What should be apparent is that, if the Administrative Order
is to serve as a pattern for future society, then the community within which it
is developing must not only acquire capacity to address increasingly complex
material and spiritual requirements but also become larger and larger in size.
How could it be otherwise. A small community, whose members are united by their
shared beliefs, characterized by their high ideals, proficient in managing
their affairs and tending to their needs, and perhaps engaged in several
humanitarian projects—a community such as this, prospering but at a comfortable
distance from the reality experienced by the masses of humanity, can never hope
to serve as a pattern for restructuring the whole of society. That the
worldwide Bahá’í community has managed to avert the dangers of complacency is a
source of abiding joy to us. Indeed, the community has well in hand its
expansion and consolidation. Yet, to administer the affairs of teeming numbers
in villages and cities around the globe—to raise aloft the standard of
Bahá’u’lláh’s World Order for all to see—is still a distant goal.
- The
Universal House of Justice (From a message dated 28 December 2010 addressed to
the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors)
