National Institutional Meeting — Bahá'í Aotearoa

The National Institutional Meeting was attended by about 60 friends (and 10 children), including members of the North and South Island Regional Bahá'í Councils, Regional Institute Boards, Regional Coordinators, National and Regional Statistics Officers, pioneering desk personnel, representatives of the ISGP coordinating team, Auxiliary Board members, Counsellors, Administrative Aide for Statistics to geographic group of Counsellors, National Spiritual Assembly members, National Secretariat, and a number of individuals from key clusters and Local Spiritual Assemblies.

The meeting was held over two days (25-26 August) to help the National Assembly “to grasp more fully what was taking place at the grassroots of the community and to determine how they could encourage and refine the unfolding process of expansion and consolidation”.

In this light and with the overall vision of the Plan kept clearly before us, the National Spiritual Assembly, in collaboration with the Counsellors, convened this National Institutional Meeting. It was intended that the meeting would allow us to review recent progress in New Zealand, assess current conditions in both regions, appraise the strength of human and other resources available, and analyse the support systems and structures that are in place and are needed. We reviewed the pace of and plans for the movement of clusters in each region and considered measures that could accelerate the process of establishing new intensive programmes of growth, conscious that “in the cycles leading to the celebration of the bicentenary of the Birth of the Báb in October 2019—cycles which demand the greatest share of our striving to bring 5,000 programmes of growth to the stage of intensity —the pace of systematic endeavour needs to accelerate”. The meeting was an opportunity to refine the National Plan, which will in turn provide an opportunity to consider how regional and national systems and structures need to be strengthened or adjusted to support the achievement of our goals.

During the period of the National Institutional Meeting, Saturday evening was set aside for a meeting with two beloved Counsellors, Ms Tessa Scrine and Mr Taraz Nadarajah, and the National Spiritual Assembly to which all believers were invited. It was hoped the meeting would help build a greater sense of collective endeavour by sharing our united vision of the path we are all walking together in bringing more of humanity closer to Bahá’u’lláh. The event was live-streamed for those who were not able to attend in person.