ISKCON Constitution

In this week's podcast we discuss James Cameron's new movie, Avatar - the most expensive movie to produce of all time at $300 million.

We also discuss Leadership.

Here's the podcast file:

• 09-12-19 Red Hill Podcast - Avatar 3d and Leadership

Here are my free ebooks on Leadership that I mention in the podcast:

• Bhagavad-gita Small Group Resource
• On Leadership
• Leadership Lessons From Bhagavad-gita

Here's last week's podcast on ISKCON Membership, including live callers. Aniruddha prabhu, temple president of Melbourne, and Dhruva prabhu from Byron Bay called in.

• Podcast on ISKCON membership Part A
• Podcast on ISKCON membership Part B

Tomorrow (Saturday 5th December) at 10 am AEST (GMT+10), David Jorm and I will be continuing with part two of our discussion about ISKCON membership.

We will be discussing David's recent blog post Membership in a confederated ISKCON structure, and the 2007 Church Plant Survivability and Health Study by the Center for Missional Research, North American Mission Board.

You can listen live here: Kirtan Radio, and you can participate in the conversation as it takes place via facebook and twitter (@sitapati).

So it's Saturday, 5th December at 10am AEST. Here's the current date and time in Brisbane:

Here's a podcast that David Jorm and I recorded this morning. We talked around ISKCON membership, covering the Chocolate incident, and some wider ISKCON Constitutional issues.

• Podcast: ISKCON Membership (mp3, 55 mins, 65MB)

Some related resources:

• David's blog

• H.H. Prahladananda Swami's 2006 paper "Duties of GBC and Guru"

I've also attached a copy to this post, in case the other link goes dark at some point.
Here's the section I quoted in the podcast:

The absence of a strong GBC Body and management system has created a authority vacuum within ISKCON. The devotees who join ISKCON often are more loyalty to their initiating guru than to the management structure of the Society. We have seen big temples such as in Bangalore leave ISKCON, and without learning from our mistakes, we do not sufficiently supervise our leaders or the Society’s projects. In some places, the strategy of a charismatic leader and experienced managers has encouraged many devotees to join and take initiation. However, when the devotees do not identify themselves as subordinate to the authority structure of the ISKCON society, in the future, when the current gurus leave their bodies, it is not clear what will to happen to such projects.

- Why ISKCON is in danger of failing, Duties of GBC and Guru, H.H. Prahladananda Swami, 2006

• H.H. Sivarama Swami podcast on Chocolate, May 26, 2006

Here is a transcript of the section about chocolate (from 4.42):

In answering this question I should point out.... that there was some discussion about this topic not long ago, in the GBC, and it was pointed out that the information that was given to Srila Prabhupada, and that is that chocolate contains coffeine [sic] was incorrect, ah, and it's not a [sic] intoxicant on the same level as coffee, tea, etc. So Srila Prabhupada had told devotees not to take chocolate on the basis of the information that they had given, ah therefore, ah, chocolate does not contain caffeine. Having said that, it's a substance that is cooked and prepared by karmis. Vaisnavas generally do not eat karmi foods. If someone were to ask whether they could eat bread cooked by karmis, the answer, Srila Prabhupada's answer is 'no'.

[Maharaja discusses not going nuts on eating chocolate, and discusses using cocoa butter to make preparations for the Deity]

[7:42]
...the information is there that they do not contain caffeine, and they are no longer a banned substance.

This frank admission of the challenges faced by the Bhakti-vriksha program is a breath of fresh air.

Here are a few of my observations:

1. Lack of leadership support

One of the issues explained in this article is a lack of widespread support for the initiative by the leadership of ISKCON.

One of the qualities of an effective manager or leader is realism. Leaders need to be able to make a realistic assessment of the situation, in order to calculate a course from where they are now to where they want to go. "Know yourself and know your enemy and you need not fear defeat in any battle". Another word for this is "practical".

Unfortunately a lot of the information coming out of the Congregational Ministry up to this point has been transparently unrealistic. Managers want to know about the bottom line. "What are the cold hard facts"? From the Congregational Ministry so far we've been hearing inflated accounts of successes "in other parts of the world". Level headed organizers and administrators have not been taken in by this, and have not lent their support to it as a result.

