Assistant
Assistant, or Assistant to the Auxiliary Board member, is a position in Bahá’í Administration which refers to an individual appointed by an Auxiliary Board member to assist them in their work. The position was established at the direction of the Universal House of Justice in 1973.
Functions[edit]
An assistant is appointed by an Auxiliary Board member and works within a specific geographical jurisdiction.[1] Regarding their function the Universal House of Justice has stated:
"Their aims should be to activate and encourage Local Spiritual Assemblies, to call the attention of Local Spiritual Assembly members to the importance of holding regular meetings, to encourage local communities to meet for the Nineteen Day Feasts and Holy Days, to help deepen their fellow-believers’ understanding of the Teachings, and generally to assist the Auxiliary Board members in the discharge of their duties."[2]
Unlike Auxiliary Board members and Counsellors assistants are permitted to serve on Spiritual Assemblies while serving as an assistant and regarding this the Universal House of Justice has written:
"An assistant is appointed by an Auxiliary Board member to help him in a specified area of the territory and he functions as an assistant only in relation to that area. Assistants, like Auxiliary Board members, function individually, not as a consultative body. Assistants who are members of a National Assembly or a national committee do not function as assistants in relation to that body, and they have the same duty to observe the confidentiality of its consultations, and of matters considered by the Assembly to be confidential, as does any other member. An assistant can, of course, be a member of a Local Spiritual Assembly, but his task here as an assistant is to help the Spiritual Assembly to function harmoniously and efficiently in the discharge of its duties and this will hardly succeed if he gives the Assembly the feeling that he is reporting privately everything it does to the Auxiliary Board member. He should, on the contrary, do all he can to foster an atmosphere of warm and loving collaboration between the Local Assembly and the Board member."[3]
