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During the past year our committee's two main projects have been library book placement and study group organization. Tom Allen remains in charge of our library book project, and since last year's report has placed and additional 138 books, for a total of 425 books since the project began in early 1982. One change from last year's procedure has been that certain volunteers have been permitted to contact libraries using the mails, without the personal contact which all of us agree is the preferred method. This change was only made due to the fact that our "ready, willing and able" volunteers have already placed books in all of their local libraries, and despite notices in Urantia publications, exhortations at conferences, letters and phone calls, we haven't been able to stir up sufficient new volunteers to keep up the pace.

Naturally, wherever possible, we continue to encourage the personal placement procedure. Our committee appreciates the Brotherhood's support in this project, and by means of off-budget support we have been successful in keeping the overhead associated with getting the books out at virtually zero. In order to retain your support for the library placement project, we are engaged in a project to prioritize the types of libraries we should approach for maximum effect, and determine the best method of approaching them. David Kulieke is in charge of this project, and has designed a comprehensive questionnaire which he will use to help us improve our procedures.

The second major project has been with the Study Group Fellowship. Last fall we called the leaders of every known study group, first, to make personal contact with them, find out how their group was going, what their needs were, etc., and secondly, in the event they had not already joined the Study Group Fellowship of Urantia Brotherhood, to ask if they would care to be included in the upcoming Study Group Directory. Taking into account talking with baby-sitters, people who had moved, talking with uninvolved spouses, etc., this involved completing over 500 calls! I am pleased to report that Waldine Stump, who coordinated this project, not only survived sane, but thoroughly enjoyed it. As a result of making all those calls and hearing the gratitude of the more-isolated groups at the fact that someone paid some attention to them, she has become our foremost advocate of increased contact with study groups. The grand totals are now 192 groups, and with only three exceptions, every group we contacted wished to be included in the Directory.

By the time you read this, the Study Group Directory should be printed. It is the preliminary result of Waldine's work last fall. Our feeling is that we will discover quite a few errors in this first directory, and that the second directory will be substantially better. Our expectation is that other groups will surface and desire to be included, and that lots of individuals who are not listed as being members of their study group will write us to make sure that they are included in the next edition. Our hope is that this directory will stimulate interaction among Urantia study groups at the regional level, and thereby strengthen our movement all around.

Our committee made one proposal this year to the Executive Committee which was turned down, but with encouragement to resubmit more temperately. The proposal was for the Brotherhood to have a booth at the New Orleans World Trade Fair, which is being held from May 12th through November 12th of this year. The cost was budgeted at $132,000, with outreach estimated at several million contacts. The Executive Committee's complaint was "too much, too soon." However, we were encouraged to find another fair on a smaller scale, and try that. The fact that the fair format involves personal contact by volunteers was thought to make such an outreach a promising means of making known the existence of the book. Many of you may have heard about the Rocky Mountain Urantia Society's second successful fair, held in Denver this May. This fair had approximately 150,000 in attendance, and the volunteers there gave away approximately 750 pamphlets, and held around 500 conversations with interested parties. They even discovered a Urantia study group in Denver that had been meeting for some time that had never contacted anyone in the movement! The First Urantia Society of Oklahoma is trying to get space at the Tulsa State Fair, which will be held September 28th through October 8th. The Oklahoma Society will be keeping good records of procedures, costs and results for use by Domestic Extension Committee and the Brotherhood in making their determination of whether this appears to be a promising type of outreach.

Our Committee is also privileged this year to be hosting two afternoon segments of the General Conference, one on the subject of book distribution and the other on study groups.

Domestic Extension committee's primary responsibilities have been assumed to be the fostering of study groups and increased distribution of The Urantia Book in the United States. Concerning the future, I believe that we have a vast amount of fertile ground that needs attention with respect to our study groups. That we have around 200 study groups gives us a marvelous base, but our more isolated groups, in particular, need attention and would appreciate advice. Their common problem is difficulty in getting new readers and irregularity of attendance by their existing members. In my opinion, an improved outreach program by the Brotherhood solves both problems, as it helps bring in new members, who inspire us all when we learn anew from them the life-changing impact of the Urantia Revelation.

It might be that some of the best money we could spend would be to hire a full-time circuit rider to visit our outlying study groups and readers. The right person could encourage the present members to greater loyalty to their group, offer advice on how other study groups had solved certain problems, and show them how much the Brotherhood cares for them. This is not a recommendation, but think about it.

One matter of a constitutional nature which our committee discusses from time to time is a change of its name, which rings parochial. The problem is functional as well as aesthetic. "Domestic" Extension implies that the Brotherhood is a U.S. organization, which, while it may be the present reality, is not the image we wish to project. To change the name to "United States" Extension would be an improvement, but it still sets the US. in a special category, i.e., the U.S. rates a committee all its own, and the rest of the world gets one committee. The best solution I have heard is for a realignment of the functions of Domestic Extension and International Fellowship Committees, in which the first word in both titles would be dropped and we would have an "Extension" committee and a ''Fellowship" committee, both of which would be international in scope. The Extension Committee would be involved with outreach matters -getting new readers -- and the Fellowship Committee would concern itself with the nurturing, comforting and encouraging existing readers and study groups. Another option would be to simply merge the two committees into one, or disband one of them; however, self-serving comments aside, I believe that would be a silly resolution of the problem due to the amount of work both committees are presently involved in, and the importance of outreach and fellowship in the Brotherhood's overall goals. This is not to be considered a recommendation, but merely something that you might want to be thinking about. Quite frankly, I like it just fine the way the committees are presently structured, but it may cause us embarrassment sometime in the future.

On a personal note, my term as chairman of the committee expires this year, and I would like to thank the General Council for having permitted me to serve. It's been an education and an honor. I would also like to thank my fellow committee members David Kulieke, CeCe Forrester, Mary Schlueter, Tom Allen and Waldine Stump for their labors during the past year.

Respectfully submitted, Harry McMullan, Chairman