This kind of hype may work on the simple masses, but jedi mind tricks and smoke and mirrors are of no use on the kind of people whose support you need. They want to know what's really going on.

2. "Over-promised, under-delivered"

The Bhaktivriksha program has committed the cardinal sin of "over-promising and under-delivering". Too much hype was created as a way of trying to create a massive wave of enthusiasm. Instead it needs to be approached in a level manner with management of expectations.

First of all: "These are the challenges that you are facing". To demonstrate that you have a realistic appreciation of the situation.

"Here is the opportunity". Explaining how the cell structure of Bhaktivriksha addresses these challenges.

"Here are the present success stories". Showing what has happened in ISKCON, and what has happened outside ISKCON.

"Here are the problems". Explaining that no-one has yet converted an existing ISKCON yatra to the cell model.

At this point we have at least one very successful BV yatra which demonstrates the potential. However, we have not been able to convert from a classical ISKCON organizational structure to a BV structure. That's OK. We don't have to obscure this fact. It is at a pioneering stage. If you're willing to explore the potential of this program, we're willing to go along with you. We'll all be learning as we go, because as we explained, there is so far no success story - but you can see the potential.

Some forward thinking leaders will work with this. Otherwise they just see an unproven system being pushed by unrealistic people in either a naive or dishonest fashion, and there is no way they are going to risk their present success, however close to failure their yatra may be, on that.

In the article you mention that ISKCON yatras are failing. However, you cannot provide one example of where you have saved one with BV. *That* is why leaders are not going to take to it whole-heartedly. Effective managers and leaders are extremely practical. ISKCON's present leaders got where they are now by making safe bets on calculated risks, not by embracing every snake-oil salesman who rolls into town.

Adjust the pitch and try to create a single reference site. Manage the expectations and work with a brutally realistic but visionary manager who is open to trying this somewhere in ISKCON.

This is not another program - it's a replacement organizational paradigm

Something that needs to be very clear is that this is not simply another program - this is a replacement organizational paradigm.

There are two implications of this:

1) If you try to chase two rabbits, both will get away

Without understanding that this is a new organizational paradigm that will undergird the entire yatra you end up with these two conflicting organizational models. Dilemmas arise: "Who's in charge? What's the relationship between the BV and the temple? What's the authority structure?". Energy to one sucks energy from the other. The success of one is at the expense of the other.

2) You are in direct opposition to the current temple organizational paradigm

The temple became successful (whatever state they are) following a particular paradigm. You are trying to replace this underlying paradigm. Although initially it's presented as another program that you add in, soon it becomes apparent, either through its symptoms, or when devotees grasp the implications, that you are going to change the entire fundamental power structure of the community.

You are undermining the authority and the processes of the existing yatra. People got to where they are doing certain things in a certain way, and you're about to do away with that. That's very, very scary for people. They respond by trying to protect their personal situation to keep it safe, and that manifests collectively as an attack on the BV. At the very least it manifests as indifference, but more usually it will result in preaching against it (or preaching against some of its symptoms), withdrawing resources, etc....

Obviously where there is no previously "successful" (or rather entrenched) paradigm to displace, BV starts up a lot easier.

These points need to be understood. If BV is going to be implemented in an ISKCON yatra it needs to be clearly discussed and understood that this represents a complete conversion to a fundamentally different paradigm of organization. This is going to lead to a different structure of power. If this is clearly understood and the leadership is fully committed to it, then it can be worked through. Otherwise it will be a train wreck. The BV and the temple are headed for a head-on collision.

At this point there is no roadmap for doing a conversion. No-one has pulled it off yet. So whoever agrees to doing this has to agree to the following things (essentially):

Some combination of the following:
1 a) We're in such a bad state right now that we'll try anything - we have nothing to lose so we're willing to bet the farm.
1 b) We can see the huge potential of this and are so inspired by it that we're willing to bet the farm on it.

2) We understand that this implies giving up our present paradigm for a new paradigm of organization, that it involves trusting people and allowing the yatra to expand beyond what we can "control" and trusting in our ability to "direct" it through preaching.

