Waypoints

This is where we are headed. Within the next year we envision our community sustaining two children's classes and two junior youth groups — spaces where young people are not only introduced to the spiritual principles of the Bahá'í Faith but are grounded in the cultural heritage of the land they call home. Soha's class launching in March is the first step on this path. The curriculum work already underway will help ensure these spaces are meaningful and rooted. This Vision Waypoint is our declaration of intention — a horizon we are walking toward together, one class, one child, one conversation at a time.

It sounds simple — just explain what you believe and what your community does. But anyone who has tried knows that finding the right words, in the right moment, with the right spirit, is a skill that takes time and practice to develop. By spring of 2027 we envision teaching teams within our community who have done that work — men and women who can speak naturally and compellingly about the Bahá'í Faith, answer questions with confidence, and extend genuine invitations to the activities and gatherings that are transforming our community. This is not about scripted speeches or sales pitches. It is about finding your own authentic voice for something you love.

The Bahá'í approach to community building is not a fixed plan executed from above but a living, iterative process of growth. At its heart is a four part cycle — Study, Action, Reflection, and Consultation — through which a community builds capacity, goes out and serves, honestly examines what it is learning, and brings those insights back to the table to inform what comes next. This is not a complicated idea, but embedding it deeply enough into community life that it becomes second nature takes years of patient practice. By 2029 we hold a vision of a community that has done that work — where study, action, reflection, and consultation are not items on an agenda but the natural rhythm of how we move forward together. Every home visit, every children's class, every meaningful conversation, every gift made for Celebration feeds back into this cycle and makes us wiser, more capable, and more unified. This Waypoint marks our intention to become not just a community that does good things, but a community that learns its way into doing them better.

This is what growth looks like in the Bahá'í framework — not a single center expanding outward but many small fires kindling simultaneously across a community. By 2030 we envision teaching teams active in multiple focus neighborhoods throughout Juneau, each working in an ongoing cycle of study, action, reflection, and consultation with the families they are walking alongside. No neighborhood is too small, no relationship too ordinary to be part of this vision. What begins with a home visit, a children's class, a meaningful conversation, grows over time into something that transforms not just individual lives but the spiritual culture of an entire city. This Waypoint marks our horizon — the moment when everything we are building today begins to bear its fullest fruit.

This is where we are going. By 2031 we envision a Bahá'í community center that is not just a building but a living, breathing heart of spiritual and cultural life in Juneau. Teaching teams are active across multiple neighborhoods. Children's classes and junior youth groups are thriving, rooted in the cultural heritage of this land. Families are engaged, relationships are deep, and the cycle of study, action, reflection, and consultation turns as naturally as the seasons. The values of the indigenous peoples of Southeast Alaska and the principles of the Bahá'í Faith have found their common voice together. Every Waypoint on this scroll — every home visit, every gift made by hand, every dawn prayer, every meaningful conversation — has been a step toward this moment. A community built, as a child once said with perfect clarity, with nothing more and nothing less than love and a drum.