© 1996 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Dean White
After discovering The Urantia Book in October 1979, I attended my first conference in Lake Forest, Illinois the following summer. I returned from that Summer Seminar with five extra Urantia Books, the names of two or three readers in northeastern Tennessee, and a desire to start a study group. In retrospect, I can see how our seraphim work to bring groups together. Our first group meeting was four months later on October 12, 1980. After some fifteen years, three couples who started reading with me in that first group are still active in our Urantia community.
Typically, members of our study group are very diverse in background, and some of us continue to be active in the traditional Christian churches we belonged to prior to finding The Urantia Book. Myself, the Miller family, and the Whitman family worship in First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton. Billie Anderson attends a Christian church in Johnson City, and the Wolff family a Christian church in Erwin. Debby Reese serves as choir director for First Methodist Church in Mountain City, and Hal Miller plays the piano for a Universal Church in Johnson City.
We have welcomed visitors from various traditional and non-traditional religious organizations, including students from a conservative Christian university and New Agers from North Carolina who attend the Center for Spiritual Arts in Asheville. We are constantly reminding each other of Jesus’ admonition to James, “When did I ever teach you that you should all see alike?”
Soon after starting our group, we began a sequential reading of the book. Reading a paper a week, with down time for vacations, hazardous winter weather, and illness, we completed the book almost five years later. We then began a study of our journey to Paradise, starting with our mortal career on Urantia and ending with our induction into the Corps of Finality on Paradise. After completing that study, we experimented with various formats, meeting places, and meeting times. Our meetings currently include a monthly covered dish supper, an annual Pentecostal service, and a Urantia Family Picnic each August in celebration of Jesus’ birthday.
Our monthly study group meeting starts around five o’clock on the last Sunday evening of each month. We meet in my home, visit for awhile and enjoy a meal together. A devotion and music follow the meal. We have a lot of musical talent in our Urantia community and we enjoy singing hymns together, with our children joining in. We conclude with an adult study while the children entertain themselves elsewhere.
The Watauga Valley Study Group annually hosts a Urantia Family Picnic, a day-long event held at the beautiful mountain farm home of Billie and Greg Anderson, near Elizabethton. The mountains surrounding the Watauga Valley provide a picturesque, peaceful setting in which to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. The picnic, an all-day Saturday gathering, has become something of a regional event that typically draws 50 or more readers from across Tennessee and sev- eral neighboring states. Many stay overnight and enjoy more fellowship on Sunday morning.
The picnic is a group project, with members readying the grounds, preparing and serving an evening meal, and planning and participating in a program that always includes music as well as topical presentations by guest speakers who have come from as far away as Texas and Canada. We invite one and all to join us for music, fellowship, wide-ranging discussion, recreation, and celebration here in the mountains of northeast Tennessee next August.
By Billie Anderson
I think I would describe our little study group as an advanced, intimate study. Currently, we have three women who meet every Tuesday morning at the home of Dean White in Elizabethton. We enjoy three hours of sharing and study centered mostly around The Urantia Book. When I first came to this group, there were several people who met in the home of Richard and Ruth Tschanz in Mountain City. Usually, there were five seekers present, and we all felt that our angels had arranged our group to meet and grow together. Over the course of 10 years, we have studied such topics as personality, mind, time/ space reality, end-time prophecy, and many others. All topics seem to interrelate and we often feel exhilarated by new inspiration and personal connections to our everyday experience.
For the last two years, we have hosted a Pentecost celebration for our group and the Watauga Valley Study Group. We long to understand what it is to really worship. We have tried to allow the Spirit of Truth to guide our thoughts and activities at this outdoor gathering which takes place in the early evening around a symbolic Pentecost campfire. Last year we were delighted to have Debby Reece’s minister, Don Morris, share with us his thoughts about Pentecost, the church, and the Urantia revelation.
By Bruce McCoy
The beginning of the Knoxville Study Group can only be understood in the context of Helen Hutchinson’s coming to embrace The Urantia Book. In the late 60s in the University of Tennessee’s off-campus student housing community adjacent to the university area, Helen lived just down the street from Epworth Methodist Church. She was a lay leader of this slowly dying church whose core was dents and others interested in Reece, Billie Anderson, and Dean White. grassroots and community development activities. There was constant and, often, heated dialogue between people of widely divergent views on every topic under the sun. There were hippies, rednecks, students, university professors, and others who were drawn by the music.
