The administration of teaching is preeminent among the
categories of responsibility in which a National Spiritual Assembly exercises
its authority to direct and coordinate the affairs of its community. The
execution of this responsibility is of a different character, however, from
that of, say, the administration of justice; for whereas the latter is properly
concentrated in the activity of the Assembly, which must itself render
judgments on cases submitted to it, the former is essentially concerned with
efforts initiated and maintained at the base of the community and thus calls
for a decentralized mode of management—a means of functioning that makes
possible the mobilization of action among the generality of believers, whose
individual initiatives must be accommodated in a coherent movement of teaching
at the level of clusters. Where rapid or substantial growth is occurring, such
management ensures that due attention is given not only to executing the plan
for expansion and consolidation, but also to addressing the needs of varying
patterns of growth from one area to another, to coping with emerging new
realities, as well as to applying the lessons of experience in rapidly changing
situations.
(From a letter dated 5 January 2006 written on behalf of the Universal
House of Justice to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United
States)
