OUR VISION

Vision UrantiaNow.com is an interactive community platform designed to foster worldwide spiritual unity through the positive free expression of personal religious experience as revealed in The Urantia Book.

Goals

• To be a dynamic hub for fruitful conversation among students of The Urantia Book.

• To be an engaging and exciting introduction to the Urantia community for those who are new or unfamiliar.

• To engage and inspire students of The Urantia Book with testimonials, news, forums, access to community resources, and promotion of community events.

• To serve as a conduit of discovery to the meanings of The Urantia Book to all those seeking.

• To offer resources and support for spiritual growth.

Audience UrantiaNow.com seeks to reach anyone interested in learning more about, becoming involved with, or staying involved with the community of Urantia Book readers. The content and aesthetic of the site is particularly meant to appeal to younger generations.

Format UrantiaNow.com is designed as a news blog. Featured posts rotate regularly, focus on personal religious experience, and encourage comments and discussion. The site also offers an opinion section and resources for study, support, socialization, service, and outreach.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT URANTIANOW

Urantianow was a website born from a vision, a realization that something was missing in our community. 

Because of the nature and timing of being students of this "Big Blue Book" too many of us are separated in our journeys as UB readers. 

This site's creators saw that this need must be satisfied. 

We began on a journey to bring the highest quality, most inspiring, and honest stories and news from around the Urantia community and deliver it to your desktop, inbox, and smart phone! You belong to a beautiful, growing community of truthseekers from the world around. 

We thank you for your support of our efforts! Stay tuned for much that is to come. 

-- Teuvo Orjala, Urantianow founder.

Address of the bookmark: http://urantianow.com

Truthseekers is...

Truthseekers activities and programs empower young adults to discern values and discover meanings for them-selves by reflecting actively on their own life experiences and on those of others. Truthseekers reaches out to young adults who have begun their search for truth. Our program provides them support and encouragement in recognizing their own values and related meanings to assist them in their lives.

Truthseekers is dedicated to helping youth and young adults find and explore the meanings and values that will enable them to lead healthy and productive lives. In order to accomplish this we do the following:
 

• We reach out to young people who are receiving the conflicting messages that abound in our culture about life’s meaning and purpose.
• We offer them the opportunity to critically sort through these conflicting messages.
• We encourage them to look within themselves in order to find a path that makes sense to them and to recognize which values are important and how to actively adopt such values.
• We provide them with a safe, accepting, supportive environment in which they can explore meanings and values within a community of their peers and with the assistance of trained facilitators, many of whom are past Truthseekers.
• We provide a curriculum that gives these young people a wide variety of avenues which they can follow in their explorations.

Address of the bookmark: http://tsquest.org

WHERE ARE THE YOUTH?

This last weekend I attended the Gathering at the Hood. A regional conference put on by the newly formed Urantia Communities of the Northwest. It was truly an amazing event, to say the least, but it was missing youth participation.

So where are the young people? They are everywhere! They are all around us everyday. Ok, yes, you know I’m speaking specifically about young Urantia Book readers. Well, unfortunately they seem to be in shockingly short supply. But it wasn’t always this way.

When I talk with people about the history of the movement I often hear about how many people found the book in the late 60’s and 70’s. The open minded cultural movement of love and self discovery of those times was the perfect soil for the revelation to grow and an amazing number of people (including many young) became readers in a short period of time.

The UB tells us:

“As the human mind reckons backward into the past, it is evaluating past experience for the purpose of bringing it to bear on a present situation. As mind reaches out into the future, it is attempting to evaluate the future significance of possible action. And having thus reckoned with both experience and wisdom, the human will exercises judgment-decision in the present, and the plan of action thus born of the past and the future becomes existent. “ 118:1.4

To me this quote means that we continue to acknowledge the past of our movement as we plan for the future. Otherwise it seems we will be discussing solutions to a problem we don’t fully understand.

My understanding of this problem has developed out of my life experiences. I was born into a UB home, I’ve traveled on evangelical missions, and I have been a founding member of the Youth and Young Adult Committee. Therefore, I feel my experiences have given me an understanding of my generation that few share.