Helen, a retired school teacher, was as loyal to her church as she was conservative in both her philosophy and her theology. But, she was also a devout Christian and therefore determinedly unwilling to have what she considered to be an un-Christian attitude, a heart and a mind closed to the ideas and the energy of the diverse group of people who rather suddenly descended upon her and her ladies’ Sunday School class.
Helen’s home became the de facto educational building of the new Epworth Ecumenical Church. Six or seven different groups of people met there for a variety of activities. One Sunday in early 1974 , during a small group church service that consisted of a group of people sitting in a circle singing old Christian folk songs and discussing a topic presented by a designated leader, I expressed some strange new ideas, notions about Jesus not dying for our sins, about the afterlife being a time of continuing development, and other ideas that I’d discovered in The Urantia Book.
Helen asked me where I’d found these ideas. I told her that I’d discovered them in a book that was written by non-humans. That really got her attention and one thing led to another. Within a few months Bob French and I were meeting regularly with Helen on Friday mornings in her famous kitchen to read and discuss The Urantia Book. When others became interested, Helen began the Thursday night Knoxville Study Group meeting that still continues.
Helen soon came to love The Urantia Book; she delighted in reading it and was given to quoting it in conversation among friends. She was a mainstay in Knoxville’s Urantia community for many years and the group met in her home until her death in 1989. There was deep sorrow in our group when Helen died, but we were all determined to carry on. Alvin and Helen Smith stepped forward and invited the group to meet in their home in West Knoxville with meeting time, as always, at 7:30 on Thursday nights.
Our group reads sequentially. Occasionally we have a meeting which includes a topical reading. Our meetings involve quite a bit of humor and a lot of discussion. We usually manage to read through a paper during the course of a meeting.
We have 20 members; about 10 are regular readers. Most of us are urban professionals, several are retirees, and many of us continue to be active in traditional Christian churches (Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian). Our regular members are: Alvin and Helen Smith and their lifelong friends Harry and Wanda Roberts, Herman Sain, Terry Faulkner, Vance Page, Denise Flowers, Beth Bartley, Michael Gillespie, George Farnham, and Bruce McCoy.
By Buddy Conley
The Middle Tennessee Study Group meets in the home of Helen, Andrew, and Buddy Conley in Murfreesboro at 7:30 p.m. on Monday. For several years, Helen, Andrew, and Buddy attended the Nashville Study Group, a drive of about 60 miles. When Buddy Stockard returned to Murfreesboro in the late 80 s, he suggested that we start our own group. And we four, along with Brian Snowden, did just that. We have been meeting regularly for well over five years and are about halfway through our second consecutive reading. We encourage discussion and are blessed with lots of humor.
Our group now numbers about 10. Dr. David Schundt (Dr. Dave on URANTIAL) teaches at Vanderbilt University in the Psychology Department. David has a first edition of The Urantia Book that once belonged to his father. His father was one of more than 20 people who attended Dr. Sadler’s Urantia Book school. The notations in the margins of the old book are fascinating.
Buddy Stockard is also a psychologist and works for the State of Tennessee with codependent adoles- cents, along with having a private practice. He’s a terrific songwriter and singer. Buddy’s wife, Susan, was introduced to the book by her husband. Susan works for the Murfreesboro City School System with handicapped children. She, too, is a talented singer who sings professionally with Buddy. Susan is presently underlining the entire book. Her quiet devotion to the truth is inspiring to us all.
Steven Long is a computer graphics consultant. He adds much humor to our meetings. He is probably the most peaceful former Green Beret in the entire world. Connie, Steven’s wife, is an interior designer and manages a fabric store. She keeps our group lively with her questions and good humor.
Andrew Conley (Agape Andrew on URANTIAL) sings and writes lyrics for Jack, a rock band. Andrew, who has been reading The Urantia Book for about 15 years, at one time attended the Boulder School. He helps us with some of the difficult passages.
Helen Conley is a financial analyst for the Nissan plant in nearby Smyrna. Helen makes our meetings even more joyful by her constant good cheer and her beautiful smile. And me, I’m Buddy Conley, Helen’s husband and Andrew’s father. I sell CAD software across the state. I’ve been studying The Urantia Book since 1978.
