Gaining followers via free food

One practice founded by the Baha'i prophet, which is in our most holy book, is a monthly feast for the Bahais:

"Verily, it is enjoined upon you to offer a feast, once in every month...for God hath purposed to bind hearts together, albeit through both earthly and heavenly means."

This has historically been a major Baha'i event. Even when I was a child I remember there being great feasts, with excellent Persian food.

But over time the Baha'i leadership began to understand that since these feasts were so well attended, they could hijack them to spread their own propaganda. And it became a standard part of these feasts to go around in a circle and read these stupid boring letters by the Baha'i leadership (called the Universal House of Justice), which use this pompous corporate poetry which they write using their own secret lingo to tell us to proselytize more and large portions of the letters are just general nonsense which really don't say much of anything. Here is an example of the stupid letters we read:

https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20230430_001/20230430_001.xhtml

And these readings go on and on because some of the more brainwashed members to seem devout will talk about a portion of the letter that "resonates" with them, and this can drag the readings on for a very long time.

So this drives away all the sane people and nowadays only a few of the most brainwashed cultists show up to feast, the few people who are interested in discussing these stupid letters. And since only a few people attend, the practice of serving food has died off. At best there will be a few cookies.

Me and my friend are trying to revive the practice of having a real feast (although we are not presenting it this way). We are holding a gathering which we will serve pizza at, and we plan to do this pizza gathering every month. It has no agenda but to eat pizza and socialize, just like how the feast is supposed to be as envisioned by the Baha'i prophet.

I am hoping this will bring back normally inactive Bahais, and among these people hopefully we can find some people who are receptive to our views.

If giving away free food won't get people to come back then I don't know what will. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

So today I had my second one of these gatherings. For the first one, 9 showed up, and for the second one (today) 7 showed up.

The decline in numbers is not encouraging, but I must say that I enjoyed the gathering. A Baha'i couple from out of town showed up, and the guy was really energetic despite being 70 years old, joking and poking fun at things, all while seeming very wholesome, like you would expect of a religious person. Everyone in the room was socializing with each other, having conversations about mutual friends they had, telling stories. It really seemed like the people were enjoying themselves. It reminded me of what the Bahai gatherings used to be like when I was a kid, before the Baha'i central authority started adding a rigid structure to all the gatherings.

Sadly though, no young girls showed up. No one younger than 60 besides myself. And I could be wrong but I think probably none of the people there seemed to be the type that would be "on my side" with respect to my hatred of the Baha'i administration.

If what I am doing is making an impact on the Baha'i community, it seems to be doing so at a very slow rate.