The Five Year Plan 2006-2011 (Messages)/Preface
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Preface
In the new Five Year Plan which will stretch from 2006 to 2011, the Baha’is of the world will enter the midpoint of that series of Plans, beginning in 1996 and continuing for a quarter century until the year 2021, which all focus on a single aim—advancing the process of entry by troops. Much has been learned in the previous decade. Much remains to be achieved in the coming decade and a half.
The process of entry by troops began in Africa and the Pacific region during the ministry of Shoghi Effendi and gradually spread to most parts of the world. Receptive peoples in country after country embraced the Faith by the hundreds, the thousands, and even by the tens of thousands. For some forty years, however, the community struggled to balance the process of expansion with an equally strong process of consolidation. Large-scale enrollments would be achieved, but there was no way to deepen so many new believers, no way to educate their children, no way to build communities or to strengthen fledgling institutions. Chapter 9 of Century of Light analyzes the challenge of growth during that period:
The burst of enrolments brought with it, however, equally great problems. At the immediate level, the resources of Baha’i communities engaged in the work were soon overwhelmed by the task of providing the sustained deepening the masses of new believers needed and the consolidation of the resulting communities and Spiritual Assemblies.
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In the previous Five Year Plan covering the period
from 2001 to 2006, the Baha’i world learned how to
bring together the various elements needed to successfully maintain intensive programs of growth at the
cluster level. In clusters where receptivity was high,
as many as one thousand believers were brought into
the Faith in a single year, while, at the same time, the
pattern of community life was established and a sufficient percentage of the new believers were helped
through the institute process to become active servants
of the Cause who could, in turn, teach and consolidate others. Significant growth, therefore, could not
only be initiated, but sustained. Even in clusters where
the populations were considered less receptive, new
patterns of action gave rise to rejuvenated communities, increased the participation of individuals from
the wider society in community life, and raised the
tempo of teaching, resulting in a fresh infusion of new
believers—in some clusters, as many as 30 to 50 in a
single year. From Thiruvannamalai, India, to Broward
County, Florida, in the United States, from Mulanje
in Malawi to London in the United Kingdom, from
Karkar, Papua New Guinea, to Norte de Cauca in
Colombia, cluster after cluster experienced a change.
“So consistent has been the experience with intensive
programmes of growth, implemented on the basis of
this understanding in divers clusters,” the Universal
House of Justice explains, “that no cause for equivocation remains.”
The learning that occurred over the past five years to effect this change is summarized in the 27 December 2005 message from the Universal House of Justice to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors, which also lays out the features of the next Plan. Among the main challenges of the coming five years are to extend the “edifying influence” of the training
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institute to hundreds of thousands more souls and to
accelerate the movement of clusters so that no less
than 1,500 become the focus of intensive programs of
growth. Only if the hard-earned lessons of the past ten
years are applied through the persistent, sacrificial,
and universal participation of the believers in all parts
of the world will these pressing objectives be met.
By compiling in this small volume the messages of the Universal House of Justice relevant to the next Plan, we hope to make them more readily accessible to the friends everywhere.
Palabra Publications
