Fellow Councilors:

What follows is my report to the General Council. Inasmuch as this is a Triennial Year and concludes my three-year term as President, I will try to summarize what has been achieved during this period (see the committee reports for more detail) and suggest a contextual framework in which to consider possibilities for the next period of Brotherhood growth.

 REVIEW OF BROTHERHOOD ACTIVITIES SINCE SUMMER, 1985

 1. The. General Council has become increasingly active as an instrumental part of the decision-making process of URANTIA Brotherhood. The Council has met together at least twice yearly for the last three years, both in formal session and in informal planning/designing sessions.

 2. Efforts have been made at every level to keep the full membership apprised of all Brotherhood activities and areas of discussion. The Executive Committee Letter is sent to every Brotherhood member, and The Bulletin has provided augmented coverage of Brotherhood activities.

 3. Every Standing Committee is actively pursuing a broad range of projects designed to achieve the Brotherhood's purposes of study and dissemination of the teachings of The URANTIA Book via the mechanism of an active, dynamic, growing, cooperative fellowship of readers, both as individuals and in study groups and societies.

 4. Annual distribution of The URANTIA Book has increased steadily to reach the highest yearly level ever--over 13,000 during 1987. This is partially the result of a steady improvement in the professionalism of our distribution and library placement efforts, including:

 --Increased levels of personal contact with all elements of the book distribution and library trades;

 --Participation in book industry trade shows--The American Booksellers Association Convention in Washington in 1987 and Anaheim in 1988 and the London Book Fair in 1988;

 --The expanded use of awareness and availability advertising in a broad range of distributor catalogs and trade publications;

 --Ongoing mailings to bookstores, distributors, and libraries.

 5. Brotherhood membership has grown steadily; three new societies were chartered during 1988--Seattle, Kansas City, and Greater New York.

 6. The central office services operation has been involved in a re-structuring designed to prepare it better to handle the constantly increasing workload. This includes the shared allocation of URANTIA Brotherhood and URANTIA Foundation resources--both material and personnel--to more effectively accomplish the tasks at hand, the joint purchase of printing and copying equipment to service written communication needs, and conversion to computer automated systems for mailing list maintenance and accounting. 

6. Personal contacts with an increasing number of readers in countries outside the United States, facilitated by the attendance of readers from different countries at study groups and conferences in Canada, France, Australia, Fiji, Finland, and England have resulted in the establishment of a worldwide network of readers whose interaction contributes to leavening parochial and nationalistic tendencies, and diminishing the obstacles of language and culture. 

7. Two new service activities, resulting from the General Council Design Team effort, will be initiated this year: a broadened field representative program designed to enhance the quality of local study group activity and communication through the efforts of a corps of field workers, and the upcoming publication of a Resource Guide designed to help interested readers obtain the various study and resource materials being developed by readers throughout the reader community.

8. Ongoing and consistent educational activities have provided many readers with an experiential opportunity to develop teacher and leader skills, and broaden their awareness and comprehension of the variations of religious expression on our planet. 

9. Members of the General Council and Trustees of URANTIA Foundation, deepening their commitments to mutual support and cooperation, have made great strides in resolving issues which seemingly resulted from a lack of interpersonal contact, the changes and adjustments necessary to respond to the evolution and growth of our reader community, and the need to adjust to the changing personality dynamics resulting from a substantial turnover of persons serving in both organizations.

In reviewing these three years, it has been a privilege to serve with all of you, but especially with the fine, hard-working Executive Committee members who have accomplished so much.

WHAT NEXT?

In the second part of last year's report, my focus was on a vision of what I felt it was possible for us to accomplish using The URANTIA Book as our blueprint. While the list of activities and projects above testifies to the accomplishments of the past three years, I can't help but wonder if the frontier of this fifth epoch still eludes us. A review of the history of similar religiously-based movements might reveal that we are basically re-tracing past evolutionary patterns, that our words, our plans, and the products we create have all been said and done before and for the same reasons.

I believe it is both fair and important to ask ourselves some challenging questions about our work: Are we trying to put new wine into the old skins? Is it sufficient to do what has been done before better? Is there a unique contribution that we, as human workers, can make even now to this fifth epoch? -Does evolution require that we recapitulate the past (if, in fact, we are) as a mandatory. basis for moving into the frontier? The untiring efforts of our peers testify to a deep commitment to perpetual progression--in personal as well as group development.

