From William Schaberg's writing The Big Book, Pages 132-133:

Bill Wilson and the Oxford Group

Bill Wilson had started out in early 1935 with a similarly strong connection to the New York Oxford Group, but his experiences were strikingly different from those of the people in Akron. While a vocal minority in Ohio actively embraced these new members, the New York chapter wanted little or nothing to do with the drunks Bill was regularly bringing into their meetings. It was a strained relationship from the very start, setting Wilson and the New York Oxford Group on a completely different trajectory from the one on Akron.

Having left Towns Hospital for the lest time, Bill, "constantly went to Oxford Group meetings" and he soon became a member of one of the smaller 'teams' of men who regularly met and sat quietly as they listened for "the guidance of God for each one." Curiously, Oxford Group guidance was rarely directed toward the one receiving it, but rather was intended for someone else within the group. Bill almost immediately began to have trouble with the guidance others were receiving for him...

The crux of the problem was clear. Bill Wilson wanted to spend all his time working with drunks and the Oxford Group members believed (and constantly received confirming guidance from God) that he should go out and get a job on Wall Street where he could mingle with the 'right' sort of people, people who would be much better appropriate candidates for membership in their Group. The practice of recruiting recovering alcoholics as new members, which was so generously tolerated on Akron, was at first discouraged in New York, and later soundly criticized and censured. Given these evolving criticisms and restrictions, Bill's stubborn commitment to working with drunks generated a fair amount of friction as he began to pick and choose which guidance he would follow and which he would not. In spite of the specific instructions others so consistently received and passed along to him, Bill doggedly insisted his time and energy could best be spent trying to sober up an recruit people who were in trouble with alcohol.

Or, as he so eloquently put it a few years later: "The Oxford Group wanted to save the world, and I only wanted to save the drunks."

Because of this tension and the undercurrent of hostility, the alcoholic members in New York (whom Bill was recruiting not only from within the Group itself, but also from among the drunks at Calvary Mission and the patients in Towns Hospital) began to gather by themselves immediately after the regular Oxford Group sessions at Stewart's Cafeteria, a convenient and congenial spot just a few blocks from the regular Oxford Group meetings. But this eventually proved to be both too public and too unwieldy and, starting late in 1935, Bill moved these sessions to his house in Brooklyn where they began to hold regular "alcoholics only" meetings on Sunday nights.

These early Brooklyn meetings began "using the Oxford Group principles" and were remarkably similar to what was happening at T. Henry's house in Akron at that time, i.e., they started with some quiet time followed by Christian readings and then a talk by the leader (Usually Bill) along with witnessing by other attendees, all of which was bookended by opening and closing prayers. But because they did not include any non-alcoholic members in their group - an integral part of the Akron format - the meetings in New York almost immediately began to evolve independently and to have a much more specific emphasis on alcohol than in Akron where drinking was rarely mentioned in their meetings. Given both of these changes, many f the practices specific to the Oxford Group began to fade away as it "became very clear" (as Wilson so delicately put it later) "that [the] drunks couldn't stand the Oxford Group pace."

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