© 2013 Bill Beasley
© 2013 Urantia Foundation
| A Filmmaker's Approach to Promoting The Urantia Book | Volume 7, Issue 4, Dec. 2013 — Index | Holiday Party at Urantia Foundation |
By Bill Beasley, Brandon, Florida, United States
Editor’s Note: The Urantia Book Study Group Directory is a joint project of Urantia Association International, The Urantia Book Fellowship, and Urantia Foundation. The members of the committee that govern the directory are: Bill Beasley, Scott Brooks, Barry Clark (chair), Jackie Koury, and Tamara Strumfeld.
A few years ago I calculated the percentage of people who followed the true teachings of Jesus based on the population of the civilized world in his time. Then I calculated the percentage of the number of students of The Urantia Book based on the world’s population today and compared the two. Of course, the numbers could not be exact because no one really knows them. But guess what? Based on my calculations, there was little variance in the percentages. It seems that for 2000 years, the core group of believers—as a percentage of the total population—has remained unchanged.
How important is it that we are prepared as individuals and as a group for the time when the religion of Jesus breaks through the clouds of confusion? Jesus assembled groups around him to study. He taught his apostles to become leaders and bade them to encourage others to study and reflect on what he taught. On a personal level and within the Urantia community, we have a “once in our eternal career” opportunity to do the same. Connecting students of The Urantia Book, using internet sources, is the most effective long-distance resource at our disposal to accomplish this.
The online resource, The Urantia Book Study Group Directory, formerly known as The Urantia Book Study Group Portal, continues to move forward. Currently there are 334 study group accounts representing 35 countries and 44 states in the U.S. The listings are available in English, Spanish, French, and Russian.
The committee that governs the directory is the second one since the directory’s inception in 2008. Our team usually meets via WebEx three times a month. We work off of an open-list-items system to insure continued growth and participation in the directory. Each item is assigned a priority of high, medium or low. The latest item completed was the governance document.
The next major step is to clean the data to ensure that listings are current and accurate. Following this, the study group contact information of Urantia Association International, The Urantia Book Fellowship, and Urantia Foundation will be placed in one selfregistering database and centralized list. It is my belief that this step will ensure that Urantia Book students will find others to study with, and that the growth of our community will continue.
Our goal is to make the directory the “go to” site for anyone desiring a road map to find a study group. Many students are geographically isolated without a study group nearby. So another item of high priority is to make the directory capable of accommodating virtual study groups. There are several of these groups now functioning.
Please join us in our enthusiasm for the promotion of study groups all over Urantia! If you host a study group that is focused on The Urantia Book and you want to attract readers, please visit urantiastudygroup.org and register your group. If you have a website and would like to display a link to The Urantia Book Study Group Directory, please email me at bill.beasley@gmail.com.
¶ References
| A Filmmaker's Approach to Promoting The Urantia Book | Volume 7, Issue 4, Dec. 2013 — Index | Holiday Party at Urantia Foundation |