Small Groups

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.

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

Function Follows Form Influences Function

When we look at any purpose-built structure we find that the form of the structure is dictated by the function that it will perform.

Take a look at a service station (a "servo" in Australia, a "petrol station" in en-UK speaking countries). The whole layout of the facility is purely to facilitate its functionality: driveways - entry and exit; fuel pumps; underground tanks with access for petrol tankers; a shop and till.

Take a look at a supermarket: a huge parking lot; a specific layout with aisles and signs, laid out to guide shoppers through in a specific order; lanes and tills, with express lanes and regular lanes.

Take a look at an office building: multi-level with office spaces; toilets on or between floors; a kitchenette facility; elevators and stairs.

Take a look at a stadium: probably extensive parking near-by; huge entrances and corridors; extensive bathroom facilites; changing rooms; tiered seating; commercial facilites for caterers; sound system; video system.

Whatever the function that will be performed there, the building is designed and constructed to facilitate that.

Important Point:

• A "facility" (from Latin facilis - easy) is a particular form that makes a particular function easy.

In this way Form follows Function.

Form, in turn, influences function. For example: we leased a space for our yoga center downtown in Brisbane. We were unable to put a kitchen in there, although we had hoped that we would be able to. Due to this limitation, or particular characteristic of the form of the space our functionality was similarly limited, or shaped. So the form of the building supports certain functionality, and impedes other functionalities.

In this way Form influences Function.

Function Precedes Form

Another way of stating that Form follows Function is to say that Function precedes Form. In the case of our yoga center we already had our function. However, the form that we obtained did not support that function. Function precedes form. When you are designing a building you have in mind the function that it will support and facilitate. When you buy or rent an existing building, unless the function you wish to perform is a common use case (which yoga classes + dinner is not) then you may have to adapt the form (something that was easy to do in New Zealand, but very difficult in Nazi Australia), or restrict or adapt the functionality (which is what we ended up doing for a strained three years).

I would like to write a digressionary note about form and formlessness, but I don't have the energy or time right now. Suffice it to say:

• as Krishna says in Bhagavad-gita, that progress is difficult without a form, for the embodied. A form of some description gives people something to latch on to and helps them to get started and to progress. Eventually the forms must be abandoned (or at least attachment to the forms must be given up for pursuit of the function);
• as Bruce Lee said: "Learn all the techniques then forget them", or as Duke Ellington put it: "Learn all the scale and notes, then forget them and just wail";
• As soon as you instantiate a form you make a target for criticism. No-one will criticise you for doing nothing - it's only once you start trying to do *something* that people do that.
• As soon as you instantiate a form you create a pattern which can replace the thing that exists to support. Soon it goes from a form supporting a function to the function being to support and perpetuate the form, an inversion of the original proposition.

Anyway, form has its use, its misuse, and its abuse.

Tomorrow: A Brief Analysis of ISKCON Temple Design

I've started this blog post many times over. The most recent time was on the plane flying back from Sydney after this year's Janmastami festival. I let a small snippet of it escape via Twitter and it ignited such interest that I realized that it's a winner as a topic. I can never get it just right, so I'm just going to bang it out now as it is, half digested though it may be. I'm going to publish it in parts over the next week, so stay tuned and collect the whole set!

A rather lengthy preamble

First of all, let me frame this somewhat. There is really no way to write about this without ruffling feathers. It's going to be difficult for my local audience (in Brisbane, Australia) to read this blog post without thinking about the local ISKCON temple project, and assuming that everything that I am writing is somehow either inspired by or aimed at that project. My national audience (in Australia) may be left thinking that I'm talking about their temple. International audiences will probably find it applicable, but unless I mention your temple by name or you've seen me there, you're probably going to appreciate this more as a general analysis.

I have been thinking about these themes for over a decade now, and these thoughts and observations are a synthesis of my reading, thinking, observing, and experimenting.

Secondly, and to frame it further: I have a bunch of favorite sayings. One I recently stumbled across is: "Understand your problems, but give your energy to solutions". Here are a couple of my own that are also applicable here: "The only valid critique is a superior result"; and "Opinions are many, success stories are few". What I mean to say by this is that there are a million people out there who are arm chair generals, arm chair coaches, arm chair strategists, arm chair GBCs, and arm chair temple presidents. Once you actually get on the field and face the limitations of the circumstances you are working with, including the people, the existing structures, and the reality of your own mortality, you gain an appreciation for why it's not as simple as your off-the-cuff plan makes it sound.

