Here are some of my notes on Lample’s talk.

He begins his talk by asking us to imagine what the world would be like if Baha’u’llah’s teachings were put into practice. In essence, he asks us to envision what the world will be like after the establishment of the Lesser Peace, and then after the establishment of the Greater Peace.

He urges us to keep this vision in our minds and hearts, and he reminds us that the administrative order and all the stuff we do has the objective of bringing this vision into reality.

“…The purpose of the faith is not to have more meetings, or to have more committees, or to form various administrative bodies, as important as those things are – I’m not saying – I know many of you are out there working in these areas sacrificing and making efforts, and it’s important, but what’s important to realize is that those things are not the end. Baha’u’llah didn’t create – didn’t come to create those things, per se. Those things are a means to an end….”

“…The purpose is the transformation of our own lives, of the lives of our family, of the lives of our community, of the whole society, by translating what Baha’u’llah has taught us into reality and into action….”

“…Institutions are created to help raise up people, to cultivate individuals who manifest certain characteristics, and who work in a constructive way to transform the world around them. So what we want is a mass of people, people who in their daily efforts and their daily life try to be like ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to live the Bahá'í life, and in so doing interact with the countless other human beings on the planet…. Make it a different place…. Try to create a different kind of world…“

To some degree we have had some successes in doing this. Some Bahá'í individuals are contributing to the transformation, and some of our collective Bahá'í efforts are having some success.

We’re still too small to really make a significant impact in the world, or to really dramatically bring the world in line with Baha’u’llah’s teachings.

We’re not just interested in making the faith bigger so our religion grows. Our purpose is to get bigger so we can transform the world and make it more like what Baha’u’llah wants for us.

We must see this in terms of the wider perspective. If not, we might get caught up in the petty details (e.g., which book should we study, and should a local area teaching committee and LSA have overlapping responsibilities, etc.) These petty details must not become our whole reality. The broader vision must be central.

The UHJ wants to focus on “entry by troops” until about 2021. This stage is what we need at this time. We must learn how to do it successfully.

There are many people who are ready to join the Bahá'í Faith, but we didn’t know what to do with people when they joined the Bahá'í Faith.

We’re learning how to bring in many new Bahá'ís and go beyond enrollment, and help people who join the Bahá'í Faith to find a place in the religion and learn how to contribute.

For four decades we didn’t know how to systematically incorporate new believers into active life as Bahá'ís when masses enrolled, and only in 1996 did the UHJ get serious about finding a systematic method for handling enrollment. We’ve been struggling to learn about this, and we’ll continue to learn about it.

People could join and find no pattern that would sustain them. We are creating a pattern to sustain new believers.

Now, after nine years, we are starting to know how to sustain new believers and handle mass enrollments. We are learning how to train people, educate their children, and bring them into a fulfilling Bahá'í life after they enroll.

With these core activities you could think of them as more meetings. You could think, ‘here’s my busy schedule, and now I have more meetings to go to.’ But if we look close we see that the study circles, devotional meetings, and children’s classes are all places where community-building begins. In all three of the core activities we are doing activities together around the word of God.

Now people can come and draw from the Bahá'í writings whatever they want. If they just want devotions, or just want children’s classes, then they can come to just those. We’re offering a service and offering the Word of God to anyone who wants it.

By the time people reach the seventh course they can become tutors, and they can help others along the path of service.

The core activities give people an opportunity for service. Instead of five or six people giving service to the Bahá'í community of 30 or so Bahá'ís we want 35 Bahá'ís to all be ready to offer service to the whole community beyond the Bahá'ís, which might be thousands or tens of thousands of people.

He describes that maybe each believer would become a tutor, and then start teaching courses, and then perhaps each tutor would attract six or so persons to a series of courses, and maybe a couple of the people would move with the tutor along the path of service and start doing home visits, offering children’s classes, and so as each tutor puts out six branches, and some of those branches would become tutors and have branches, so that the Faith and service around the Word of God would grow exponentially.

The Bahá'í wouldn’t have an interest in converting members of the class. If people have interest in learning more they can go through the system of courses. They can become active in service.

There was a cluster in India that went from no Bahá'ís to 250 believers. In a cluster in Taiwan there were nine believers. One became a tutor. The tutor started a study circle. Some came and became Bahá'ís, and some came and didn’t become Bahá'ís, but they drew up some good from the courses. And before too long there were a network of about 40 people going through the courses. There was intimacy and love among the 40 people. The other eight Bahá'ís could decide to join the 40, or could become tutors and try to duplicate what the one tutor had done.

