Site Index

Our committee is pleased to report on work in the following areas during the past year:

1. By the time you receive this, the Study Group Directory should be finally published. Whew! We have 280 study groups listed in the Directory. In our first edition in 1984 there were 219. Thanks to all who helped, especially Waldine.

2. Since last summer's report to the General Council, 247 gift books have been distributed to libraries in the U.S. Tom Allen's "regular" volunteer program placed 160 of these, and Jennifer Cooke began a telephone program which placed the remaining 87 books. The source of these books was a generous contribution by URANTIA Foundation. As this is written, our supply of these gift books has been exhausted for some time, and those engaged in book placement are necessarily waiting until they have something to place before resuming. Despite the supply interruption, we now have people willing to get these books placed, and the constraints are almost entirely financial -- how much money the program is allocated.

3. The General Council design team effort assigned several tasks to Domestic Extension.

a.) The design of a booklet on how to have an effective URANTIA Book study group; b.) The design of a booklet on how to effectively share The URANTIA Book; c.) The formulation of a proposal to reactivate and greatly expand a network of Field Representatives to serve individual readers and study groups throughout the world; d.) The design of a 10 week trial programmed study guide and for URANTIA Book study groups; and e.) The design of a packet of information which could be sent to new study groups.

Topics a.), b.) and c.) are not far from completion. You have all seen earlier drafts on a.) and b.). Our work on b.) is also in response to the 1986 General Council request for Fraternal Relations and Domestic Extension to develop guidelines for sharing The URAA7IA Book. D.) is coming along O.K. but is not yet presentable. E.) has not been worked on yet (at least by me). Any drafts approved by the committee between the writing of this report and the General Council meeting will be made available to you.

4. The 1985 General Council asked Domestic Extension to come up with a plan for making URANTIA Societies more active. One of our members, Michael Challis, made the excellent suggestion that to help accomplish this URANTIA Societies could be asked to host meetings of the Executive Committee and the General Council on a rotating basis, with their local society members being encouraged to participate as much as possible in those meetings, and with socials held immediately following. Such meetings would provide an occasion for the hosting local society members to work together on the logistics. They could gain more insight into policy discussions, and be made to feel more a part of the Brotherhood. The entire meeting need not be open to local society members to accomplish that. I recognize that this would be less convenient for Chicago area members who are used to having everyone else fly in to meet with them, but with four Chicago area societies also in line to host meetings, we would still be meeting in Chicago a disproportionate amount of the time.

I wish to thank each of the Domestic Extension members who served in the past year: David Kulieke, Tom Allen, Waldine Stump, Mo Siegel and Michael Challis. We appreciate the opportunity to have served during the past year, and look forward to hearing any comments or suggestions concerning how we can better perform our duties.

Respectfully submitted,

Harry McMullan, Chairman Domestic Extension* Conunittee

*P.S. Since you are all tired of me talking about how much our committee would appreciate a name change, I won't mention it in this report.

HM:krc 5/15/87