Annual Report of the President

September 18, 2004

The Fellowship took a giant step in its decentralization process this year and sold the building that had served as its “headquarters” since 1989. In addition to this being an important cost saving measure, it is expected, along with other operational adjustments and greater reliance on web based technologies, to increase the organization’s efficiency and improve the quality of its services.

Unity among readers across any and all organizational lines continues to be an important goal for many Fellowship members as well as other “Urantians”. The yearning for unity is almost palpable as one walks amongst a gathering such as the one we are having this weekend. The frustration with the persisting rift that still exists between The Fellowship and the Foundation/IUA is deep. But yearning and frustration alone will not heal this rift. We must act. The past year has seen increasing efforts on the part of Fellowship members to participate in events and activities sponsored by or involving other groups. To name just a few - a number of Fellowship members attended an IUA conference in Quebec last summer; another group attended the recent UAUS conference in Chicago; Fellowship members enjoyed working alongside Foundation, IUA and unaffiliated individuals on dissemination activities at the World Parliament of Religions in Barcelona this summer. There was no “us” and “them” in that picture. The Fellowship’s International Conference, IC 05, organizers are involving IUA members as well as “unaffiliated” readers in the planning and execution of what I am sure is going to be a very exciting and uplifting conference celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the publication of The Urantia Book. As long as we continue to create opportunities for cooperation and for plain-old fellowshipping among all readers on local, regional, national and international levels, in time the old ideological demons and the lingering animosities will recede into the shadows and eventually disappear completely.

The General Council held a planning retreat during its last mid-year meeting. The process generated many creative ideas about how The Fellowship could better fulfill its mission, how it could provide for fellowshipping opportunities and how it could improve its communication. These ideas may well contain the seeds of positive change. In order to bring about this change, the General Council will need to develop some of these ideas into specific policies, which the Executive Committee will then be responsible for implementing. All of you, the 36 unique personalities sitting around this table, have the power to chart the overall course of the organization, to make course corrections and, when necessary, to make constitutional changes in order to improve the way the organization functions.

As you know, organizational service opportunities exist beyond the General Council. The Standing Committees are the primary working teams that carry out various tasks in accordance with their constitutional mandates and direction from the Executive Committee. We have had some discussion lately about the way these committees should function. It is critical to our continued growth as an organization and to our ability to disseminate The Urantia Book, that we get these committees to work in the most effective way possible. Together we should find the way to help each working team reach a level of functioning consistent with the highest ideals of group work expressed in The Urantia Book. As we endeavor to do that, should we find that our current constitutional provisions are useful to that end, we should continue to use them with increased diligence. Should we find that they are not, we should amend the constitution.

Nothing binds us but our energy and imagination. Let us use these gifts and get on with our work.

In friendship,

Avi Dogim