By Nena Feichter
Readers of The Urantia Book are well represented in the Memphis area. Sixteen readers are active in study groups and another 10 to 15 are moderately active. Readers seem to crop up in the most unusual places.
Memphis study group activity is largely due to the considerable efforts of Steve Law, who now lives in nearby Jackson where he and his wife are raising three beautiful little Urantians in a small-town setting. te Steve found The Urantia Book on August 31, 1973, the day he completed his service in the United States Navy. After living in Florida for a few years, he moved to Memphis in 1980 and began placing Urantia Books in bookstores and libraries around the state.
He also started an introductory study group in the Creative Resource Center associated with a Memphis book store. There he met Cebrun Gaustad, a psychologist with the Veteran’s Administration. Cebrun not only became a dedicated reader utilizing Jesusonian practices in his profession, but also introduced some of his clients and interns at the hospital to the book. Among the interns was Pitt Beam, Sonny Gentry, and later Leanne Gentry. Others who have found the book in Memphis include Debby York and Marsha Pauley. Paul Miller discovered the book while living in the hills in Arkansas working as a custom knife craftsman. Paul later moved to Memphis.
I was introduced to the book almost 13 years ago by Dr. Lawrence Schkade, while visiting my mother in Dallas, Texas. (My mother is also now a dedicated reader, active in study group and fellowship activities in the Dallas area.) The day I returned to Memphis, doubting anyone in the city would be aware of The Urantia Book, I wandered into a bookstore and was surprised to find the book in stock. I was even more surprised to find a card with Steve Law’s telephone number and address inside the front cover.
Memphis area groups have met over the years in various homes, a downtown loft, a Unity Church, the Resource Center, and even in a beauty parlor for a brief time. Although there have been as many as three meetings in the area, right now there are two.
Steve Law and Dale Knieval meet regularly in Jackson, one hour from Memphis, and between five and 10 readers meet regularly on Saturday mornings in the home of Sonny and Leanne Gentry.
The Saturday morning group has met consistently for the past five years at 7 a.m. Recently, the time was moved to 8 a.m. Undoubtedly, this change will result in improved attendance. We socialize from 7:30 until 8 while waiting for the non-morning readers, mainly me, and then read sequentially from the front of the book, then the next Saturday we read from the Jesus Papers. We close the meeting with about 20 minutes of meditation and worship.
The Memphis study group is wonderful, with a lot of curiosity, dedication, and friendship.
By Melissa Wells
The Nashville study group had its origins, appropriately enough, among gospel and country music artists from Music Row. Marijohn Wilkins, who wrote One Day At A Time, and Hal Bynum, co-writer of You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me, Lucille, were among the first members of the Nashville Study Group. In the early 80s, Lee Rector, then publisher of Music City News, hosted the weekly meeting at his home.
The group attracted a mix of well established songwriters, struggling artists, and folks who commuted from as far away as 90 miles. A favorite topic of conversation at meetings concerned the many recording artists to whom The Urantia Book had been introduced, such as Stevie Wonder and Willie Nelson.
In 1983 Rector organized a statewide regional conference at Fall Creek Falls in southeast Tennessee that was attended by about 60 readers from throughout the southeastern United States. He began a trend that would continue over the next several years; a number of regional conferences were held at Fall Creek Falls in the 80s.
When Rector and his wife, Mary Beth, moved to California in 1984 I began hosting the Nashville study group. Our meetings would average 15 people, with a core group who were ambitious about doing outreach projects.
Some of our accomplishments included organizing well-attended regional conferences at Fall Creek Falls (with the help of leaders from the other Tennessee study groups) in 1985 and 1986, gathering Christmas gifts from the community for Cambodian refugee children who had just moved to Nashville, and developing the first Scientific Symposium program, which was presented in 1988 at Nashville.
When Urantia Foundation and the then Brotherhood split, the majority of the members of this study group elected to side with the views of the Foundation. The Nashville study group still thrives and has been instrumental in organizing conferences for the International Urantia Association.
Do you have an outreach project that needs a little seed money to get off the ground?
Why not turn to FLOWERS?
The Fellowship offers loans or matching grants to Societies and Study Groups to help your projects get started.
For more information:
The Fellowship
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Chicago, IL 60614
(312) 327-0424
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