Want to Start a LifeRing Meeting?
Become a LifeRing Convenor
Your Roadmap to Becoming a LifeRing Convenor
Are you in recovery and looking for a meaningful way to give back? Becoming a LifeRing Convenor is a powerful way to do just that. Convenors are the heart of the LifeRing community, bringing people together for weekly meetings—either in person or online—to support each other on their recovery journeys.
This roadmap will guide you through the process, from eligibility to the rewarding experience of becoming a convenor.
Step 1: Meet the Requirements
Before you get started, make sure you meet the basic criteria to become a convenor:
- Continuous Sobriety: You must have at least six months of continuous sobriety from alcohol and illicit or non-medically indicated drugs.
- Familiarity with the 3-S Philosophy: Understand and embrace LifeRing’s Sobriety, Secularity, and Self-Empowerment philosophy.
- Willingness to Give Back: Feel a genuine desire to support others in their recovery by sharing your time and experience.
Step 2: Educate Yourself
While there is no test to become a convenor, you need to be knowledgeable about the LifeRing approach.
- Attend Lifering Meetings: The first and most crucial step is to regularly attend LifeRing meetings as a participant. This will help you understand the format, principles, and culture of the organization. You'll see how active convenors host meetings and how the group interacts. You can find meetings on the Lifering Meetings Calendar.
- Read the Literature: The primary resource for convenors is the handbook "How Was Your Week?" This book, along with others, is available in the new convenor's "Starter Kit."
- Know Your Stuff: Familiarize yourself with additional LifeRing Convenor Resources:
- Expectations: Convenors are representatives of LifeRing and are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that is consistent with LifeRing's mission and values. Convenors are peers in recovery, not professionals. As such, convenors do not give advice, although they may talk about their own experiences in recovery and share resources as appropriate.
- Start the meeting on time.
- Encourage participants to share and crosstalk as a means of building connection.
- Facilitate shares and manage time to ensure people who would like to share have time to do so.
- Facilitate crosstalk and ensure it is respectful, supportive, and nonjudgmental.
- Direct participants who appear to be in crisis to the appropriate crisis resources.
- Redirect individuals whose shares go off-topic or become inconsistent with the goal of the meeting.
- Protect the safety of meeting participants and ensure compliance with LifeRing policies and practices.
- Close the meeting.
Step 3: Get Started
When you're ready to start your journey, it's time to connect with the LifeRing Service Center.
- Contact your Regional Representative: LifeRing Regional Reps are your support team! Reach out by email to the Regional Rep in your territory or contact the Online Rep to start the onboarding process. Provide your full name, location (city and state), a frequently checked email address, and phone number.
- Request a Starter Kit: The Service Center will send you a Meeting Starter Kit with essential literature, supplies, and information to help you begin. For online meetings, they will also set you up with a Zoom connection.
- Receive Your Charter: Once your meeting is up and running, you will receive a personalized LifeRing Meeting Charter*, which grants you permission to use the LifeRing name and logo to promote your meeting.
Step 4: Convene A Meeting
As a convenor, your role is to act as a peer and host, bringing people together and keeping the meeting focused on recovery. Your responsibilities may include:
- Local Meetings: Find a suitable meeting space, set up the room, provide literature, welcome attendees, facilitate discussions, and manage the flow of the meeting.
- Online Meetings: Host video or chat meetings, moderate email lists, and contribute to online forums.
- Connecting with the Community: Post flyers, connect with local treatment professionals, and act as a representative for LifeRing in your community.
Step 5: Stay Connected and Grow
Being a convenor is a continuous learning experience. LifeRing provides a robust support network to help you succeed.
- Utilize Your Resources: Stay in contact with your Regional Representative and other convenors.
- Join the Email List: The LifeRing Office will add you to the convenors' email list, where you can share ideas and find support.
- Participate: Consider attending convenor workshops, participating in the annual LifeRing Congress, or even serving on the LifeRing Board of Directors.
By following this roadmap, you'll be well on your way to becoming a LifeRing Convenor and a vital part of the recovery community. The personal satisfaction of helping others, along with the strengthening of your own recovery, is the greatest reward.
Pick a Meeting Format!
Local Meeting Format | Online Meeting Format
LifeRing offers a variety of recovery meeting formatsLifeRing offers over 150 online and local meetings every week in a variety of formats. You pick! Check-in: How Was Your Week? (HWYW) | HWYW meetings explore current and upcoming weeks. New convenors are encouraged to either start or adopt a HWYW meeting. Co-Occurring Disorders: These meetings allow participants to explore how additional conditions impact their recovery. Convenors are themselves diagnosed with co-occurring disorders. Family & Friends: Shares and crosstalk explore the needs of people who on family and friends who care about someone in substance use recovery. Focus: Recovery meetings for people with specific commonalities including: • LGBTQIA+ • Veterans • Co-Occurring Disorders • Family & Friends • Seniors • SUD-related Medical Conditions • CPS • Survivors of Domestic Violence • Creativity Topic: Focus of discussion varies. This sounds easy, but this can be a tough format for a new convenor. Workbook: Ongoing discussion of a section of the Recovery by Choice workbook. |
LifeRing Secular Recovery Meeting Charter
LifeRing, Inc. hereby grants the (Local Meeting Location or Online Meeting Number) this charter to display the LifeRing logo and to use the name, “LifeRing Secular Recovery” and any short forms thereof, to promote sobriety, secularity, and self-empowerment. This charter is valid so long as the Meeting remains actively dedicated to these goals.
For the duration of this charter, LifeRing Secular Recovery Service Center promises to list the Meeting on the LifeRing meeting list, to notify the Meeting of any publications or events that may affect it, to include the Meeting in the democratic internal decision-making process of LifeRing, Inc. pursuant to the LifeRing Bylaws, and to serve the Meeting’s needs to the best of its ability.
In turn, the Meeting promises to keep the LSR Service Center informed of the current name, address, phone number, and if applicable, email address of at least one contact person for the Meeting; to notify the Center promptly of any change in its meeting time, place, Internet address if applicable, or description; and to support LifeRing, Inc. financially to the extent the Meeting sees fit.
LifeRing, Inc., owner of the LifeRing logo and of the service mark “LifeRing Secular Recovery,” is chartered as a nonprofit corporation to serve people overcoming substance use challenges, and the general public, by organizing meetings dedicated to sobriety, secularity, and self-empowerment, and by providing educational information toward that end. By “sobriety,” LifeRing means complete abstinence from alcohol and illicit or non-medically indicated drugs.