, Walt R.(Bing), Don J., Tom M., Lew G., Judy L., Janice H.. Although not all the original founders are involved in SNJ today, to the best of our knowledge, as of 2008, all are still sober.

Meeting Location

1^st United Methodist Church (first location)

1^st Baptist Church (second location-we moved to church in 2002)

Name Permutations of Group

Saturday Night Jive; Saturday Night Jive Beginners; Saturday Night Jive 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. After much discussion, it was decided that we wanted to do this in four main perspectives:

1. Feature a speaker's meeting 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 town.
2. 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. Meet in 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 Boulder)
4. Emphasize heavy involvement 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.  We built time into our format to encourage reports from our trusted servants and promote their visibility in the AA community.

At the 1st Meeting the speaker did not show due to a snowstorm so a visitor from California, Mike L., had 2 years and was asked to stand in to speak., as he was from out of town.  Approx 55 people attended. Attendance and expectations or the quality of our meeting(s) grew rapidly.

This meeting supported many local social activities for a few years, due to the social nature of the meeting, and the availability of a great 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). It was a big Success; Lots of work; Flooded the Church from a faulty dishwasher drain.

We added the Beginner Discussion portion of our meeting in 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 oportunities 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 it’s formats and group identity. Our Saturday meeting has always been a 1^1/2 hour meeting, and have always had a monthly Group Conscience after our regular meeting, on the 2^nd Saturday of the month.

Group Inventories have been held more or less routinely each year or year and ½. 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 homes.

The Story of Saturday Night Jive on Wednesday

 Approximately March of 1999, Chuck N., 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.  This was a great success.

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 2^nd Saturday of the month.

In August of 2001, the host Methodist church decided to reclaim their space for their purposes 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 1^st Baptist church at 13th and Pine, in Boulder. That 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.

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 beginners 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 are:

• The separate group business and the unified group conscience questions- aware of the 1^st tradition striving toward unity , 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.
• 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 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.

Update January, 2004- January 2008

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.