Call For Renewed Commitment

The weekend of 18-20 June 2010 witnessed an event that called for renewed commitment of the friends to intensify the growth of the Cause especially in clusters, which had launched intensive programs of growth. About forty members of the institutions including members of the National Assembly, Regional Councils, and members of the Local Spiritual Assemblies and Area Growth Committee of Kuching cluster met with Counsellor George Soraya and Auxiliary Board Members at the Kuching Bahá΄í Centre to study the 2010 Ridvan message. In order to benefit all participants, the reading of the message and discussions were carried out in both English and Malay, paragraph by paragraph. All of the 33 paragraphs were covered in the two days’ session. One thing was made obvious; right from the beginning, the participants were made aware that the whole purpose of this message was to call for a renewed commitment in building a community whose culture is striving to translate the Bahá΄í teachings into reality.

Clusters already in the intensive program of growth were especially called to intensify effort in putting in place the learning process involving people of all ages the institute process for the adults and youth, the junior youth spiritual empowerment and children’s classes for those in their respective age groups.

To cap the event, Mr. Soraya drew up a chart of the “health indicator” of clusters in the southern region. These indicators include figures in the last three months of the number of Book 7 graduates, enrolment, as well as number of on-going study circles, junior youth groups and children’s classes. Needless to say, most of the clusters fell short of the expectations with a few even falling within the “critical” level. It’s obvious that all clusters need to redouble their effort if they were to achieve the “healthy” target by Ridvan 2011.

Following this weekend study session, all Area Growth Committees of the eighteen clusters with intensive program of growth were called upon to carry out similar study sessions for communities in their own respective cluster. But before they can do that, the members of the Area Growth Committees need to attend a similar study sessions organized by their respective Regional Council. The critical role of the cluster level institutions especially that of the coordinators for institute courses became more apparent with increasing responsibility and the high expectation for each cluster.