3) We understand that this has never been done before and that we are pioneering this process of transition.

4) We understand that this involves a massive amount of fundamental change and this will be very unsettling for people. People will be asked to give up what made them successful individually, and will be asked to have faith in a new way of organizing the yatra, going against their experience to this point. We acknowledge these challenges. We commit to open communication, complete honesty and transparency, ongoing discussion and analysis in order to help people to understand, process, and adapt to these changes.

5) We have the complete commitment of our leadership to this course of action.

Without this BV cannot be successful in an existing ISKCON yatra without killing the temple. Which hasn't happened yet either, but at the moment the only hope for a successful conversion is for an ISKCON temple to become so weak that an inspired and dedicate BV preacher is able to overwhelm it with a BV program.

It's no surprise that ISKCON leaders haven't supported this. Basically in areas where there are ISKCON temples you've been getting some fringe visionaries who are discontented with the current status quo to start it and pitting them against the temple power structure. Existing temple authorities have everything to lose, and little to gain, based on what they've seen other temple managers gain as a result of giving up control.

ISKCON leaders en masse will have more faith in this when there is a successful implementation. I would focus on creating one success first.

I was restoring a back up of my machine today and found a couple of articles that I wrote about Bhakti Vrksa. Phanisvara could tell me about when they were written if he can remember the event that I describe in it about namahatta.org, but it think it's a couple of years ago. Not sure if I published them previously, but here they are:

I spent a couple of years working in technical support for a Linux operating system software vendor, supporting my family in between trying to do some missionary work. All too frequently in my job I would have a similar exchange to the the following with a customer:

Me: "Could you please try XYZ."
Customer: "It didn't work."
Me: "It didn't work... anything more specific than that?"
Customer: "It's just sitting there blinking."
Me: "O...K... but after you typed in the command, what did it say?"
Customer: "Oh, it said 'Error something something' and then a whole bunch of stuff."
Me: "Right... Do you think you could you read that error message to me please..."

The customer is calling because they don't know how to solve their problem. And unfortunately, they don't even know enough to be able to describe their problem. If they did, perhaps they wouldn't need to call. "I don't know doctor, I just feel... 'sick'!".

I saw an exchange the other day in the namahatta.org forums that reminded of this situation, in relation to the Bhakti-vriksha program. Kaunteya prabhu was probing for information on why the Bhakti-vriksha program had failed to take off in a particular area. The preacher who had tried it replied: "The groups just folded". ("Right.. anything more specific than that?")

Recently on namahatta.org a call has gone out to participate in discussion of what is working and what is not working, and why, in the Bhakti-vriksha program globally. I welcome this frank, open dicussion, which I believe to be essential to the success of this program.

When the Bhakti-vriksha program was first launched in 1996 the word was to keep it under wraps, "in case the opposition heard about it". The idea was that it was so explosive that it represented a significant "competitive advantage". That has proven to not be the case. Like anything in preaching, it doesn't work on autopilot, and the hard, personal, work of implementation cannot be replaced by a one-two-three formula.

So I think that there is nothing wrong with open discussion, in fact there is everything right with it, but I think it needs some reference points. Perhaps a lot of people will have trouble saying more than: "It didn't work".

I'd like to contribute to this discussion. I'd like to present my observations and experience as one reference point that people can use as a sounding board - to compare, to contrast, to refute.

I don't claim to be an expert on Bhakti-vriksha, but I am a believer in the "cellular" or "network" model of preaching that it attempts to implement in ISKCON. I'm a 100% drank-the-koolaid convert since I read the BV manual. Since then I've been involved in one of the longest running Bhakti-vriksha programs in ISKCON, in Lima, Peru, both in the Bhakti-vriksha program itself, and as the administrator of a temple in the same yatra. I've seen it from both sides of the fence, and I wrote an article about that experience that was published in Congregational Preaching Journal, entitled: "Integrating Temple and Bhakti-vriksha, a temple manager's perspective".

