“A Place to Pray” is a series being broadcast on BBC Radio 4, dealing with various religions. Monday 25 August's broadcast came from Belfast and had as its subject the Bahá'í Faith. It looked at two forms of worship, a ‘tranquility evening’ of the sort the Belfast community has been running, and obligatory prayer. A variety of Believers - Northern Irish, Iranian, Indian, and Chinese - were featured and were able to give a good amount of information about the Faith, and the listeners also heard positively from two non-Bahá'ís who attend regularly.
The programmed came about because one of those attending the Belfast ‘tranquility evenings’ spoke of them to a relative who works for the BBC, and the net result was some excellent nation-wide publicity for the Faith. Special congratulations go to Orang and Susie Agahi who were the main interviewees.
The series of deepenings in Newtownards on the theme ‘Teaching Christians More Effectively’ isproving very popular. Twelve people attended the latest one.The series is facilitated by Eddie Whiteside and to date we have studied together Christian fearsabout false prophets, the Anti-Christ, and the Beast, and how they cannot refer to Bahá'u'lláh.The most recent dealt with signs of the Second Coming and how they are fulfilled in theBaha'i Faith. The next part will be devoted to Christian Doctrines and how they relate to the Faith. The skills of finding one's way round the Bible are also covered - very useful !These deepenings are organised by the Spiritual Assembly and held on the first Tuesday of each month.
KW
Building momentum must start with the individual. That was the message of the latest “Deepening in Derry”, held on Friday 29 August and attended by Friends from Omagh, Coleraine and of curse Derry. Entitled Building Momentum this evening combined the popular video that was prepared for the Ninth International Bahá’í convention with a talk by Sarah Munro. Sarah delivered an excellent and thought provoking presentation, combining a PowerPoint presentation with group discussion.
CP
Auxiliary Board Member Denis Coyle meet with the Local Spiritual Assemblies in the Charles Dunning Cluster (Belfast, Newtownabbey and Castlereagh) on 27 August. The main purpose of the meeting was to help the Friends take more ownership of the Five Year Plan in their respective areas. After a small group “brainstorming” session Denis pointed out the general themes emerging from the group reports such as enjoyment, spontaneity, sustainability, energy, dedication, and sacrifice. The grass roots nature of the plan was stressed as was the need for the Spiritual Assemblies to take responsibility for their own areas. Ways in which three LSAs could work together were looked at. One suggestion was that Belfast Assembly could take on the responsibility of developing this discussion between the three Assemblies of what type of co- ordination was needed.
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