© 2019 Michael Challis
© 2019 The Urantia Book Fellowship
The Media and Communications Team is composed Of the Publications, IT and Web Content Committees. The chair’s function, as a member of the Executive Committee, is to coordinate the activities of its constituent committees and communicate between them and the Executive Committee.
As Service Teams are a relatively new addition to the Fellowship’s Constitution (July 2018) there were some unintended consequences to address in the initial phases. Among them was the problem of not having enough candidates who met the constitutional requirements: “Section 11.3 Election and Term of Office: Candidates for Service Team chair positions must have served as an officer of THE URANTIA BOOK FELLOWSHIP or as chair of a Departmental Committee for at least two (2) years.”
As a consequence two committee chairs were elected to serve as Service Team Chairs as well. When the initial one year term of the Media and Communications Team Chair, Cristina Seaborn, was completed, Cristina declined reelection as she also was serving as Publications Committee Chair. There were very few candidates who met the qualifications and I was elected by the General Council at the July 2019 meeting.
The composition of the Media and Communications Team is unusual as two of its vitally important committees are IT and Web Content. Both are ad hoc committees, undefined in the constitution, and currently under the management of the Executive Committee of which I am a member, making my role as chair, redundant. In addition, the committee chairs, Cristina Seaborn (Publications), Jena Lassiter (Web Content), and Emilio Coppola (IT) are ably fulfilling their roles without my guidance!
I believe the restrictive qualifications for Service Team Chairs are unfair as the only qualification for the rest of the Executive Committee is membership on the General Council. If there is no other requirement than GC membership to hold a position such as treasurer, who is the principal financial officer and has general supervision and control over the money and property of The Fellowship, how do we justify the need for qualifications to be a Service Team Chair?
My observation is that the newly structured Executive Committee is working well under Geoff Theiss’ leadership. However, although I do not like the “middle management” structure now in place and believe in lean management, I think an eight member Executive Committee is too small a body. It’s a cumbersome model for communication that adds a layer between the committees and the EC and feels isolated from the membership.
One of the justifications for the new structure was the desire of some committee members to do the work without having the travel and expense of attending four EC meetings a year. The use of regular Zoom meetings and fewer face to face meetings has somewhat diminished that objection. And personally I miss all the variety and wisdom of the voices on the EC!