Step 12 Questions: Service, Your Story and Sponsoring
These Step 12 questions help you see how far you have come and turn that into service. There are five: how your life is different, who needs your story, a service commitment, sponsoring, and where you still aren’t living the principles. The last one is usually the most important.
Write your answers out. Then talk them over with your sponsor, who can tell you whether you are ready to take on more or need to slow down.
1. How is your life different now from when you started Step One?
Make two short lists: then and now. Sleep, work, money, family, faith, fear, honesty. Be specific.
Guidance: This is the spiritual awakening the step talks about. For most people it is not one dramatic moment. It is a long list of small changes they only notice when they look back. Thank God for each one.
2. Who in your life needs to hear your story?
Think of one or two people. Someone at work who drinks too much. A relative. A newer person at your meeting. Someone at church who is hiding something.
Guidance: You don’t have to fix them. Your job is to be honest about your own life: what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now. The Big Book’s chapter Working With Others (pages 89 to 103, 4th edition) has practical advice. Don’t preach, and let them decide.
3. What service commitment could you take on at your home group?
Coffee. Chairs. Greeter. Literature. Secretary. Pick one you can actually keep for six months or a year.
Guidance: Small, steady service is better than big promises. It also gets you to meetings on the days you’d rather stay home. Consider one at church as well.
4. Is anyone asking you to sponsor them?
If yes, have you worked all twelve steps yourself? Have you talked it over with your own sponsor? Have you reread Working With Others?
Guidance: Sponsoring is walking someone through the steps the way you were walked through them. Keep your own sponsor while you do it. If you are not ready, say so kindly and help them find someone who is.
5. Where are you still not practicing these principles: work, money, home?
Go area by area. At work, are you honest about your hours? With money, are you paying what you owe and giving? At home, are you patient, present, kind?
Guidance: Home is often the hardest. Ask the people you live with. Their answer may sting, but it is the most useful inventory you’ll get. What you find goes into your nightly review and, where needed, a quick amends.
Before you call Step 12 done
The checks asked before the step is marked complete:
- Are you carrying the message to others?
- Is service a regular part of your life now?
A verse to keep in mind
“Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
The full step is on the Step 12 page, with more Scripture on the Step 12 verses page. To look back over the whole path, see all twelve steps.
Talk it through with Jimmy or Sarah — first month free
Jimmy and Sarah are AI sponsors who know the Twelve Steps and the Bible. They'll listen, walk the steps with you, and keep pointing you to real people: a meeting, a sponsor, a church.
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