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Subud Vision - Feedback

Raymond Foster - What Lies Ahead?

Think of the organization as serving customers. From Sahlan Diver, September 27, 2007. Time 9:11

Raymond,

In the second paragraph of your article you say: "...although I found complete fulfilment by way of the kejiwaan, I nevertheless found myself ... very much at odds with the social and thence the organizational side of Subud".

This comment puts me in mind of a comment from Michael Irwin in the feedback to one of the other Subud Vision articles: "Now the idea of separating out the congregation of the opened from those who want to be active in the organizational support of that congregation is emerging."

Perhaps Subud should be organised more like the Church where there is a much greater separation between practising one's faith and being involved in the Church organisation. You can just turn up, take part in a church service and then go home again - people don't have to feel obliged to sit around and socialise afterwards, nor have to get heavily involved in Church organisational issues. To put it another way, if someone is converted to Christianity, the most important thing is that they have become a Christian, not that they have joined an organisation called the Christian church.

There is nothing "received" about the committee model of organisation that Bapak encouraged, which in practise has become overblown and burdensome for Subud's small membership. In fact, there is probably nothing particularly Indonesian about it either - it's the system of organisation one would find at the local cricket club or stamp-collecting society.

We should be looking at alternative models of organisation that might serve us much better, e.g. as Michael Irwin suggests "...think of the organization as serving customers".

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