Last weekend we had a mini conference in San Diego California. Andrea Barnes and I, who are both active members of committees of The Urantia Book Fellowship, had the idea that we needed to be more active in building community in our local area. Seeing as we are both in Southern California, we decided San Diego would be the location to give it a try.
Many of you know about, or have attended, the Fellowship’s International Conferences that happen every three years. This last summer IC’11 was held in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conferences are major undertakings and require a lot of planning and preparation. I think anyone who has attended one of these will tell you they are an amazing experience. What we desired to create was a similar experience on a local level, with the same format but in a shorter time with less preparation.
All in all, the weekend was amazing! Friday night we held an introduction to the Urantia Book that we advertised on Meetup, Craigslist, and Facebook. Aurora Hill and Thomas Orjala have been working to develop a model of introducing the Urantia Book, which was put into practice Friday night by Andrea and Thomas. We had four guests and all of them left open and inspired! One man even came back and joined us for the weekend workshops. Saturday we had workshops on various topics presented by seasoned readers. That evening we had a meal together and plenty of social time. Sunday we had a few more presentations and said our goodbyes.
Kermit Anderson, who is President of the LA society led an excellent workshop on the major concepts found in Papers 1-5. It was a great blend of younger and older folks, and to me it seemed that the older generation really got a fire lit inside them to see the youth so excited about the revelation.
Given that only two of us planned the whole weekend, we had a great turnout at a great location and everyone had a good time. By the end, people were asking when the next one was, and when I told one person it would be next year he looked at me like I was crazy! “A year?” he said. “No, we need to have them more often!” I agree. As UB readers we have no church. We have study groups but they frequently include the same group of people and rarely involve worship, singing, or interaction with new people. To have a weekend that stimulated so much slumbering spiritual energy was a real boost for everyone.
This weekend many readers in San Diego met for the first time, including readers that live only miles apart. Participants are now reaching out to us and asking that together we take action steps in building our community. If the goal was to stimulate the local community I think we succeeded. We are already planning the next gathering and putting outreach projects on the calender.
It is easy to get weighed down by the lack of community and visible action in our movement. We don’t have a church to attend where we see the fruits of spiritual progress. So we tend to lose hope in some respects and become resigned that we can’t make a difference. It can be tempting to accept this as the way it is and go about our daily lives.
We know that the revelation has changed OUR lives but most of us are not sure where to go from there. This is partially due to the implied direction of our leaders. As Meredith Sprunger said “Many people who long to serve and help spread the good news of the fifth epochal revelation are confused by conflicting advice given by leaders in the URANTIA movement. Some are even afraid of violating some “hidden” or “implied” directive of the revelators of The URANTIA Book. It is time that these ambiguities be laid to rest.” Amen Meredith!
Never forget. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul. 48:7.4
What this all says to me is that we need to address the fact that the culture of our community is changing. Meredith Sprunger saw the need for change many years ago and I personally intend to honor him by following his advice to live the teachings. You can also see this in the work of Truthseekers and in the new Youth and Young Adult Committee. There is an increasing focus on living the teachings in our lives in addition to book study. And all of this should not scare anyone who reads the Urantia Book. As Jesus instructed, our only mission is “to share the good news!”. Weekends like this one are a big step in that direction. Small grass roots gatherings of believers can motivate and inspire the spiritual progress of the whole. I encourage others to consider holding similar events in your local areas.
We honor and thank The Urantia Book Fellowship for their support of this event through the Outreach Committee and the Youth & Young Adult Committee.
5 thoughts on “The Possibility”
Dear Andrea & Teuvo (alphabetical order),
Thank you so much for the time & effort you did put into this “mini-conference”!
I really enjoyed the “workshops” & learned quite a bit, as I always seem to glean new “nuggets” of wisdom & learning from these gatherings. It was nice to re-connect with you, Kaelas, & your Dad, Thomas as well as others. Also, seeing folks from all over SC & even AZ (Justin Michael) is always a “gift”. Kudos & let’s
do it again!!! BTW, Andrea, good job on Friday night’s “What is The Urantia Book”…that’s a tough one to expound on & you did wonderfully!
Thank your Robert. Didn’t Andrea do a great job?? We have been talking sense that weekend about how to keep these events going and how to continue to offer introductions like that. The time of being fearful to share the good news has come to an end.
We hope to have another one of these in LA some time in late summer or early Fall.
I so enjoyed the Web site ,UrantiaNow! The 9 minute Youtube was great! It was good to l see some old friends in it who have not been to conferences in a while! I am so jazzed for the youth of the Urantia movement. I’ve been around a longtime and this new energy of the youth is like a transfusion for the soul! I honor and support all of you!
Janet we honor and support you! Your hard work has allowed us to reach this place we are now. Having a committee that is supportive of the Youth is so important and we are taking full advantage of our resources right out the gate.
We have a lot of work to do and with the support of our community we can really see a brighter future coming. I’m very present to many of the struggles the last generation has had and I hope that this generation can learn and grow from all the situations that transpired.
We must continue to turn to Jesus for how to work out the issues in each of our lives. As soon as we give up on his teachings as a guide to deal with the difficult problems we face we can only expect to be let down by life and by our peers. We must exercise our spiritual practices just as we exercise out body’s.
Thank you and see you soon in Chicago!
So Awesome! Such a great and creative way to present it as well 🙂