He says this will work. To grow a network of people who go through courses. Then you will have a critical mass of trained and deepened believers who are ready to do an intensive program of growth.

In America there are 20 advanced clusters out of 1000 clusters. The clusters and their processes aren’t perfect, but you can’t expect perfection. People can work out the problems.

A planning phase to figure out what they could handle, a teaching phase to teach and get the new believers, and a consolidation phase to take new believers through the courses. The new believers learn how to give firesides, study the writings, organize devotional meetings, teach children’s classes, etc. Then you can do another planning phase to figure out how many new believers you can train, do another teaching phase, and more consolidation. With each cycle you can grow the community and its capacity.

In a cluster in Kenya they decided they could handle about 100 new believers in the courses of study, devotional programs, and children’s classes. So they went out and taught to get that number, got a little over 100 new believers, and then stopped teaching and did the consolidation with those new believers.

A cluster in Mongolia has gone through four cycles of planning-teaching-consolidation with a tutor helping a new believer to walk a path of service. This cluster went from about 20 believers to about 400 believers, and now up to 1000 members. At each cycle they could bring new believers into the pattern of activities, and they could learn how to improve. It wasn’t just a case of enrolling people, put of bringing them into a community life in which there were many activities centered around the word of God.

In Ethiopia they think that for everyone that they bring into their sequence of courses there are two or three others who want to get involved, but there aren’t enough Bahá'í tutors to train them all.

The concepts are different in each cluster because people are different. You can’t just do exactly what people are doing in Mongolia or London.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo they couldn’t have devotional meetings at some regular time each week. Rather, they had to go and share devotions at births, marriages, and funerals.

In London people have learned how to visit Bahá'ís in their homes, and have learned how to invite people to Bahá'í activities. They made contact with 500 people, found over 100 were interested, and quickly found a few who joined the Faith, and within the sequence of courses they had 20 enrollments.

Anecdotes about individuals who were afraid of pressuring people or offending people, but who went ahead and invited people and did home visits. In these anecdotes people found this work was enjoyable, and the response was warm.

Out of six billion people probably five billion aren’t interested and wouldn’t want to come, but probably one billion would come, and we need to focus on those.

Bahá'ís are learning how to consciously translate the writings into action. People are learning how to make meetings into fun activities that people would want to attend and people would enjoy instead of just another meeting to attend.

The American Bahá'í Community has been learning how to do a learning process. We developed the administrative order through a learning process, and we’ve shared our lessons with the rest of the world. We in the States can do the same thing again with the current plan. We can learn how to do race unity, how to do devotional meetings, and how to appeal to different tastes.

We’re multiplying a diversity of efforts. We don’t need to come together to do everything together. Diverse efforts for diverse believers.

All of the learning is part of this five-year-plan and the next plans.

By 2021 we’ll probably have some clusters with thousands of Bahá'ís and the questions of sustained growth will have been satisfactorily answered. We’ll then be moving on to questions of social transformation, how to make families better, and how to solve economic problems. If there are 5,000 Bahá'ís in a cluster what can they do to help the other 30,000 people living in a cluster? We’ll have questions about what is a Bahá'í state or a Bahá'í commonwealth.

You don’t want to study the institute courses? Okay, you don’t have to. But you shouldn’t sit on the sidelines. Can you invite your own neighbors and contacts? Can you get involved with the teaching campaign?

Every cluster and every Bahá'í should be participating and finding a way to help out. There should be opportunities for everyone in this stage.

You can learn incrementally. If you had one new believer last year, maybe you can have two or three the next year by learning what you did right the first time. Translating the training into practical action, learning how to invite people, these are skills you will learn slowly. When you reach the level of an A cluster you are at the starting point for learning about intensive growth.

Local Spiritual Assemblies shouldn’t be opposing the process. They should be encouraging it. LSAs can facilitate individuals’ getting involved. When there is a cluster plan the LSA can take part in that and fit in.

We should look to people who are receptive to this process. Create a welcoming environment where people can feel comfortable with the Faith. Some people don’t want to become Bahá'í, and that’s fine, but they might like the Bahá'í prayers and might want to come to devotions, and that’s okay.

When people made the effort they found that there are people out there who will enjoy the process.

He hasn’t seen much about a response to the “One Common Faith” document.

These are his own perceptions and don’t represent the UHJ.