I've come to deal with this by no longer talking about what other people should do, but rather talking about what I think I should do. So that's what I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about what Tirtharaj should do with the Brisbane temple. I'm not talking about what Aniruddha should do with the Melbourne temple. I'm not talking about what Varanayaka should do with the Sydney temple, nor what Svavasa should do with the LA temple.

This is not about what everyone else is doing right or wrong. People are doing the best they can given the circumstances they are working in, and there are many people who are doing a great job. That doesn't rule out improvement, nor does looking at ways to do things differently depreciate what is going on. Anyone who has taken responsibility in ISKCON for starting or maintaining a facility knows first hand the challenges involved, and nothing is stopping anyone who thinks it is "not being done right" or that they could do something better from taking responsibility for something themselves.

What I'm talking about here is my own vision about what I will do in the future, what my son will do in the future, and what we will continue to do moving forward into the future, life after life. At this point I think the vision, while it continues to evolve, has stablised to the point where future changes will be of the details rather than the overall scope and direction.

Thirdly, and the final piece of framing: why am I writing this down? For a number of reasons:

• To record my own observations for posterity, so that I can look back on them and review how things have changed, or panned out
• To share them and contribute to a conversation about these topics
• To participate in a conversation about them to further refine them
• To learn from the experience and observations of others

So to summarise. This is not about what I think X person should be doing, except where X = me in the future. So don't read it any other way. It's not a veiled attack or subversive revolutionary manifesto.

So here we go.

Tomorrow: Function Follows Form Influences Function

By popular demand, here is my Bhagavad-gita Small Group Resource. It contains resources for a 20 week small group program based on Bhagavad-gita. It is suitable for small groups of 2-20 people.

Each week one chapter or half a chapter of the Gita is covered. Participants read the Gita during the week, then discuss it in a 60-90 minute small group meeting. Having a resource such as this takes the pressure off the facilitator of the group to come up with something each week. There is a structure and some basic material, and they simply have to facilitate discussion and answer questions that arise.

The purposes of this resource and the small group program around it are three:

• 1. To encourage participants to read the Gita in a systematic fashion
• 2. To encourage them to discuss it in a systematic fashion
• 3. To encourage the formation and transmission of values in addition to information.

The resource is licensed under Creative Commons 2.5 BY-SA, so you're free to use, reuse, modify, redistribute, even sell it, as long as you pass on the same rights to others, including giving your modifications away under the same license.

Please feel free to write me with feedback.

Here it is:

• Bhagavad-gita Small Group Resource 1.0 (794KB, 55 page pdf)

Writing helps me to clarify and collate my thinking. In writing about the reasoning behind our decision to close the Albert St studio (not yet published) I wrote that our mission is not "to maintain a yoga studio", but rather to "help people to develop uplifting relationships".

That's a key insight.

Four Spaces where Relationships take place

Human beings need relationships in four distinct relational "spaces" in order to be psychologically balanced and healthy.

The four relational spaces are: Public, Social, Personal, and Intimate.

A strategic approach to sharing Krishna consciousness should provide opportunities for uplifting relationships in all of these spaces.

Public Space

The Public space is where you are essentially "alone in a crowd". You are surrounded by people, but there are too many for you to interact personally. You are as much spectator as participant.

Examples of the Public space would be a Sunday Feast program at a Hare Krishna temple or doing a yoga class in the Atma studio.

Social Space

The Social space is 6-15 people. It gives you an opportunity to interact with people and assess them. Essentially you are looking for persons with whom you are interested in pursuing a further relationship.

Examples of the social space would be a group of people talking at a party or sitting at the table talking over dinner at Atma after the class.

Personal Space

The Personal space is typically 3-5 people. It's a much smaller group where the conversation can turn more specific and closer to shared core values of the participants.

Examples of the Personal space would be the kitchen of a home, or a group of friends sitting down for a drink in a cafe.

Intimate Space

The Intimate space is inhabited by 2-3 people. In this space the participants are very closely bonded.

Examples of intimate space might include a heart-to-heart talk between two people, asking advice, talking confidentially or specifically. The dynamic of the interaction will change when someone else enters the space.

The Foyer, Living Room, Kitchen Analogy

In the book "Creating Community: Five Keys to Creating a Small Group Culture" Andy Stanley and Bill Willlits use the analogy of a house to describe these different spaces.

The Public space is the "foyer" or perhaps the porch of the house. If you imagine a party, people who are hanging around on the edges, sizing things up, hang outside. There they have the opportunity to spectate, without the pressure to participate.

The Living Room is the Social space, where people head once they decide that they want to get involved.

The Kitchen is the Personal space, the heart of the party, where people are more deeply engaged, and the deep and meaningful conversations happen.

