Dissemination of the URANTIA Papers

One of my favorite lessons too Rexford - the distillation process of the Master to identify the dedicated few amongst the hungry many!! Many raise not their hand to serve, others raise a hand but slip away after some challenge or failure, but the few who stick, thick or thin, are revealed only by time and results.

A couple of points:

nod says above: "One of the first criticisms I kept hearing was that the UB was a "rich man's bible" due to its cost. When I found out about the various conferences and meetings of readers getting together somewhere in the world far from where I lived, to further the dissemination and translation efforts and such, I said to myself, sure would be nice if I could afford to participate and jump on an airplane and hang out in some nice hotel with these nice folks. But those cards where not then, and aren't now, in my hand."

I too am of limited means. I've only been to one International, in Snow Mass back around 1990....as I could drive there and love Colorado also. It was life changing actually. Hundreds of friendly students having fun learning and teaching. Friendships and bonds made. The music and art and laughter and small group encounters, not to mention the awesome concert by fellow reader John Denver! I have been to dozens of local and regional conferences though as costs are usually quite modest and, again the friendship bonds formed and teams expressed and created were exhilarating. But I bring this up to illustrate the dissemination functionality of organizational infrastructure and shared priorities for a group.

This past summer at the International Conference in Quebec over $20,000 was donated and spent on financial aid for attendees from many countries. This was not general donation funds budgeted for this purpose but gifts made specifically to pay for the attendance of those who could not otherwise attend. Hundreds of people gave that money, most of those did not attend themselves, and the organization had to arrange all the travel and lodging and visas, etc., etc. - donors and volunteers activated, organized, focused, and working in teams to create an event and bring people together. Not otherwise possible. Is it a good thing to bring people together? Oh, and for the first time, these events are now being videoed and archived and even live-streamed and people from around the world participated in asking questions and discussing the presentations in real time! Stunning in its implications for the future.

Next year is a conference in San Antonio, co-sponsored by the Foundation, Fellowship, and Association - who cooperatively attended the Parliament of World Religions this past month. Both events are building bridges of cooperation, team work, and love of connectivity in purpose for dissemination. Volunteers from all 3 groups joined together to create a beautiful booth in Utah and joint presentations to religionists from around the world, including very professional videos about Jesus life and teachings. This is but a limited perspective of the potential that organizational infrastructure can magnify the sincerity and faith of volunteers and leverage that into chain reactions of perpetual motion and progress in service to the readership and those truth seekers which come to the UB in their own way and time.

Groups of people can accomplish more than what 10 times as many individuals can when organized and focused in priority and strategy. It has been very rewarding to know such people and work side by side doing our small part to bring the Revelation to the whole world, believing that such work might provide some assistance to those charged with planetary progress by the spread of the Good News and hoping that someone will come to the UB in their truth seeking to be as blessed by that discovery as we have been due to those disseminators before us.

I could provide a litany of frustrations and failures along the trail of course. Those bring experience, wisdom, resolve, renewed efforts, and better outcomes over time. We remember how many times how close our ancestry barely survived a jump to the left or right....dissemination has had its share of fire and earthquake and the whisker's hair of doom. It's been very "interesting" indeed.

I am confident that all who come to love the facts and truths within the text, will raise their own light and share their own fruits of the spirit in ways which will bring Light and Life by their selfless and loving service to others in as many unique and personal ways as there are such believers (in God, not a book). Dissemination is only one way of the limitless ways we may bring love and life to our world.

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