Since coming to Australia in 2004 I've been steadily plugging along tinkering with the system and launching probing attacks with a group of like-minded pioneers. Today, Christmas Day, 2006, we held our strategic planning session to cast the vision for our preaching here reaching out to 2010. We're not expecting victory before then, and we're not accepting defeat before then.

Here are my thoughts on Bhakti-vriksha and the cellular model of organization, specifically related to our situation here, and my particular experience to this point.

Understanding The Need

First of all, we have to understand the need for a cellular organizational structure. To illustrate its importance I'd like to draw an analogy from the natural world. Small animals, such as ants and cockroaches, have exo-skeletons. Their bones are outside their body. This is very strong for small sizes, much stronger than having the bones inside the body. Ants can take crushing forces that would pulverize a larger animal if an equivalent force were applied.

However, this efficiency does not scale. Once we hit crabs, who spend a lot of time in water, the largest animals with exo-skeletons are lobsters (crayfish), who have to live in the water where their weight is offset by the bouyancy of their medium. Without this, they would be unable to sustain their weight on the land. The efficiency of the exoskeleton has a point of diminishing returns.

In order to scale further an organism needs an internal structure to stop it from collapsing in on itself as it grows. An endoskeleton supports all larger forms of life, from a chimpanzee to an elephant.

Let us know consider what are known as "megachurches" in the United States. These are churches that have congregations of over 1000 people. Some megachurches have congregations of tens of thousands. It is a common fallacy that megachurches are impersonal places, due to the large number of people and the impossibility of forming meaningful personal relationships amongst so many people. Of course if it were all random that would probably be the case. However, megachurch leaders have understood that in order to grow big, they have to grow small at the same time.

While such a huge congregation would collapse under its own weight, defeated by its own proselytizing success, if it simply had an exo-skeletal organizational structure, these churches do not, because they have an "endoskeleton" structure within that supports the whole organization.

A church is not simply a building - it is a body of believers living in community. Part of that "life in community" for megachurches is participation in one of their small groups. Megachurches have been enabled, and have grown to the sizes that they have, not through the force of a cult of personality, although there is always an inspired, dedicated, and sincere personality involved, but through a system that enables people to receive individual care and attention. Do you know how attractive that is? Attractive enough, and structurally sound enough, to create local communities numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands.

What's an exo-skeletal organizational structure? It's one that relies on external authorities, externally organized programs, static boundaries, solid processes that do not scale well.

An ISKCON yatra is a classic example of an exo-skeletal organism. It is extremely strong at small sizes, but does not scale well. It's ecstatic in the early days, but as it grows it becomes a victim of its own success. It becomes impersonal as too many people are added and no-one can look after them. Congregations actually become a burden as they become disgruntled and start complaining and criticizing.

The systems, processes, and organizational structures that are typically employed simply do not scale beyond a certain point. Gridlocks develop. People start mentalling out about "losing control". In order to retain control they actually begin to restrict the expansion of the organization, consciously or unconsciously. Volunteer organizations, by definition, cannot run or even be directed, by legislation. They run on good will, "buena voluntad" in Spanish.

The exoskeleton defines the shape of the organism. Without the exoskeleton, the organism will run out of control! It must be contained!

I said this in my earlier article, and I repeat it here: this fear of losing control is at the root of our institutional rejection of Bhakti-vriksha.

This is the fifth post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". See also the previously published Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Note: Since I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I've been thinking about various programs that we are doing here in different venues. In the case of the temple I think Children is Function 2 after sound. In the case of the Sunday Feast and Krishnafest at our house I think that Presentations is Function 2. This doesn't mean that one is more important than the other, it's just the order of implementation. In the case of the Sunday Feast, for example, Presentations is a low-hanging fruit. On the other hand there are not facilities for easily spinning up a Children's Program there. In the case of the temple, there are plenty of children, and potential facilities for a Children's Program, so there it's both easier, and a greater imperative.

Also, someone mentioned a kitchen in response to an earlier post, the one about Sound. I have put a kitchen in a separate category of functions, and we'll come back to it later. OK, on with today's show...

Function 2 - Children

I'm going to go out on a limb here and put Children as function 2, rather than Presentations. In places like Gaura Yoga [website] and the Loft [website] in New Zealand they focus on Sound and Presentations, and have no facility for children. That works fine as center for young, single people. But eventually those young, single people are going to become married couples with children, so they will need some facility.

