UK institutional meeting - longer report

Twenty-eight established intensive programmes of growth. That’s what the UK national institutional meeting last weekend has pledged to the Universal House of Justice as its contribution to the world total of 1,500 IPGs by 2011, the end of the next Five Year Plan. And just so’s you know, we have 51 clusters in the UK.

It’s going to be challenging, but it is certainly do-able.

Boy, what a meeting! Around 150 Bah?’?s attended. There were four Counsellors: Mr Shahriar Razavi representing the International Teaching Centre, and three representatives of the European Board of Counsellors. Most of our Auxiliary Board members. There were nine members of the UK National Spiritual Assembly. Most of the members of all four Regional Bah?’? Councils (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and of their respective Training Institute Boards, together with the National Training Co-ordinators from each of the four UK countries. Members of the cluster-level agencies (Area Teaching Committees and Cluster Co-ordinators) from all of the seven advanced clusters in the UK that currently or soon will have intensive programmes of growth. Representatives from some promising B clusters. And up to six observers from each of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) and from the Republic of Ireland.

It was a heady mix.

The programme had three elements:

1. Presentations by three of the Counsellors;
2. Study of the 27 December 2005 message from the Universal House of Justice to the conference of the Continental Counsellors;
3. Reviewing progress in our A, B and C clusters; assessing our present human resources; setting our contribution to the Universal House of Justice’s goal of 1,500 established IPGs by 2011; and preparing outline plans for growth to make or contribution of 28 IPGs achievable

Counsellor Shahriar Razavi was in masterly form, helping us to deepen our understanding of the 27 December message with great force and clarity. Below I have put some of the jottings from my notes. (I should stress that what I write below is not a transcript of the talk and should not be taken as being authoritative in any way. The material is drawn from my notes taken during several presentations.) My notes are quite extensive and I may include more of them in another post, but we can get the flavour of the new Plan from what I’ve put here.

Counsellor Shirin Fozdar-Foroudi also spoke with great intensity and love, and I’ll include some material from my notes of her talk in another post as well.

All I can say at this stage is that the 27 December 2005 message and the words of the Counsellors presented us with a breathtaking vision for the next five years, a vision which every believer in Bah?’u'll?h really has to embrace, make part of the very core of their being, and express day by day and minute by minute if we are to achieve what the House of Justice is calling us to achieve.

Notes from presentations by Counsellor Shahriar Razavi, member of the International Teaching Centre

Counsellor Razavi told us that the International Teaching Centre had particularly asked him to convey its admiration for the accomplishments of the UK Bah?’? community, for the distance it has travelled in the last five years, and for the place it has reached, poised to launch the next Five Year Plan.

Since the Conference of the Counsellors in December 2005 a number of national institutional meetings have taken place and are taking place in those countries that the ITC believes will make the most significant contribution to achieving the main goal of the Plan.

USA and India will contribute more than a third of the total of 1,500 IPGs. This is the first institutional meeting in Europe at this time. UK expected to make the largest contribution to the 1,500 in Europe. And the meeting is taking place before Ridv?n so that we can hit the ground running.

One of the purposes of the institutional meetings is to study the latest guidance from the Universal House of Justice. This year we will study the message of 27 December 2005 from the Universal House of Justice to the Conference of the Counsellors.

This national meeting will be followed by regional institutional meetings around the UK, which will study the letter in greater depth.

The letter distils the learning of the last ten years. In a real sense, even more than that. The framework for action crystallizes the learning of the last 50 years. Fifty years ago, as the end of Shoghi Effendi?s ministry approached, the Guardian began to talk about entry by troops. He also spoke of expansion and consolidation going hand in hand. It has taken 50 years to reach the point where we have a framework that needs to be exploited. The House of Justice tells us that the number of IPGs has to rise from the current 250 to 1,500.

Now we know that we are doing is going to yield results. The process has proven itself all around the world. It is no longer a matter of experimentation.