When I’ve traveled I would hear very personal stories about what some people went through in the 70’s and 80’s. The break up of the Foundation and the Brotherhood, the Fall of Vern Grimsly, and the growth of the teaching mission. All of these events had incredible effects on the Urantia community of those days, and continue to influence us today.

The events of those times should not be taken lightly. Not that they need to be dug up but that they need to be acknowledged if we desire to have a honest conversation about our history and where we find our movement in 2015 and going forward.

These events had a devastating effect on our community for a few specific reasons.

1. One, they started a culture of separation. That groups of us had separate missions while studying the same exact teachings.
2. Two, they caused incredible disappointment. When you have such strong leadership, that you place so much expectation on, the let down is significant if they falter. The desire to support new leaders and trust in strong leadership has been largely lost in our community. Instead of a focus on training young leaders inside the Fellowship we continue as a culture of “study, study, study”.
3. Third, in my opinion, we have not yet figured out what our primary mission is as kingdom believers.
4. What do I mean by “our mission” ? Well when I say Buddhist you instantly have a clear image of what being Buddhist means right? What about Mormon? Same thing? These groups have established who they are and that’s how the world knows them.

Us UB readers are still just “readers” if you ask most people. In fact as we left the gathering at the Hood one of the staff said “the book club group is leaving today at noon”. That is how we come across to observers. And if you visit your average study group that is what you will find, “readers”.

That is not to say these readers are not living these teachings in their daily lives or are kind and beautiful people. We know they are. I’m saying as a community of Urantia Book students, and believers in Jesus Christ, we have not yet come together in unity of purpose and therefor we are known as readers. Because that is what we primarily do. We read. I know some of you would say that having a unifying mission is not the goal but I would argue it’s why we have so few young people in our movement.

People, especially young, want to be part of something. Not something deep and complex but something tangible, fulfilling, and now! Being part of a book club is not very exciting. Though it might have some spiritual fulfilment, once you get deep enough, it is not enough to attract but a few.

Here is my idea for moving forward and discovering who we are as a movement. I’m proposing that we do EXACTLY what the revelation instructs. It is a fact that the 5th Epochal Revelation does not in fact tell us to study and know the 196 papers of the Urantia Book. It just doesn’t say this. What it DOES say is this:

“Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.” (196:1.3)

This to me is our path to becoming who we know we can be as a community and a worldwide movement. To focus on Jesus’ message first and foremost.

The rest of the Urantia Book is just incredible knowledge and truth to help us become better messengers of the world’s most important Gospel!

As Jesus instructs, this does not mean banging on doors declaring “The Master has risen!” We must meet people where they are in their spiritual path and along the way serve all we find in need. When the whole of our movement, most importantly the leadership, is committed to this mission we will be overflowing with families and youth.

When our message and purpose is simple and tangible we will be shocked by how many people find us and join our cause.

“No cult can survive unless it embodies some masterful mystery and conceals some worthful unattainable” 87:7.9

Do we have this in our movement? If you think we do please leave it in the comments. I don’t personally see one. Not one that unites us and makes us jump out of bed every morning! And until we do find this our community will continue to splinter into many different minimally effective social groups. Losing the potential power we all know we would find if we united behind Jesus and his life saving message.

Let us develop together a message we can all unite behind. It won’t be comfortable for some at first, and it shouldn’t be, but it is the way. When the revelation says it so clearly  “Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.” (196:1.3)  will we just continue to ignore this? Will we continue to be a book club when we are called to be teachers and leaders for the master? I pray not. I pray we find our common purpose in these teachings and work together to reach the masses with this BEAUTIFUL NEW Gospel we all know will change lives as it has changed ours.

And when we do this the youth will start knocking on our door day and night.

Note from the Author: I feel like I could write 20,000 words about this subject. How to attract and inspire young spiritually minded youth to find and understand revelation. There is no one answer. It really is all wrapped up in how we each move towards following the Masters leading and being true cosmic citizens. I’d love to hear your thought for the future of our movement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I hope you do enjoy this and the beautiful content from our inspired world wide community. This website has been a vision of mine from a very long time. This recent redesign is the latest effort to try and provide our community of believers with inspiring stories, information, opinions, events, and more. If you believe in this work please show us your support by donating to the Fellowship.