That doesn't mean that Gaura Yoga and the Loft will have to transform, but the organization will have to build out its capability to service those needs in some facility.

Personally, in working within an existing community, I'm focusing on sound first, then children second, rather than presentations.

My friend Krishnapada put it like this: "If McDonalds have facilities for children I think we should too".

Think about this. Let's say that you have a facility to which 400 adults and youths will come at a time. Let's say that half of them are married couples. So that's 200 people, or 100 couples. Let's say that on average they have 1 child - some will have none, some will have two or three. That's 100 children for 400 people.

Of course you could have a facility that is not child-friendly, but that's hardly making it easy, is it?

Here are two other points:

1. People sometimes ask me why I am so enthusiastic in Krishna Consciousness. It's simple. When I was a kid my mother raised me reading the Bible, and then sent me every weekend and every school holiday to a Bible camp, school holiday program, or youth group event, where they poured resources, attention, and intention into the program and the children on it. If you want to influence the value structure of a generation of devotees then you have to look after the kids. If you want to keep recruiting first generation devotees who were raised as atheists, then don't worry about them.

2. If you want parents to come back, then you provide something for their kids. McDonalds understand this. Krishnapada told me that his 4 year old son Shyam points to McDonalds and says: "I want to go there", just from seeing it from the outside - he's never been in. It's so attractive. McDonalds understands: get the kids, and you get the parents. Now, if you can give the children a valuable formative experience based on solid moral principles and values, what parent is going to say no to that?

For children's facilities you actually need more personnel, energy, money, and planning than you do for the adults. Children require more diversity of activities and facilities. You cannot put 400 children together in a big room for an hour and deliver one experience for them all. They need to be segregated and provided with an age-appropriate experience.

At Buckhead Community Church, which has facility for 3000 adults, they have one auditorium for the adults, and four floors of facilities for the children.

Each of those floors contains age-appropriate facilities for children from toddlers through to teenagers. On the first floor for the younger children they have a small stage/auditorium area where they do a Wiggles-type presentation [wikipedia article on the Wiggles], before splitting the children into groups in rooms where they play with toys and do other activities. In this way they have both a large group experience and a small group experience each week.

You can see a bunch of pictures and a video that I took of the young children's facilities when I visited this church in 2007 here.

At Buckhead, which is one of Andy Stanley's churches, along with Northpoint Community Church, they understand that people have different needs at each phase of life, for example, as a child, as a new believer, as a newly-wed, as an adult, as a father, etc. They distill this down to three essential messages that they repeat the these people over and over again in a variety of ways. For the youngest children it boils down to: "God Loves Me. God Made Me. Jesus Wants to Be My Friend For Ever".

Taking a cue from this, each year since he turned 5, I've taught Prahlad an additional prayer that we recite each night before sleeping. We now recite four prayers together (actually 5, because I also taught him Our Lord's Prayer from the Bible). In these prayers I have encapsulated what I discern as the essential devotional philosophical underpinnings that are most appropriate for him to imbibe at that time.

The Maha Kirtan for Kids program [poster | program] here on September 13 is the beginning of this. We've got the sound system to a certain level now, and it's time to put some energy into our program for the children.

The current temple design that we are working with has zero, as in no facility for children. It's based on a design for a bunch of single people to cram into an ashram and go out until they flame out.

A purpose-designed facility has sufficient spaces to facilitate age-appropriate programs for the number of children who come based on the number of adults who are facilitated. The program that goes on in that facility needs to dedicate sufficient resources as in personnel and money to that program to make it work.

For the older youths there is a section upstairs, as mentioned previously, with their own sound system and stage, and also break out rooms for small group discussions. It's an expanded version of a Loft preaching center, like Gaura Yoga or the Loft in New Zealand.

Conclusion: Invest heavily in children's facilities and programming.

Next: Function 3 - Presentations.

This is the fifth post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". See also the previously published Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Function 1 - Sound

The first function that the facility has to facilitate (that's why it's called a facility - it's a form that makes a particular function easy) is the chanting of the Holy Name.

