964 with the Nine Year Plan, to be followed by a
Five Year Plan (1974), a Seven Year Plan (1979), a Six Year Plan (1986), a
Three Year Plan (1993), a Four Year Plan (1996), and a Twelve Month Plan
that ended the century. The shifts in emphasis that distinguished these
successive endeavours from one another provide a useful index to the
growth that the Cause was experiencing in these decades and the new
opportunities and challenges that this growth produced. Far more important
than the differences amongst them, however, is the fact that the
activities called for in each Plan were extensions of initiatives which
had been set in motion by Shoghi Effendi, who in turn had seized up and
elaborated strands woven by the Faith's Founders--the training of Spiritual
Assemblies; the translation, production and distribution of literature;
the encouragement of universal participation by the friends; attention to
the spiritual enrichment of Baha'i life; efforts toward the involvement of
the Baha'i community in the life of society; the strengthening of Baha'i
family life; and the education of children and youth. While these various
processes will continue indefinitely to unfold new possibilities, the fact
that each originated in the creative impulse of the Revelation itself
lends to everything the Baha'i community does a unifying force that is
both the secret and the guarantee of its ultimate success.

The first two decades of the process were one of the most enriching
periods that the Baha'i community has experienced. Within a remarkably
short period of time, the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies multiplied
and the ethnic and cultural diversity of the membership became an ever
more distinctive feature of Baha'i life. Although the breakdown of society
was creating problems for Baha'i administrative institutions, a related
effect was to generate a greatly increased interest in the message of the
Cause. At the outset, the community was introduced to the challenge of
"teaching the masses". By 1967, it was being called on "to launch, on a
global scale and to every stratum of human society, an enduring and
intensive proclamation of the healing message that the Promised One has
come...."(121)

As believers from urban centres set out on sustained campaigns to reach
the mass of the world's peoples living in villages and rural areas, they
encountered a receptivity to Baha'u'llah's message far beyond anything
they had imagined possible. While