RE: devotionals (was RE: ruhi in ireland)

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:38:26 -0800

Dear Susan,
 
you are right I have not seen any statistics ;o)
 
I think a devotional meeting is not passing the prayer book around. I think it is creating a devotional atmosphere. I usually print out some quotes and prayers and try to make it as diverse as possible, with prayers from different religions. There is a website on the internet which has word documents containing quotes from different religions around one theme, like unity for example.
 
I use music as well, and try to make a special atmosphere in the room by lighting candles. I think a lot of Bahais have no idea how to create a spiritual atmosphere, but luckily there is something like the Tranquility Zone (there is a website as well) and I got a lot of ideas from there Do a search or look on www.bahai.org.uk.
 
I think some people are more interested in a small group than others. It may be that in your area a devotional in a house does not work, but one cannot know that for certain until at least 4 or 5 people have tried it on a regular basis.
 
I think if you have devotionals in your house, you feel more taht it is your responsibility to offer it to people you meet. But I do not wish to say that public devotionals should not be held. Only, we held them for years in hotels etc and not many people showed up. The only public devotionals with big success are the tranquility zones in Swindon, UK. And that is because that spiritual dimension through music and the decoration of the room is added.
 
much love,
 
janine van rooij
dublin, ireland

Susan Maneck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
" maybe I have understood it not correctly. But I got the idea from letters
by the UHJ that the institute process consists of study circles, childrens
classes and devotionals. Maybe I got that wrong."

Dear Janine,

No, those are the three core activities of the Five Year Plan. The hope is
that the Institute Process will eventually lead to the multiplication of all
three, but it is only directly involved in study circles.

"I have understood that we should do devotionals as much as possible in our
own home, to reach the most people, because the more bahais and non-bahais
have devotionals, the more people can come to them."

That is the way they have been pushing devotionals but I'm not sure that is
such a good idea. As I said, studies indicate that seekers want to attend
worship services in a neutral place, not in strangers' homes.

"If you have ten bahais in a town and one regular devotional, where
everybody can come, you reach less people than if you have ten devotionals
in the town at each persons home who invites his or her personal friends and
family."

I would be more inclined to invite my friends and family over to a regularly
established worship service than a prayer meeting in my home.

"Have you seen the Building Momentum video?"

Bits and pieces.

"There were examplesof this and how a non=bahai held a devotional in her
own home as well.
It does work, actually. It works better than regular devotionals in one
central place, because we have held them on and off in europe and people you
know personally will feel more comfortable coming to your own home than
coming to a center, because you have a bond withthem."

But entry by troops involves getting people to meetings whom we don't
necessarily have a personal bond with. I'v! e not seen any studies which
compare the statistics on the effectiveness of well-planned worship services
vs. small home based devotionals, have you? But I'll grant you that in
Europe where only 4% of the population goes to church on any given Sunday,
this approach might be more effective. I live in a part of the country where
*most* people go to church at least two times a week and if we can't create
that intense sense of community we won't get anywhere here. I agree that at
some point you need to multiply these meetings simply to handle the sheer
numbers of people we hope to have. But to multiply them before the numbers
have begun to increase are there strikes me as doing something like going
back to the good ole days of paper Assemblies and moving around to open
localities. We had a goals to fulfill by God we were going to have them
whether we ended up with anything viable or not! In my opinion part of the
advantage of clustering is that ! it enabled us to combine resources in order
to put in place all of the three core activities. The time to multiply, it
seems to me, is when our numbers actually begin to grow as a result. But
instead we seem to imagine that multiplication by itself will bring growth.
I think it just drains our resources.

"I think entry by troops will happen when we have 100 bahais in a town each
holding their devotionals having regularly 3-4 people attending"

Except I don't expect my seekers to want to go to prayer meetings with just
3-4 people attending. What are we going to do? Just pass around the prayer
book? Most non-Baha'is find that boring! We need well-planned devotional
meetings much like the ones in the Mashriqu'l-Adhkars. Better in fact,
because most non-Baha'is find those boring too.

warmest, Susan


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