The environment must be designed around sound vibration - after all, this movement is meant to be all about sound. Forget about turning to India for state-of-the-art sound design. You can get your subject matter from there, but delivery is a Western contribution.

The main space has to be acoustically designed. This is a science, but it's not rocket science. Auditoriums are tuned for sound. The space needs to be designed from the get go for acoustics, or it needs to be repurposed with acoustic materials, such as baffles and acoustic panels.

Next, it needs to be wired for sound. The model here is any environment which is purposed for sound, such as an auditorium, a concert hall, a nightclub, etc. There needs to be a multicore running down the length of the facility, either under the floor on in the wall. A multicore is a huge snake cable with thirty or forty cables inside it.

You need a massive mixing desk, multi-band graphic eq for the room, compressors and multi-effects units, and a number of wireless rigs. Sound is what it's all about.

The thing about technology, and this is from years of personal experience, is that there is a sweet spot that you have to reach to take advantage of it. Before you get to that sweet spot the technology creates as much interference as it does benefit. Let me give you some examples: When your microphones keep feeding back, or the cable malfunctions unless it's held at an angle, or the output of your power amp doesn't scale sufficiently, your technology gets in the way as much as facilitates. When you lay down the bucks and have a graphic eq, noise gate, a compressor, and a wireless hypercardioid mic, all that goes away, and all you get is the crisp, clear sound of the message, with no distraction by the medium. When your singers can't hear themselves and strain to sing and miss notes, when your mrdanga player can't hear what's going on and misses a change, when there is too much treble in the sound reinforcement and not enough power (bass), when the sound distribution is uneven (loud at the front and inaudible at the back), when there are speakers or ugly stands between the people and the kirtan party, technology is not helping you. When you lay down the bucks and mount speakers out of line of sight at front and back with a 180 degree phase difference, with distributed subwoofers, and provide foldback for the performers with in-ear monitors with dedicated mixes, then all that goes away and all you get is the experience of the kirtan, with no distraction by the medium.

You have to spend big on this to make it happen, and when you do, the results are awesome. No-one but the most observant goes away saying: "Wow, did you see that they were using in-ear monitors?" The technology has reached the sweet spot and become transparent. They just go away saying: "That was the best kirtan ever!" If you introduce a low level of technology then people will notice it. They'll go away complaining about the microphone or the sound.

The facility needs a dedicated sound mixing area and sound engineers. I visited Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where I participated in their morning worship service (you can check out my photos and videos of the opening service here). They had two engineers working a desk halfway back in the auditorium. Basically the design there was like any number of dedicated auditoriums that I played in in bands as a teenager. In a tour of the facility afterwards I was shown an area on the third floor where the youth have their own worship service with their own band. They had their own stage, own PA system with mixing console (all smaller than the main one, but much more developed than ISKCON temple I've seeen), and their own lighting rig.

I got my start in audio engineering at the Sandringham Baptist Church on end of my block on Mt Albert Rd in Auckland, New Zealand. The church sound man, Clem, gave a number of training sessions for interested persons in the congregation, to develop a sustained sound engineering capability for the church. When you see me rolling cables using that particular technique, that's his training.

Now you can say: well, there is no way that we can do all that. But guess what: it can be done, and I'm going to prove it.

A Culture of Music

Above I mentioned getting the subject matter for the sound. Of course, any sound system is going to be worthless without something to put through it. A zero amplified even a million times is still zero. Something out of time and out of tune just sounds worse when it's miked up.

In order to field a powerful experience for people, it's necessary to have a vibrant culture of music. This takes investment of resources - time, energy, and money.

Where you spend your money and time is where you will see growth. Creating a long-term culture of music takes short to medium term investment with no immediate return.

Quality instruments need to be purchased and maintained. Events and artists need to be sponsored. Cultural exchange needs to take place. Seminars need to be held.

Australia's biggest Christian megachurch, Hillsong [website], started life in 1983 as Hills Christian Life Centre. In 1986 they started an annual music conference, called Hillsong. By the early 90s this music conference had reached a stage of momentum where CDs were released. These CDs became wildly popular and the church rebranded itself as "Hillsong", since that was what they were known for.

