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Dear fellow Unificationists,

I am writing this book in the hope my ideas will inspire our movement to grow in numbers and in spirit. The title of this book comes from a speech given by Father in 1994 titled, "Create Your Ideal Family to Save the World." He said: "... create ideal families for the building of God's kingdom on earth." He told us we "have a very important mission of restoring this world. In order to restore this world, you must create your own blessed family which is an example to other families in this world."

What is the strategy we should use to get our movement to sweep the earth in the next 10 or 20 years? I believe we should show people how to fulfill the Three Blessings and who will then turn around and witness and inspire others to witness until every person on earth lives by the common sense laws of the universe that True Parents teach.

Let me begin by saying that we should first organize ourselves in a way that makes it as easy for people to hear the Principle and join us as dedicated brothers and sisters under the Messiah. Public Relations is fine, but our primary job is to get people to study and accept the DP as the truth that will set this world free. The old style of having a center and inviting strangers over to hear lectures for hours on end is too slow. We live in the age of technology. We are called to be teachers. The Messiah is a teacher. Our duty is to educate this world. God wants every person to hear his truth and that is why every home has a TV. The blue glow that comes out of every home in America at night is mesmerizing millions of people to the values of immoral Hollywood stars like Oprah and Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt who glorify premarital sex on the screen and in real life. Television exists to spread God's word -- for mankind to see and hear the Messiah and hear his theology. Satan attacks first and has dominated TV since the beginning, but now it is time for God to be heard and studied. Unificationists should be famous as being religious people who are as fanatic to get videos into every home as the Jehovah Witnesses are about getting their publications printed and out. We should do books, tapes and give speeches, but the core of our life should be to get every home in this world and every person to study the DP in their home by watching videos that clearly and professionally teach people how to live God's way of life.

Everyone watches TV. We should focus on the media. Every home needs videos of the Principle and videos on how to live a principled life. The few videos made by the church are not good enough. People need to see colorful pictures, not someone standing in front of a blackboard. I encourage Unificationists to see that the very first thing we should do is make good videos.

The next thing I believe we should do is have a strategy that is same the world over. Everyone recognizes McDonald's the world over. They have an image that every person recognizes. The UM should have the same. I believe that image should be that we are focused on teaching the Principle. I do not believe we should buy or build traditional church buildings.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE READING ROOMS

I think we should do something like the Christian Scientists do with their reading rooms. Imagine that in every country we have a Divine Principle Study Room. Let's have one in every major city to begin with. A Unificationist sits at a desk near the door and any person can ask them questions. There is no aggressive witnessing inside the room. People can buy literature. Perhaps some can borrow books and videos. I think it would be most effective to have video carrels with earphones so that a person can sit and watch videos anytime they want.

MALLS

Some Christian Science reading rooms are in malls. I remember seeing a Christian Science reading in the largest mall (called Westroads) in Omaha, Nebraska. I believe that the UM should only do malls if they are available. Why? There are several good reasons.

Safety -- malls have security that patrol the mall and parking lot. Some white and black Christian churches are burned every year by arsonists. The headquarters of the UC in Paris, France was bombed once. It would more difficult for a mob to attack in a mall as opposed to being on the street.

Insurance -- it would probably be more litigation proof to be in a mall. People are walking around in the mall and using their restrooms instead of having to provide restrooms if we rented or owned a shop on a busy street. Some people deliberately fall in restrooms and say there was water on the floor. Many parts of the world have bad weather at least part of the year and the mall is indoors. In winter the parking lot is kept plowed of snow and the sidewalks are kept ice free on the outside of the mall.

Convenience -- everyone knows where the mall is and everyone goes there. It is easier for spirit world to work to influence people to go there. People can easily loose addresses but they will never forget the mall.

Advertising -- people have to go there all the time anyway, so they will continually see the video room.

Psychological -- being in the mall gives us a feeling of legitimacy. It also gives balance to the dominating atmosphere of materialism. In the mall in Nebraska I mentioned earlier, there was even a chapel for anyone to use. Another major reason to be in the mall is that people are often afraid to try something new. If the study room is on the street a person has to walk by outdoors and have the guts to walk in. What if it is eight o'clock at night and the other stores next to it are closed? At the same hour in a mall it is bright and air-conditioned. The person can walk around without looking conspicuous and get his or her courage up to walk in. The mall is like a mediator between the outside and the video room. There are three stages here: the first is the outdoors, the second is indoors in the mall, and the third is inside the study room. The feng shui is better than being on the street because a person feels more conformable. Perhaps we could even have a door open that leads to a brochure table and video playing an intro to the UM and then a door after that to go inside.

Here is a picture of the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

LIBRARIES

Most public and school libraries now have video carrels. We should make sure that every library in the world has our videos and that we advertise those videos so effectively that every student and person knows about them and is persuaded to look at them -- either at the library or checking them out and watching our video series at home. We should have a clear set of videos that take each person from point A to point B. The videos should be so clear that the average person will move through the DP and then into videos that go step by step into explaining all the practical aspects of life.

DIVINE PRINCIPLE VIDEO ROOMS

The focus of the Divine Principle Video Rooms is video. Visitors can view videos at video carrels. They can also borrow or buy books and videos. Perhaps we could have rooms with glass windows where guests can join a Principle or Bible study session.

TOLL FREE 800 NUMBER

The Family Federation should be united world wide like McDonald's is. Everywhere you go, we should be the same. If we meet someone from Kansas, Kenya or Russia we should be able to say, "Call this toll-free number and someone will give you the phone number of a person there that you can talk to." Ideally the number should be one that everyone knows because the numbers form a word or phrase that is easily remembered. Something like 1-800-LoveGod or whatever. We should have magazine, newspaper, billboards, TV, and radio ads persuading people to call. We should distribute videos by the millions door-to-door and the video begins with our phone number. No matter where a person goes he or she will hear the same message and see our brothers and sisters living that ideology. If we teach that men are to be the providers of their families then guests should see men leading their families according to the traditional values we teach. Mankind needs to see a group living what they preach. Word and deed must match absolutely.

