Hi Fini, Husky and all,
LifeRing also has a book "How Was Your Week", which is intended for people who host the meeting. It would be helpful even if your not though or if you are thinking about it. The formatting isn't the best because it was scanned as two pages per page, but you can download the whole thing.
http://liferingrecovery.org/wp-conte...eRing-2003.pdf
I host an online meeting for LifeRing, but I get how a lot of people might prefer the face to face contact. I'm also starting up a f2f meeting, but doing that as a SMART meeting. There are already SMART in neighboring towns, so I figured better for people already doing that, plus easier to have backup for vacation and if I'm out of town for work.
I thought SMART was same thing with some type of requirement on sobriety time, but it's not. They don't have any time requirement. I'm doing the training right now. I have most of it done actually, but they have some chat room meetings for finishing up and they are schedule a few weeks out still. It's $75 to take their training. You can refund yourself out of meeting donation, if you want though (assuming you start a meeting, get people to show up and collect some donations). I'm thinking a lot more people go through the training, then get one up and running. It's pretty good material to go through though. Probably wouldn't be bad even if you just took it for personal growth experience or whatever you want to call it. I was a bit on the fence, if I would actually do it or not or how much effort I would put in at least. I'm sure that isn't too uncommon.
I was a little concerned that it would be a little to I don't know the right word, but “pushy” or trying to push their agenda. I like most of there stuff OK, but am not in love with all of the ideas. I think they use way too many achronyms. I find the use of achronyms a bit annoying in general and they kind of pile them on. It wasn't to pushy though. They do have a lot of stuff people can use if they want, but they don't expect everyone too. They also mention several times that meetings aren't suppose to be places for teaching others all about SMART. Basically they figure people are reasonably intelligent and can learn the SMART tools on there own, if they want to. Meetings are for support. Recovery is learned by living and doing, not by having someone teach you something. I felt better on hearing that. It's pretty much how a meeting I was hosting would end up anyway, so I guess it's good I fit the expectation. Lol.
I can't offer much on starting a face to face, since I am just in the process of doing it. I did get lucky on finding a place. I only called three of for different places and a bit of back and forth e-mails, but got one within a couple weeks. I hadn't really even started the full blown process. I can say this, if you are going to do it. Just do it. I have tendency to think about doing something, say starting a web page. I read all up on it. Learn some software, play around a bit, plan it all out in my mind over and over, different ways, but maybe never get around to actually doing it. For finding a meeting site I just called the close place to my house, that had a meeting room. They didn't have any openings the could do for a non-profit, but suggested a couple other place, once they knew what I was looking for. One was the place ended up with. I would have eventually, made a list of target sites, gone to a couple AA meeting to see if I could find someone friendly enough to give me a contact for whoever let them have the room, etc. Instead of doing all that (and not actually getting started), I got started. I also started with the most likely places. Even if you end up having to make a lot of calls to get someone to say “yes”, why not start with the ones that are the best prospects?
Anyway good luck to you Husky, if you do go down that path. It's not a bad one, for me anyway. I really think it helps with my own sobriety too.
Take care, Todd