But, have we confused growth with change? To what degree, if any, have we replaced unthinking inaction with unthinking action? Do we make decisions about our work in the isolation of personal desire and opinion, or in the context of an objective and learned view of this revelation and the evolutionary status of the world into which it is. being introduced? Does the very way in which we address these questions limit or expand the value of the conclusions we reach? Do we actually utilize The URANTIA Book as a blueprint for our work and ascend to its level of teaching, or do we reduce it instead to our level?

 I don't pretend to have any answers and rather suspect that many factors are at play. However, it seems. both appropriate and wise to ask these (and other) questions to force ourselves to consider whether our thinking and actions are effectively serving the purposes of our role as the human corps in the work of uplifting this planet into its fifth epoch of evolutionary growth. The framework below is one approach to stimulate the conversation.

 A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATION

 The model envisioned here is based upon seven fully-interactive facets, each of which supports or is supported by the other facets, and which, taken together, is hopefully representative of progressive growth. In visual form, this framework might look like this:

 Shared Values

Dynamic Brotherhood

Quality of Thinking

De-centralized

Responsibilities

Ethical Sensitivity

True Service

Cooperation

World Awareness

1. Shared Values: At the highest level, that which speaks of why we exist--the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind--we surely agree. At a lower level of collective action, we try to decide by vote and either cooperate or do it our own way. In between, however, we need to address some questions:

-Do we share in common values subordinate to and derived from the highest we know which both created and sustain our organizations and which guide our work together?

-To what degree are the values we share unselfish, God-oriented, and motivating of our actions toward each other and toward non-readers?

-Do we even agree that it is important to have such shared values?

2. Quality of Thinking: The URANTIA Book clearly states that the next great human goal has to do with raising the quality of thinking on the planet. There are questions here, too:

 -Is our quality of thinking progressing? Does it stand as an example for those who see us from an outside, objective view?

 -Do we apply a high standard of thinking in evaluating our work, both before we do it and after, and in determining our shared values?

 -To what degree, if any, do we use our mindal faculties simply to justify what we would "like" to do anyway; in other words, do We use thinking as a tool of rationalization rather than reflectivity?

 -Do we use our minds to express increasingly the absolute pattern for mind given in the book--to mediate between the divergent realms of matter and spirit? Might this approach include the need to better understand the revelation in relationship to the evolutionary status of the world into which we are helping to introduce it, with a more careful review of past revelations and their lessons?

 3. Ethical Sensitivity: We are told that ethical sensitivity is a concomitant of spiritual insight. Consider:

 -Are we progressing in our appreciation and application of ever higher standards of ethical behavior--toward readers and non-readers alike? 

-To what degree, if any, do we place ethical considerations in a role subordinate to personal desire and opinion and use our minds to help justify that position?

-Can the combined use of ethical sensitivity, quality thinking, and shared values replace the human tendency to let ends justify means, such that we consciously consider the value of both ends and means as critical ingredients in personal and collective decision making?

 4. World Awareness: The URANTIA Book, in its attention to the detail of the levels of existence we today (and will) traverse, clearly suggests the desirability of understanding the complexities of the world in which we live and are going to live as a context for developing ethical and moral sensitivities, quality thinking, and shared values.

 -When we decide what or how we will do something, to what degree does the decision take into account the evolutionary 'level in which the action will take place and its possible human consequences?

-Are we committed to doing only what we think or believe is best for others, or do we first and carefully evaluate what those others we are serving want, need, and expect from us? 

-Do we aspire to the standards of awareness, ethics, quality of thinking, and shared values established implicitly and explicitly by the teachings in The URANTIA Book? 

5. True Service Cooperation: The essence of this facet might be described as the conversion of shared values, quality thinking, ethical sensitivity, and world awareness into unselfish action. Unlike "lip" service cooperation, true service cooperation is the gift of self to another self in a cooperative endeavor.

 -What is the value balance between getting a job done and doing it in unselfish cooperation with our friends?

 Is there a new presentation of true cooperation in The URANTIA Book which should guide our work on behalf of this fifth planetary epoch? 

-What does the concept of Supremacy teach about true service? 

-Is true service cooperation a shared goal or value of our work? Now? Should it be? 