When I visited Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007 I met with the music director, a hip young guy in jeans carrying an electric guitar. When I told him I was visiting from Australia he revealed that he and three other members of the church band had just returned from a visit to Hillsong.

Conclusion: Invest in sound.

Tomorrow: Function 2 - Children.

This is the fourth post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 can be found here.

Functions of a Krishna Consciousness Facility

I'm going to add a note in here, in response to the feedback that has been coming in about this series so far.

I mentioned earlier that I had let part of this series escape via Twitter. What I said there was: "I don't want a building that looks Indian. I'll take one designed for sound, kids, parking, and presentations, thanks".

I followed that up shortly afterward, after a bit more thought, with: "of course, if it has all that, I don't really mind what it looks like #functionbeforeform"

The point is not to say that "making something look or feel Indian" is wrong. The point is that this is not the exclusive, or even primary consideration; and if this if this is the only or primary conception of function, and other functions are neglected, then don't be surprised by the outcome that such a design produces.

It's important to remember that this is a discussion about function, and thence emergent form. Merely discussing form without a deep consideration of function will lead to a superficial analysis, and an inability to make any real difference.

That's my note. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming in. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

I'm not going to go into a deep discussion about the different factors that lead me to these conclusions. Many people have their opinion, and they are welcome to them. Mainly these have been inspired by studying deep, multi-year success stories, so if you want to change my opinion, have some of those ready, or be prepared to hold you opinion strongly enough to make one.

Function 0: Parking

The zeroth function (in the sense of a precondition for the first) that the facility has to facilitate (you see where that word comes from now?) is parking. If you are expecting/want people to come, then you have to facilitate that. Take a look at any shopping center, any amusement park, any concert venue. They want people to come, they facilitate that - they make it easy.

You can get away without parking facilities, but really you want to make it easy, right? That's why you're building a facility - to facilitate certain functions. The most basic one is for people to come.

Tomorrow: Function 1 - Sound.

This is the third post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here.

A Brief Analysis of ISKCON Temple Design

Let's look now at ISKCON temple design.

Any discussion of the form of a temple design obviously requires a discussion of the function of an ISKCON temple, because one implies the other.

Let me just do two things here.

First of all, if you read anything on the Internet, you'll have read people complaining that ISKCON temples today are filled with expatriate and descendent Indian congregations, and have very few people from the native population of the host country. True? Anecdotally, and from my observation also.

Part of this may be due to the design of the temple. Allow me a flight of fantasy here. The envisioned functionality of the temple is: "Let's make something that looks really Vedic", where Vedic means Indian. In the 70s, when teenagers and youths were looking for something exotic and Indian, having the most authentic Indian-looking temple was the most effective way to attract them. In the 21st century when authentic Indian is no longer such a strong draw card, that form remains attractive to expatriate and culturally Indian persons.

In support of this idea, my second thing. Let me tell a story. It comes from, by memory, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita. Someone may be able to provide the reference.

The devotees bought Watseka Ave, the site of the LA temple. Previously it was a church. Srila Prabhupada told the devotees to leave the chairs in to allow visitors to sit comfortably and hear lectures on Krishna Consciousness. After this he left and continued travelling. When he next returned to Watseka Ave he found the devotees had actually ripped out all the chairs and laid down a marble floor, to make a bona-fide "Vedic" (read: Indian) temple. Srila Prabhupada was very displeased with this.

The relationship between the two? A disparity in envisioned functionality of the facility, and hence emergent form. The devotees wanted the facility to fulfill the function of "bona-fide Indian experience". Srila Prabhupada wanted it to perform the function of "effective outreach facility".

The replication of this approach to functionality and form, that the form of the temple should serve the functionality of being more authentically Indian, has lead to the standard ISKCON temple form... which functions today to attract large Indian congregations and not many Westerners.

Rather than catalog a list of "all the things that are wrong" with ISKCON temple designs, I am going to go back to basics, and examine functionality first, then work forward to envision the form that follows that functionality.

Tomorrow: Functions of a Krishna Consciousness Facility.