Carrying The Message: Dr Bob… Prince of Step 12 By Dick B. via Big Book Sponsorship
GNN Note – I heard reported that Dr. Bob handed out more then 5,000 copies of Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. If you’ve not read this short, 164 page book, you should. It will change your life, it certainly had a massive impact on mine. This was one of the main books the very early AA meetings used as a guide to help stay sober and bring others to the Light. / END
Is A.A. a religion? Is it a medical treatment program? Bill Wilson cautioned AAs to remember that clergymen and physicians were the “experts”; and then cautioned that AAs were merely their assistants. Is A.A. today, then, still a Twelve-Step program where the assistants emphasize love and service transmitted by one recovered alcoholic to another who still suffers? I believe it depends on how well we know our purpose.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob were very clear about the primary purpose of the Fellowship.
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We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
Bill Wilson wrote: “Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 2001, p. 20). Dr. Bob declared in his last address that our Twelve Steps, “when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service” (RHS, The A.A. Grapevine, 1951, p. 43). And Dr. Bob was the pioneer who devoted himself absolutely, completely, and continuously to helping others recover by the power of God.
Bill Wilson himself called his partner Dr. Bob “the prince of all twelfth-steppers.” The same Dr. Bob who, to 1950, the year of his death, “carried the A.A. message to more than 5,000 alcoholic men and women, and to all these he gave his medical services without thought of charge.” Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 2001, p. 171.
More specifically, Bill said this about our primary purpose and Dr. Bob’s role and accomplishments in carrying out that purpose:
