The Orleans Men’s Big Book Meeting was founded on July 10th, 1989 and originally met at the Club Dry Dock. After about ten years or so, the meeting moved to our current location at the Federated Church of Orleans. The meeting has always met on Monday nights, for a long time from 7:30-9:00 and now from 7:00-8:30. This meeting was the second or third men’s big book meeting on Cape Cod at the time of its founding, with respect to the Hyannis and Falmouth meetings.

    Orleans was chosen as a location for the meeting because there were a number of men on the lower Cape going to big book meetings but traveling for them consistently. With this in mind, there were men willing to attend the meeting and able to carry a message to the newcomer at a big book meeting closer to home. For this reason, the meeting had fair attendance from its beginning, from these members as well as men from the Hyannis big book meeting. At the end of each of our meetings, we read the last two paragraphs of page 164- the chapter, A Vision for You. Some time ago, we started doing this in hopes to make the newcomer feel more welcome in our meeting, and to stress the need to continue to grow and help others. Over the course of time, the meeting has grown and decreased in size at times but still carries the same singleness of purpose today.