For building a big temple, should a community’s focus shift from preaching to fund-raising?
Sometimes while trying to get funds for building a temple the focus shifts from preaching and helping people to become devotees to just speaking whatever is needed to get them to give the money then is that what is healthy, desirable so is it pleasing Guru Maharaj? are we pleasing our spiritual master who at one side wants to build temples to be built but who also says that preaching should also be done you see that there are it's a very important concern and I was at a temple in America where they built a beautiful temple and the temple president told me that, temple president is like a good preacher so he said actually I was doing more preaching before we build the new temple because now after building the temple it's not just building the temple, after that we have to maintain it and maintaining it also means you have to keep getting funds, not the people, funds also so he said now I have to, because the temple is already there, it will be a big disgrace if the temple has to close down or something like that, so now I have to spend more my preaching has gone down substantially because I am worried about funds right now so generally let's say that there are three levels one is, there are some people who are never going to become devotees and many of the people during Prabhupada's times, they became life members and they helped Prabhupada in many big ways but very few of them became devotees so approaching people and getting them to contribute Lakshmi to Krishna is also a valuable way of connecting people with Krishna and for some people, that is the only way they will connect with Krishna and probably in the future life, they may connect in a more serious way. Bhakti is a multi-lifetime process so it's not a wrong thing so that is at one level say now the second level would be that we focus on influential people, on wealthy people and try to make them devotees and if they are amenable, still they will require time. I was just with Giriraj Maharaj in America in Carpentaria and he was telling that how he, Krishnachandra Prabhu is one of the Rishikesh Mahapratlal is one of the prominent donors in, he was in Juhu, now Chowpatty he is, he is a big donor so he said he would actually he and Srinathji Prabhu N.D. Desai, who is a saint pastor, he said I went and spent hours just in their office, waiting to just get a few minutes to talk with them and he in fact said that we had a whole system that wherever they would travel, we would travel behind them and we would find out where we could get some time to talk with them.
So he spent hours and hours, months upon months to cultivate them and now they have become very serious devotees so giving time to big people and initially there is not much business mostly relationship building but giving them time so that they become devotees that is also worth it sometimes we see some people have a spiritual spark but they are caught in a social professional setting where they can't commit at that time but then we maintain the relationship and we make ourselves accessible so at external level not much preaching seems to be happening but then they will be giving some donations. The objective is to provide them facility to become devotees Prabhupada's vision in life membership was to help the life members to become devotees by giving them books, by giving them facility to stay in the temple the third is where people are becoming devotees they are actually understanding Krishna Bhakti and committing themselves to practice so now all these three in my understanding can be three different forms of outreach and people who are at the third doing the third don't have to be pulled to do the first and people who are doing the first don't have to be blamed for not doing the third but unfortunately every community has a particular definition of success so based on that definition of success if the fundraising is what is the priority then the fundraisers become the glamorized people they become the models oh this person raised this much money and then everybody else feels a subtle pressure to become like that and they feel as if we are not doing that then we are not doing anything worthwhile so I would say that we need some amount of security within ourselves that there are different ways in which we can serve Krishna and even if my particular service is not glamorized in the community still it is valuable and I don't think anyone will stop us from doing that service there is definitely a subtle amount of subtle or sometimes even gross also why don't you do this or what are you achieving this but on my website there is a lecture which I gave appreciating different definitions of success in bhakti so there I talk about this elaborately you may want to hear that class but the broad principle is if we are inspired to do the third just we are inspired to focus on cultivating devotees then it is best that we associate with others who appreciate the definition of success and there we will get the inspiration and even if some devotees feel that oh you know we are raising funds whatever you can explain yes we are also giving according to our capacity what we are doing but eventually even if the temple is built we will need people to run the temple we will need committed devotees so yes you are building the funds for the temple we are getting the devotees who will run the temple so some people may appreciate that some people may not appreciate that that's ok you know that there is a famous pastime of Shri Prabhupada in New Vrindavan so Prabhupada was asked when we are going to make this temple should we get expensive jewels to decorate the temple and Prabhupada said no need my devotees are my jewels they will be what will attract people to Krishna so if we can get that both by our philosophical understanding of the whole mission of Krishna Bhakti as well as by our association with like minded devotees if we get the security then we can go on and as far as some devotees getting pressured you can just explain to them yes that actually because there is this need to build a temple so even if you are approached 2-3 times by different people it's ok it's ok you just say I have already given people light and just move on so no need to criticize those who are doing that there is no need to feel insecure in what we are doing because what we are doing is also very important even for that service even for the temple building also it is important so we are all different different you could say regiments in the army of Krishna and in particular services certain regiments have a more important role and that's where they get the glory other regiments may not get that much glory but other regiments are also doing valuable service ok.