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NATIONAL
SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY
Dates for
Unit Conventions - 2000
Friends, please make a diary
note - all Unit Conventions will be arranged during the week of 14th - 22nd October.
The host Assemblies should
be approved soon and information sent to them by July.
They will be asked to
arrange the exact date and venue of the Unit Convention and to let the friends
in their respective Units know the information as soon as possible (to enable
as many of the friends as possible to attend these important events) where they
will:
elect the delegates consult
on important matters pertaining to the Twelve Month Plan (and the forthcoming
Five Year Plan) make recommendations of a national nature to the National
Spiritual Assembly consult on local initiatives making recommendations to the
local Spiritual Assemblies
Pillar at
the Guardian's resting place in safe keeping
The eagle on the top of the
pillar at the Guardian's resting place was stolen some time ago and the globe
on which it stood knocked to the ground. For safety, the Corinthian capital
which held up the globe has been moved into a secure storage space pending the
restoration of the site.
Annual
Report now available
Hard copies of the Annual
Report of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United Kingdom
are now available on request from the National Office. It is not necessary to
send a stamped addressed to receive your copy.
Qualified
in the building trade?
The National Spiritual
Assembly would be interested to hear from suitably qualified people in the
fields of building, property maintenance, civil engineering, property
surveying, architecture and related fields who would be available for an important
voluntary position with the National Assembly. Contact the National
Office, 27 Rutland Gate, London SW7
1PD.
Sixth
European Bahá'í Conference on International Law and Order The Netherlands
Distinguished speakers
include Hanne-Sophie Greve, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg, and Renée Jones Bos, Human Rights Ambassador of the Netherlands
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Following the historic
session last year commemorating the 100th
anniversary of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, there are plans to hold part of
the Conference at the Peace Palace in the Hague, the seat of the International
Court of Justice.
I read it
in the daily NEWS
Messages from the Universal
House of Justice, Messages from the National Spiritual Assembly - both urgent
and informative.
Messages and information
from the Bahá'í Councils and other bodies, both in the UK and overseas.
Reliable Information - with
so much misinformation or mischievous output from the Internet, it is good to
have an oasis of solid fact.
If you are on-line, all this
can be yours. In a message dated 10th
April 2000 the National Assembly said -
"New technology can be
used to serve the Faith, and the National Spiritual Assembly follows the
example of the Universal House of Justice in using e-mail to ensure the rapid
transmission of announcements and information.
Thus the National Spiritual
Assembly's e-mail list: mailto:NEWS@bahai.org.ukwill
be where the Friends will first see important items.
The National Assembly would
like to remind the Friends that (a) all UK Bahá'ís who have e-mail access are
urged to subscribe to this list, and (b) in each local community where there
are Bahá'ís on e-mail - and we know this to be the great majority of
communities - there should be one person (at least) specifically charged with
sharing urgent news and important announcements that have appeared with the
Assembly and the Friends in that community..."
NEWS has built up such a
good reputation as a fast reliable news service that some 20% of our
subscribers are from overseas - several of them being other National Spiritual
Assemblies or agencies thereof.
Subscribing to (joining) NEWS
couldn't be simpler: just send an e-mail message with the subject "Please
Subscribe" to mailto:NEWS.admin@bahai.org.ukand
include in the body of the message your postal address and, if known, your
Bahá'í ID number (from your credential card).
National
Conference 2000
10/11/12 November - National Conference, Scarborough
Spa Complex Theme ENDS AND BEGINNINGS committed to growth, prepared to learn
Guest speakers: Counsellor Patrick O'Mara Counsellor
Sohrab Youssefian
"Growth, Retention, and Consolidation in the
US" document available
The National Spiritual
Assembly recently received a copy of a most interesting document. Entitled "Issues Relating to Growth, Retention,
and Consolidation in the United States" it is the report of a major study
carried out by that country's National
Teaching Committee.
Although it deals with the
USA, the National Assembly found that it struck many chords with the UK
experience and appeared to have a lot of relevance to our own situation in this
country.
With the permission of the
National Spiritual Assembly of the United States we have shared the report
with Bahá'í Councils and the NTC here,
believing it will be of great interest and use to them, and have commissioned a
similar study for the UK.
The US report is almost
forty pages long and the National Assembly believes it makes a major
contribution to thinking and discussion about teaching the Faith in this
country. It is available on request from: The National Spiritual Assembly, 27
Rutland Gate, London, SW7 1PD.
