I

Anybody who is versed in The Urantia Book knows that our eternal career consists of continuous and ceaseless training, adventure, charting of the unknown. This is due to our being destined to learn to know the absolute God, and, the Absolute will; after one goal has been achieved, there always present themselves an endless number of new challenges, new goals to be achieved. The word training has 305 occurrences and the word education 109 occurrences in the Book. These figures reflect something of the importance and significance of education and training. The instructions that came along with The Urantia Book advise us to train teachers and leaders. For what other purpose could the Book have been given if not for us to study and learn. I personally regard education and training as the most important form of activity for the Finnish Urantia Association.

Through the teachings of the Book, we however know that the most important thing is faith; that everything seems to be designed for our spiritisation, spiritualization, perfection attainment. Through the same teachings we likewise know that study and learning belong to the domain of the mind, and that mind is inferior to spirit. Why then should we consider a study of the Book to be this important, if faith after all is the most important thing, and if the mind—the prerequisite for learning—is baser than the spirit? Should it not be that the most important obligation of our Urantia organisation is to disseminate faith, to revive men and women spiritually, to exercise spiritual activities and to organize spiritual meetings and gatherings? Shouldn’t we create a new religion sooner than train us in the labourious and boring study of the Book? Shouldn't we rather arrange communal worship and other meetings for us to express our unity in faith and to share our spiritual experiences?

The Urantia Book gives us a new definition that religion is a personal experience; it is not a group action. God the Father has endowed each of us with the free will to decide whether we shall be a part of the reality, and be involved in the outworking of his will, or whether we shall be unreal and refuse to participate in the actualization of his divine will. We have the freedom and the choice of either to believe or to disbelieve. Nobody needs The Urantia Book in order to believe or to make us of one’s free will, free choice, and along with that choice to be saved for the life everlasting. The Book teaches us that we get other people interested in our religion by our way of living. ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’

Although the mind is above the matter and functioning as an intermediary between the spirit and the matter, this fact does not make it worthless or insignificant. It is in the mind that a man makes the decisions which determine his eternal destiny. Man makes use of his free will in his mind. And even the mind is a gift of the Deities, an endowment that they minister to, and do it in so many ways.

We make our crucial decisions by ourselves, and we do them only in our minds. Every one of us lives the life in according to one's own choosing, and no one else can make that choice for us. Each of us says his prayers in the mind and in the heart. Everyone is worshipping his Father in his spirit and in the mind. Because every individual’s religion is a personal experience, it is unique. Everyone is endeavouring to attain a better understanding of the Father's will, so to be able to do that will. Through his personal acts, decisions and choices, everyone is striving towards perfection, everyone is trying to transform oneself and to be more in the likeness of God. Each of us endeavours to realise his sonship with God and his brotherhood with his fellow beings, struggles toward ever greater love and ever more extensive service.

Nowhere in here does one need the Book or the Association. But the Book and the organisation may help one to understand, assist in decision-making and choosing. They may help one to realize one’s sonship with God and one’s brotherhood with his fellow men. They may help one to understand the truth, to find the beautiful and to appreciate the goodness. They may help one to understand one's actual imperfectness, yet potential perfection. They may help one to disperse fears, and in that manner they can help one to comprehend that the universe is friendly, that God is love, that God is the Father. They help one to correct the wrong ideas of institutionalised evolutionary religions as concerns the existence, the reality, God, deity, Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God. They help one to widen one's horizons, one's viewpoints. They broaden one's philosophy, they expand one's understanding of the existence. They may help one to realise that the faith one has, if it is living faith, will yield the fruits of the spirit. But for all this to take place, we need to study and learn the knowledge revealed to us. None of these revealed facts and truths can be discerned by the mere faith, through the mere spirit; they presuppose the function of the mind. And the very task and obligation of a Urantia Association is to foster the study The Urantia Book.

II

When it comes to selection of teachers, study group leaders and association officers or committee members, most of our people explain that they are not yet ready for such assignments, that they themselves need to be taught, they themselves need to study and learn. Yet The Urantia Book teaches us that we are imperfect, and that we shall be perfect only after perhaps billions and billions of years, anyway, far in the future. We must not feel shame for our imperfection. Hence, no one can be a perfect teacher, a perfect study group or organisational leader. The very same Book likewise reveals to us the way we are going to make our studies in the future life: One acts as a teacher immediately after one has learnt something, and teaches those who are just one step behind. So, nobody should try to escape from these tasks in thinking of himself as not yet ready or good enough. No one is ready or good enough. Neither must we forget that to share one's experiences, expertise, skills, and endowments is godlike—divine. “Sharing is godlike—divine.” [1221:2]

To say the same in a more close-to-man way: to teach, to act as a group leader, to place one's skills and endowments at the disposal of the organisation is above everything else an opportunity for one to render a service, to serve one's fellows. In my mind it is unwise and impermissible to hold a view on someone who volunteers for any post or who at least does not refuse to take one when so offered—be it with any study group or in the leadership of the association—that that person is thinking of himself as being in some way better than others, or at least one step ahead of them. We might instead look upon him as a person who has understood his duties and responsibilities, and whose sole motive is that of serving his fellows and who is ready to do his best, even all, for the benefit of others. “...the harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are few.” [1681:8]

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III 

An individual Urantia Book reader of course reads the book the way he likes and the way that satisfies him. But even there the association could be of service by producing and offering various explanatory and derived works, secondary literature, study aids, comparative works about human knowledge on a given subject and the information provided in the Book.