What visitors must see is a community, not a church. No one should be called a minister anymore and every member is a volunteer and not supported by the community or headquarters. Men need to be outstanding in their careers and UM families should be large and happy. We need to be so incredible that Mormons will jump ship and join us. The emphasis of the UM on top down work should change to grassroots intimate communities of believers who live by traditional family values better than Mormons do. The Mormons are creaming us only because we have no clear ideology and strategy. I humbly submit I have that ideology and strategy.

LOVING COMMUNITY

I can visualize every person in the world hearing about these study rooms by word of mouth and advertising. These rooms are the external aspect of the UM. The internal aspect is Unificationists living in loving communities. There is an exciting concept called cohousing. Please check out the book Cohousing at your local library or buy a copy and share the book with other brothers and sisters. So far, cohousing communities are secular. I think we should live like these communities but add that only Unificationists live there. I think they should be a gated community and the only outside people who are allowed to visit have been screened by those who live there. Eventually these communities would grow so numerous and large that they would eventually be cities -- cities on a hill -- as the Puritans envisioned for America when they landed in Massachusetts in 1630.

Cohousing -- God's Ideal Capitalist Communities

Michael Craig's vision

In the May, 1995 Unification News Michael Craig wrote an article called "Garden Homes: A New Approach to Housing Ourselves."

 

He wrote that "it would be impossible to succeed in our collective mission unless we pulled together" but unfortunately there is no "consensus on how this could be accomplished." The members in Detroit only met "on Sundays and special occasions. As each family became involved in the struggle to feed, clothe and shelter themselves, there was little time and energy left to promote a significant transformation of our collective social environment. In this regard, the concept 'where two or more are gathered' took on a new meaning for me. Single families existing miles apart would never succeed in bringing about the kind of radical change implied by True Parent's tradition. However, a physical community (minimum of four families) could perhaps generate enough 'critical mass' to tilt the scales."

This sure sounds great to me. Let's do it. The problem of course is that these couples must love each other. Families could begin the process by visiting each other's house and have potluck. Over time, if they gel then they can get the finances and commitment to live together. This brother's "vision" was families eating together in a community dining room and having room for gardens. He says there would be great savings and mutual aid by having "cooperation in food buying, babysitting, and a hundred other details of everyday life. There could be co-sharing of big ticket items such as lawnmowers, power tools, etc., as well. It is easy to imagine parents (and older children) having weekly meetings in the community dining area (perhaps over dinner) to discuss ways to cooperate to further reduce the economic burden of raising families. This would free each to devote more time to witnessing and teaching."

I agree. But I'd like to expand this brother's vision to communities that already exist and direct you to the book CoHousing by Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant that shows beautiful colored pictures of communities in Denmark that share a communal dining room called the "common house."

At the website www.cohousing.org they give this brief definition:

What is Cohousing? Cohousing is the name of a type of collaborative housing that attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbors, and there is no sense of community. It is characterized by private dwellings with their own kitchen, living-dining room etc., but also extensive common facilities. The common building may include a large dining room, kitchen, lounges, meeting rooms, recreation facilities, library, workshops, childcare. Usually, cohousing communities are designed and managed by the residents, and are intentional neighborhoods: the people are consciously committed to living as a community; the physical design itself encourages that and facilitates social contact. The typical cohousing community has 20 to 30 single family homes along a pedestrian street or clustered around a courtyard. Residents of cohousing communities often have several optional group meals in the common building each week.   Trudeslund Cohousing in Denmark This type of housing began in Denmark in the late 1960s, and spread to North America in the late 1980s. There are now more than a hundred cohousing communities completed or in development across the United States.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

The study room is like the profane and our communities are the sacred. One is public and the other private. We need a safe place to live and yet we need to risk persecution in public.

SUNDAY SERVICE

Sunday service should be open to members only, i.e., those who believe True Parents are the Messiah and have shown themselves to be normal people. Those who have not accepted Father as the Lord of the Second Advent should be hearing the Principle at the Divine Principle Video Room on Sunday morning.

I would appreciate your thoughts. Please email me and let me know if these ideas interest you. JohnGodwin@hotmail.com.

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A NOTE TO THE READER IF YOU ARE NOT A UNIFICATIONIST

This book is addressed to the followers of Sun Myung Moon. To the reader of this who does not know about Sun Myung Moon and his movement let me say a few words. Followers of Sun Myung Moon are called Unificationists. Sun Myung Moon's movement was called the Unification Church for many years. In the 1990s Rev. Moon "took down the sign" and renamed his movement Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. In this book I will refer to this organization as Unification Movement [hereafter UM]. The focus of Unificationists is the ideology of the Divine Principle which is a combination of revelations from God to Rev. Moon and insights of his followers. The goal of Unificationists is to teach and live this truth. I encourage you to study the teachings of Rev. Moon and his followers. The movement's headquarters is in Washington D.C. at 1610 Columbia Rd. (202) 462-5700. To find some one nearest you, call them and ask. Damian Anderson has some addresses and emails of members around the world at his website www.Unification.net. If none of these work for you, email me at JohnGodwin@hotmail.com and I will do my best to connect you with someone. You might also consider reading Rev. Moon's words and some books by his followers that you can buy at the movement's online bookstore at www.HSAbooks.com. And I humbly offer my books that have the full text online at www.DivinePrinciple.com. Another website you might find helpful is www.Tparents.org.

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