A Season of Forgiving

ORGANIZERS GUIDE

Association for Global New Thought

Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence

M.K. Gandhi Institute

STEP ONE:

Read this document carefully. It is your simple guide for organizing and will save you many steps as you undertake creating an Interfaith Celebration in your community.

STEP TWO:

Review the Table of Contents. It will give you a brief summary of the tools enclosed in your toolkit.

STEP THREE:

Call a meeting of key people in your church, spiritual community, or organization. These would include, ministers and executive assistants, program directors, staff, core volunteers, members. Use your toolkit to prepare handouts and discussion points. Check out the Religions Resources. The online resources listed are hand-picked to bring you to the best interfaith resources available as quickly and easily as possible. We have already done the extensive research for you, so take advantage of this opportunity.

Next Steps: Ask meeting participants to read doc and think about possibilities. Schedule a brief meeting or conference call to determine if the group wants to go further.

AT THIS POINT: Please check-in with Dr. Barbara Fields (Barbara@agnt.org)  at AGNT headquarter office and let us know that your group is exploring further participation. We are here to mentor, guide, provide resources, brainstorm, and optimize your efforts.

STEP FOUR:

Note: If you represent a New Thought church and would like to create a regional event, contact other New Thought ministers within working distance of your center. AGNT will be happy to provide local New Thought contact information if you donÕt already have it.

STEP FIVE:

Use the Religious Directories as a guide to find and invite representatives from other religions to join your next meeting as a strategic partner. In your letter of invitation, describe the Interfaith Celebration for A Season for Forgiving in your own words. The Religions Directories in your toolkit will also steer you toward a mailing and contact list to invite the broader multi-faith community to your interfaith events.

STEP SIX:

Host a meeting at your church, or other agreed upon venue, with your New Thought colleagues and representatives from other religious traditions. If they feel called to invite key members of their communities this is a good sign and should be encouraged.

Make room for everyone to play, and share leadership! Our first task is to model new leadership and collaborative, non-hierarchical principles, including the power of collective wisdom based on spiritual foundations, shared vision, affirmation and empowerment.

STEP SEVEN

Host leaders and members from other local faith. Begin the meeting by asking if other faith leaders there would share a blessing, prayer or invocation with the group.

Make a basic presentation about the project and then create an interactive dialogue.

STEP EIGHT

Media.

Go to your local newspaper and television affiliates. Ask them to cover your Interfiath Celebration in articles and stories. Tape events and meetings where respectfully possible. If there is multi-media expertise in your group, edited clips of activities will become increasingly valuable when incorporated into the context of all other Interfaith Celebrations in progress.

STEP NINE

DO REPORT your activities on a regular basis. We will use the existing Season for Nonviolence 2006 Interactive Calendar for event posting because it is familiar and easy to use.

1. go to Season for Nonviolence Calendar

2. Click on the Add Item box and fill out the form with your up coming or completed event information. Be sure to fill in all sections as completely as possible, especially Time, (AM or PM and time zone), and Location (with town and state included). Keep the description brief but do include the name of the facility or site and any costs involved.

3. For completed projects or events, briefly describe what happened, how many participated, comments or experiences, etc. that you want to share for the anthology.

4. Comments may be added to your postings after they happen as well. For example you can add a brief summary or comment on the event at the end of the body of text that you posted previously by finding your event date and opening that day on the events calendar. Click on Modify Item and scroll to your event. Click on the dot by your event and make changes or additions. When finished, scroll to the bottom and click on Modify Event. That's it! Please note that what you post to the events calendar will be published in the anthology so remember to identify your organization name and location,(city, state, country).

5. If you will be having ongoing or recurring events, please fill out the Recurring Events section as carefully as possible.