The actual training and education given by the association is targeted to members and to other friends of The Urantia Book, to study groups; to actual or potential study group leaders, and to those actually or potentially serving in the leadership of the association. One should always remember that we are not perfect. No training programme is perfect. But this fact must not scare us from forcefully and confidently attacking even this task. Training programmes may always be improved, bettered, changed, altered, complemented...

New members. It is—even though they must by and large be familiar with the organization they have so recently joined—not out of place to offer new members oral, even better if written, information on the activities of the association, about the importance of the service motivation, on Urantia Foundation, on IUA, on the newsletter or journal of the organisation, on the gained organisational experiences, on the translation efforts etc.

Association members and friends of the Book. Education to them is given in study groups, separate educational meetings, at summer and winter conferences. The study groups are of course independent and decide independently on the ways they conduct their studies, on their programmes etc. But the association must at request sponsor the study groups by giving them a channel of communication and information, by paying their reasonable expenses and, as far as possible, by sending, upon a request, a speaker, a teacher, or a lecturer to the group, as well as by providing suitable secondary works, articles etc., which the groups may obtain at request. The association may also disseminate information on the many different ways that group studies can be performed: paper by paper, by subjects, by reading the translated text aloud, by reading and discussing, by reading only, by making comparisons with other sources, in teams seeking answers for particular questions, by discussing upon a presentation by a lecturer or speaker, by question and answer hours, by combining various methods etc. And we must not forget that our summer and winter conferences are in a way study groups as well.

Study group leaders and teachers. Training of group leaders and teachers must be separately organised, and I think it must be a continuous process. No one can be a fully learned leader or teacher. The purpose and aim of this type of training is to endow an active teacher, or someone preparing himself for this assignment of great responsibility, with constantly deeper knowledge of The Urantia Book. But apart from that, there should likewise be training in techniques of group activities, in public performing, in methods of preparing a presentation, in audio-visual aids, etc. And one should not forget to make the teachers familiar with the Urantia organizations, the use of the word Urantia and the concentric circles symbol, as well as with the Finnish Urantia Association’s statement on the dissemination of The Urantia Book and its teachings.

It is my view that nobody can presume to select people who are to be given training in study group leadership or teaching. Participation in this form of education and training has to be open to all volunteers. The education committee of the association may of course specially invite those persons the committee would like to be involved in this training.

Leaders. The training programme for leaders must be targeted to persons who wish to be thus trained. It would be ideal if those members who hold assignments in the association leadership had gone through the entire training programme, i.e. had been study group members, study group leaders and teachers. As it is with the other programmes the training of leaders is a process without end.

The stress in the leader training should lie on organizational aspects: the raison d'être of the existing Urantia organizations, their guiding principles, policies, constitutions, agreements, their history, their past problems, international activities of the Urantia movement and those of the association, international responsibilities; chairing and attending of meetings, readiness for public discourses, writing skills etc.

Teachers of teachers and leaders have to work without any formal training given by the association, while who could be their teacher or educator? Whereas even this problem had to be solved the governing board acted upon a motion by the education committee and arranged an experimental seminar for teachers and leaders in October 1990. The seminar was well attended, was a great success, and all its deliberations and discussions were carried in a spirit of love and brotherly and sisterly affection and caring.

We, who are readers of The Urantia Book, know that this fifth epochal revelation has been given to the entire world, not just to the Finns. Our embarrassment and handicap is the language barrier; it prevents us from freely sharing our experiences with the brothers and sisters in other countries. And while we are thus hampered, we easily keep silent and tell nobody anything. Yet, I consider it as our obligation to inform all Book readers throughout the world about our experiences. I may tell you that international activities are going to occupy an ever more central place within our association. Maintenance of international contacts requires mastery of foreign languages, that of English in any case. And I just invite you to give a thought also to this issue: Could our association be of any service in helping members to improve their command of the English tongue. I guess, it can. One way to accomplish this would be that of fostering an English-speaking study group.

No matter how small or apparently insignificant the achievements, we have an obligation to share them with others—and to learn from them. I remind you of the poor widow, scantily attired, who cast two mites into the receiving box trumpet at the Jerusalem temple, and in so doing, gave all that she had.

Seppo Kanerva, Finland.