Envisioning the course that the growth of the Cause would follow, Shoghi Effendi had written of “the launching of worldwide enterprises destined to be embarked upon, in future epochs of that same [Formative] Age, by the Universal House of Justice, that will symbolize the unity and coordinate and unify the activities of ... National Assemblies.”(120) These global undertakings began in 1964 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 Bahá’í life; efforts toward the involvement of the Bahá’í community in the life of society; the strengthening of Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í life. Although the breakdown of society was creating problems for Bahá’í 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)