Carry your
credential card
The National Assembly
recommends that the friends ensure they carry their Bahá'í credential card with
them at all times as in case of emergency it gives both details of the Bahá'í
law of burial, and a contact number for the National Office on the back.
Bahá'í Information Office
Third Floor, Bridge House, 97-101 High Street,Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1DP Tel:
01732 369694, Fax: 01732 569733 e-mail: mailto:bio@bahai.org.uk
More
pictures on Heritage Website
We have extended the number
of displays in the picture gallery of the UK Bahá'í Heritage Website. The
Friends are invited to view the site: http://www.iol.ie/~isp/heritagewhich
is both interesting and contains material which is useful in the study and
teaching of the Faith.
New
resource "Christianity and the
Bahá'í Faith"
Now available: a series of
six fifteen-minute radio scripts on the theme "Christianity and the Bahá'í
Faith" as successfully used elsewhere. Ideal for your local radio spot.
For a copy of the set please contact BIO.
BIO
resources - waiting for YOU to use them
Over the past few years we
have gathered resource papers from a variety of sources. Many of these have
addressed topical concerns. They have helped Bahá'ís in media work and in
sharing the ideas of the Faith with other organisations and individuals. The
community was notified when these were first released and many took advantage
of our offer of copies. We want you to know that these papers are still
available: something that might not have seemed relevant to your needs in the
past may well be appropriate and useful now.
We have papers on such
subjects as Aids, HIV, world order, environment, equality of women and men,
alienation in our society, disability issues, Bahá'í funerals, religious
discrimination, local government, Bahá'ís as hospital patients, moral
leadership and sexual education. We also have statements and discussion papers
on the document "The Prosperity of Humankind" as well as papers on
local Agenda 21, sustainable development, social development, youth, and the
advancement of women. Others are in preparation.
During the Centenary year,
many papers were written. These now form a resource library bank called the UK
Bahá'í Heritage. The papers included in
this bank cover some of the lives of the early believers such as Thomas
Breakwell, Mary Thornburgh-Cropper, Ethel Rosenberg and Lady Blomfield. Other subjects that are featured are the
oneness of humankind, fostering racial harmony, advancing the equality of women
and men and promoting religious understanding. There are also two papers that
deal with the Bahá'í Faith in the United Kingdom and the first public mentions
of our Faith.
All of these papers are
yours for the asking. If the variety is
too overwhelming, why not request a few this month and a few each month during
the rest of the 12 Month Plan?
For those of you who are
thinking of getting involved with other areas of the media such as radio and
newspapers, we have some radio scripts
and newspaper ads that we would be happy to share with you. And if you
have developed scripts and newspaper ads, please sent them to us so that we can
share them with others.
The field of local
television is just opening up in this country. As they are hungry for
information, it is a good time to get involved if you have a station in your
district. While we don't have any first
hand experience, we know of people that do.
We are always happy to link people with no experience to people with
experience.
The UK Bahá'ís have
significantly increased their presence on the World Wide Web, an activity
warmly encouraged by the National Spiritual Assembly, and BIO's Web of Faith materials
can help your community with this. The
widespread availability of personal computers means that more and more communities are getting involved with the
Local Information Officers' training programme (Show-on-the-Go). It can be
shared with all members of the community: even an individual living in a
district where he or she is the only Bahá'í, can take part in this
programme. Each one of us can play our
part by doing one thing to help take the Faith to the wider public.
Why is that important? In the Ridván message 2000, the Universal
House of Justice stated, "Equally of relevance to integrating the
essentials of the process were the strategies defined for the work in social
and economic development, which is a critical part of consolidation, and in
external affairs, which is a vital factor in enabling the Faith to manage the
consequences of its emergence from obscurity." What a wonderful sentence!
It focuses us and gives us purpose for our work. To know that what we are doing
is to help us "manage the consequences" of our Faith's
"emergence from obscurity".
To some of us it seems that
it is taking and has taken a long time, but it is now HAPPENING. And BIO is
here to help you with it.
Browse Bahá'í Web sites ...
http://ww.bahaindex.com/http://www.onecountry.org
http://bci.org/prophecy-fulfilled
http://www.promise
dday.com/http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/religion/bahai/radio/overview.html