The principal activity of the Education Committee has been to organize the program for the Intensive Summer Seminar, which has been held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the General Council during each summer in which a General Conference was not held. These programs were organized in 1991 and 1992, providing intensive study of Part IV of the Urantia Book, at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois. The 1992 program completed a cycle of six seminars, begun in 1984 in which the entirety of the Book was progressively examined. 

In planning our program for the summer of 1994, a decision was made to organize a combined event in conjunction with Scientific Symposium III in Oklahoma City, during the extended period of 1-9 July. As a result of this, Education Committee seminars have been scheduled for three days in this period while three days have been devoted to the Scientific Symposium. Fellowship organizational activities (the Triennial Delegate Assembly and the annual meeting of the General Council) are scheduled for six days during this period; therefore, some overlapping of functions had to occur. 

This overlapping of programs, combining opportunities to study the Book with opportunities to participate in the organizational life of the Fellowship, is a deliberate experiment by the Education Committee. In discussions with readers attending previous seminars, we discovered that the sharp separation of the educational and organization functions which had been practiced for many years seemed to be isolating many very dedicated students of the book from opportunities for significant personal contact with the many equally dedicated volunteers in service to the readership. We hope that, by drawing these two groups together and providing the opportunity for crossover between educational and organizational programs, this gap will be partially bridged. The committee will be evaluating the results of this experiment and is interested in hearing the reactions of delegates and councilors to this novel approach. 

The theme of the Seminar, "Progress and Providence-Keys to Universe Integration," is designed to complement the theme of the Symposium, "Man's Universe Integration. -" The committee hopes that, by offering a venue for the in depth study of the Supreme and Ultimate, a philosophical setting will be provided for the more factual exercises of the Scientific Symposium. In this combined program, serious students of the book are offered six full days of group interaction and study-the most ambitious such program the Fellowship has ever sponsored. 

The other major activity of the committee during the past three years has been the organization of several programs in the Wrightwood Series. Each seminar of this program is a weekend-long invitational seminar held at the Chicago headquarters. The goal of this program is to provide a sponsored venue conducive to detailed and in-depth study of a specific topic related to The Urantia Book. Each seminar participant commits to a significant amount of preparatory work and to participation in development of a final, publishable product.

During 1992, two seminars were held. The first of these seminars, organized by Janet Farrington, dealt with the subject "Building the Living Temple of Spiritual Fellowship." A collection of six research papers emerging from this seminar has been published and is available for purchase from headquarters. The second seminar, organized by Barbara Dreier, addressed the subject "Race and The Urantia Book." This seminar was of a smaller and more exploratory character than the first, and met a second time in 1993. Although significant issues of diverging viewpoint remained unresolved among the participants after the second meeting, the research papers from this seminar have been completed, edited, and await publication later this year.

In 1993, a third seminar on the subject of gender was organized by Janet Farrington and led by Alison Gardner. The papers from this seminar have been compiled and should be published in the near future. In 1993 plans were also made to hold a seminar on "The Evolution of the New Cult." A few proposals and a number of expressions of interest were received from various readers; however, the focus of interest in the topic seemed to require significant direction in order to achieve the goals of a Wrightwood program. Further development of this program will remain in abeyance until the organizers can muster the energy required to re-focus the agendas of the participants.

The Education Committee hopes to get "The New Cult" back on track and to sponsor additional Wrightwood programs. Topics which have been suggested for future Wrightwood Series seminars are "Roots of the Revelation-Historical and Human" and 'The Science of The Urantia Book-Problems and Predictions." The forthcoming secular, skeptical critique of the book and its origins by the well-known popularizer of mathematics and logic, Martin Gardner, seems likely to raise a number of salient questions in these areas. It is not clear that the Fellowship is in any way equipped to respond to these questions. It is by no means certain that the Fellowship should develop a response; however, it could be beneficial to provide a service in bringing together and publishing the viewpoints of individual, serious students of the book, the movement, and their joint history.

During this past triennium Marjorie Reed, our longest-serving member, retired from the Education Committee. The entire committee joins me in thanking Marjorie for her many years of kind, thoughtful, and helpful service to the committee, its programs, and its various chairpersons. We wish Marjorie the very best in her future endeavors.

Respectfully submitted for the Education Committee

Dan Massey, Chairman

Matthew Block Barbara Dreier Janet Farrington Irwin Ginsburgh Joan Neumann