-How do we identify the line which separates "do-goodness" from actual goodness, that is, serving others for self instead of for the benefit of those others? 

6. De-centralized Responsibility: Achievement of this value, if it is worthwhile, requires the use of all the factors noted above. Too much de-centralization may risk sectarianism, wherein true cooperation may be sacrificed to the institutionalization of unlimited personal sovereignty. Too little may risk creation of a central organization which develops an unquenchable appetite. The dimensions of shared value, quality thinking, ethical sensitivity, world awareness, and the commitment to true service cooperation may make this process both natural and growth producing. But: 

-How do we balance individual freedom and community? Does a close look at the characteristics of Sonship and Supremacy shed some light?

-The teaching on the "Strange Preacher" is often used to justify decisions and actions in this area; but doesn't this lesson suggest a differential between individual and group behavior? 

-How is this dynamic to be considered in the context of the seemingly natural and healthy differential responsibilities of URANTIA Brotherhood and URANTIA Foundation? As in a familial relationship, can it not be beneficial to growth to have a balance between challenging and demanding guidance and nurturance? 

7. Dynamic Brotherhood: In my view, all of the qualities above are both a part of and contribute to the existence of a dynamic Brotherhood organization comprised of a brotherhood of men and women who increasingly are able to balance, unify, and express the inner (spirit) values of sonship with the outer (material) factors of evolutionary existence. But even this accomplishment is not an end-place, but again challenges our shared values, quality of thinking, ethical sensitivity, and so on.

 -How important in this process is the ability to separate the means from the ends? What IS value and what HAS value?

 -Certainly there is full agreement on the value to Urantia's fifth epoch in the achievement of brotherhood. But, what is the value to this epoch from the existence of our Brotherhood? Is the value we see inherent, or does it come from our conscious efforts?

 -To what degree can (should) we use The Urantia Book to clarify our understanding of the role of revelation in the evolutionary process, the lessons of past epochal successes and failures, and the function (unique or mundane) of our organization?

SUMMARY

The essential purpose of this exploration is to challenge all of us to continue to seek for an understanding of our place in the grand work of raising our planet into its fifth great epoch of evolutionary growth. In my view, if we settle, consciously or unconsciously, into the footprints of those who came before us, we will not have made a contribution to this fifth epochal undertaking. I believe that the fact that The URANTIA Book is in our hands, minds, and hearts places a responsibility on us to be pioneers in blazing a trail for others to follow into the potentials of this new epoch.

Clearly words aren't enough, for if they were, simply reading The URANTIA Book would transform. Are we not called upon to set a new standard of living, one that can visibly express even to a hardened atheist that there is something or someone contributing to the power of our lives? In the fourth epoch, the potential revealed in the life of Jesus seemed to be the ability for one to live in a confused and struggling world in communion with and wholly dependent upon the spirit and will of our Father. What has this new revelation of truth added to that potential which we are called upon to demonstrate to our fellows? While it may be an enhanced ability to express the truths that others have expressed before, in our own, and more sophisticated words, it may also be much more. Perhaps we need to trod the trails blazed by others to reach the frontier. But at the least, it seems to me that we need to do so consciously with a destination in mind, so that we don't become self-satisfied with our ability to simply package new expressions of truth in old, but slicker packages.

What does this revelation add to those which came before, especially the fourth? One possibility is that it is Supremacy which is revealed and which offers the blueprint for the fifth epoch. If the fourth gave living expression to the Father-Son relationship and the richness of the inner life, the fifth, in revealing the Supreme, gives expression to the Son-Son relationship in the outer life--the richness of God in community (the use of male gender terms here is not intended to be exclusionary, but rather, to point to personality relationships). Even if this is only a fragment of the potential of this fifth epoch, it provides us with a vision of what unique role we might play as the human workers in this grand. undertaking we are so privileged to be a part of.

While it would seem that we cannot avoid contributing to the dilution of this revelation into evolutionary thought-streams, there seems to me to be sufficient justification in the book for not doing so consciously. Instead, we can reach up to its challenge to set higher standards for ourselves, rather than dealing with its teachings by capturing them in our old ways of thinking. And then, even if we fall short, at least we will have risked venturing into the frontier of the living potentials offered by this revelation and in this way served our fellows.

Thanks for the opportunity to serve with each of you.

Dave Elders