The Albert St Studio and the Four Spaces

In Creating Community Stanley and Willits explain the process of deepening relationship as one of traversing these spaces, from Foyer to Living Room to Kitchen, or from Public to Social to Personal.

In the Albert St studio we have a Public space, the yoga room, we have a social space, the dining area, but we are really lacking the personal space. At our previous facilities it was literally a kitchen, a place where people could spend time with a two or three people and talk on a more personal level, while helping to cook or do dishes.

We have had an informal saying amongst the atma crew: "I came for the yoga, I came back for the food, I stayed for the company". This describes the transition from public to social to personal.

So not having a kitchen as part of our facility at the Albert St studio has constrained the fulfilment of our mission (though not thwarted it), and now I can articulate precisely how it has done so.

The Spaces and the Strategic Approach to Facilitating Uplifting Relationships

A strategic approach to sharing Krishna Consciousness, helping people to develop relationships that are uplifting and beneficial, should provide opportunities for uplifting relationships in all of these relational spaces.

To have a huge program once a week where people can be "alone in a crowd" fulfils the need of Public space, and is necessary. People need to feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

However, it must be accompanied by social, personal, and intimate spaces.

The seating arrangement at the Sunday Feast program in Brisbane was counter-productive to this, with guests sitting in lines. It made for easy serving out, but it failed to provide the correct setting to facilitate other spaces and other types of relationships.

Recently the serving out arrangement of the Saturday night feast at the Graceville temple has changed. With up to 300 people coming it's no longer feasible to serve out in lines. Instead guests go to a continuously serving buffet and then find somewhere to sit.

With the requirement to sit in lines no longer imposed on them people have begun to sit in circles and create social spaces. These social spaces offer the opportunity to manifest relationships in social space.

Social space and Small Groups

In "Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas make the argument that small groups fulfil the need for a safe social space for participants.

Relationships in a small group are not meant to be personal or intimate, they are meant to be in the social space.

Certainly we see that atma fulfils this social and psychological need of people. Where do you go if you don't drink or smoke, to hang out and meet like-minded people?

In an overall strategy small groups can fulfill the role of a social space.

In my post "Thoughts on Small Groups 1" I explained that Bhakti-vriksha (small groups) fulfill social and psychological needs of the participants. It's important to recognise this and structure things around it.

People need relationships in all four relational spaces. A small group, and the small group program, exists to provide a venue for uplifting relationships in social space. This is an important insight.

Note to self: create a category for small group posts when I get home from the beach

As part of the strategic planning for 2009 I've been reading Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. It's not really an entirely new approach, more like a summary of the "lessons learned in the last ten years".

I've been reading this book and meditating on the Bhakti-vrksa manual, the BV program, and the previous analyses I've done.

Nityananda Priya das is on loan to Brisbane from Melbourne at the moment. He's up here working a contract for a number of months. Both in Melbourne and here in Brisbane he is an active and effective preacher of Krishna Consciousness among the Indian community, especially young students, who are always the most vulnerable and easily captured.

if you think that sounds cynical, you should read "The Cell Church", a 1998 book by Larry Stockstill. This book about Christian small group preaching contains one section describing how they target foreign students, inviting them to a dinner where they serve all their national dishes, chuck on a CD of their national music, then pull out a national map to pore over together after the meal.

Definitely cheesy, and bordering on manipulation. All preaching, however, and even all interactions, are arguably a form of manipulation - they are actions designed to elicit a particular response. That's another topic though.

i had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with NP prabhu. In that conversation he mentioned that young Indians who come to study in a foreign country like Australia become more appreciative of their own country and culture, to a degree they never would if at home in India. It's a case of "you don't know what you've got until it's gone".

Now, I'd always chalked up the success of BV among ex-pat Indian populations to "cultural predisposition" to Krishna Consciousness. Now, this is true. However, it's a special case of a general principle that can also be applied to Western populations.

That is, that BV groups fulfill a social and psychological need of the participants, and they do so in a Krishna Conscious way.

The homesick and newly nationally chauvinistic young student in a foreign land (I'm sorry, but New Zealand is the best damned country in the world ;-) has psychological needs that participating in a BV group fulfils. The role of temple as a hub of social life is also fulfilled, especially in Muslim countries where temple worship and congregation is forbidden, and where BV had its earliest successes.

So what this means is that BV is not impossible among populations who are not "culturally predisposed" to Krishna Consciousness, it's just a question of understanding what their psychological and social needs are, and meeting those in the context of the small group program, in a Krishna Conscious way.