The work of the last five years has been the systematization of the teaching work itself. The key concept in this systematization has been the introduction of the cluster. A work of divine genius. It helped us analyze needs, capacities, plan and monitor actions, institutions to think about their territory in systematic ways. A seemingly simple concept created a profound train. And it opened a forum in the cluster reflection meeting.

In many ways the Five Year Plan enabled us to understand what we were doing and it was life-changing. We now have such a good understanding of the processes that the House of Justice has every confidence in our ability to enlarge it.

In paragraph 9, the House of Justice tells us that the learning that is shared is the learning from those clusters that have learned to pull together all the elements necessary for an IPG. We have to look to our best clusters to learn how to grow. Take the best that we have achieved and apply the same patterns elsewhere.

The House of Justice says that the balance between expansion and consolidation has never been better understood. The example of the cluster where the expansion goal for three weeks was achieved in one day; the cluster then stopped the expansion immediately and moved into consolidation. The example of children?s classes in York, Ontario, where the friends had to stop enrolling children because there was a greater demand than they could meet.

Things we?ve learned in the current Plan:

? Sustainability means capacity building.
? The importance of junior youth.
? How to administer and sustain the process of growth.
? But we have to remain modest and understand that we still have a great deal to learn.
? The vital importance of the practice elements of the Ruhi courses.
? The power of neighbourhoods ? enabling people to engage in their own neighbourhoods within manageable distances.
? The role of the tutor.

When we started the Five Year Plan we thought that the tutor was the person who conducted the course. Now we understand that the tutor is the key person in growth as a self-sustaining process. Accompanying people on their path of service. The statement of the Guardian about completing the cycle of teaching. The job of the tutor is not done until he/she has enabled individuals to have the capacity that the tutor has developed ? to be a tutor. One tutor can create this system in his/her locality

The message of the Universal House of Justice has to be studied very carefully for its gems of insight. For example, experience has shown that the more closely our teaching activities are aligned with the capacities developed through the institute process, the more rewarding they will developed through the institute process, the more effective and rewarding they will be. We?ve learned the capacity to share the Writings with others, to relate stories about the B?b and Bah??u?ll?h, to deepen new believers, the spiritual education of children and junior youth, and so on.

A seemingly simple idea, but extremely profound.

The letter is replete with learning and a very significant moment in the development of the Cause.

We now understand that the plan for systematic growth is embedded in the curriculum of the institute process. Now we understand why the institute process is the engine of growth.

In the west we thought that home visits would not be easy. But it is the west that the Master?s statement that souls are inclined to estrangement is most obvious. Here, we need home visits, amongst the Bah???s and with the community of interest. Home visits are not alien to UK culture but had become alien to Bah??? culture. The home visit has become the touchstone for the success of the teaching work in a cluster.

Another key element is our understanding of the community of interest ? not a term that the House of Justice itself uses, but it alludes to the need to incorporate a wider range of people and overcome the artificial barriers that we have erected. Children particularly don?t see any demarcation between ?them? and ?us?.

One of the most important pieces of learning over the last two years concerns the junior youth (12-14 year olds). There are currently 22,000 in junior youth groups around the world, of which 11,500 are not Bah???s. Junior youth mustn?t be seen as an adjunct to children?s classes. They are going through a personal transition that requires particular approaches to moral and spiritual development. The programmes that are now being developed have the potential to have a major impact on this segment of the population. The strands of the programme materials that are being developed are:

? Language - the power of utterance
? Maths and science as knowledge systems with moral content
? Living in society
? Bah??? content ? addressing a range of existential and moral questions of the kind that junior youth ask.

The junior youth who come from this programme into Book 1 are quickly able to proceed through the sequence of courses.

Intensive programmes of growth are described by the House of Justice as straightforward, simple and direct. So we should not complicate them. IPGs engage the majority of the community. They are not for a few ?technicians?.

The intensity of effort required tests our resolve.

In the coming years we will have to learn how IPGs become established, and how they lead to numerical growth. On average in Western Europe we can double our numbers in two weeks by adding the same number to the COI as Bah???s who go out to teach in the intensive expansion phase.

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