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The Urantia Book Teacher
Education Program (TEP)
An innovative one-year online program to begin preparing teachers, ambassadors, and servant-leaders of the Urantia revelation
Announcing a new school for teachers and messengers of the Urantia revelation
Following four years of developing and testing by a team of curriculum developers and experienced students from the major Urantia organizations, UUI will open The Urantia Book School of Teacher Education in 2024. This new school is envisioned as a training hub for the Urantia revelation for generations to come.
The hybrid one-year training program features a five-day, in-person Orientation and training session at Urantia Foundation, followed by three trimesters of online study and weekly training and discussion sessions on Zoom. It is designed for people who are serious students of the Urantia revelation with a track record of participation in study groups and Urantia Book education programs.
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Offers a comprehensive review of the major themes and concepts of The Urantia Book
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Provides a useful blend of content knowledge and skill-building practices
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Prepares motivated students from around the world to effectively present the ideas and ideals of the Urantia revelation to their native cultures.
Application process
The inaugural program will kick off in August 2024. The program opens for applications on November 8, 2023. Write to us before then if you are interested in applying to the program and we will email an Application Packet to you when the window opens.
Contact us at: UUI.Teacher.Education@urantiauniversity.org
This project is supported, in part, by a Mustard Seed Grant from Urantia Foundation.
Every epochal revelation had a school to promote its mission and train teachers
Every revelation of epochal significance incorporated training schools as part of its mission to educate individuals and uplift religious cultures, from the schools of the Planetary Prince and Adam and Eve to the Salem School of Machiventa Melchizedek and the school of evangelists and apostolic corps of Jesus.
The Urantia revelation once had such a training program that was established in 1956 under the auspices of the Urantia Brotherhood School. Its mission was to prepare teachers and leaders whose responsibility it would be to carry the message of The Urantia Book to all interested people and to further the program of the Urantia Brotherhood. However, the Brotherhood School became inactive after the death of its Dean, Alvin Kulieke, in 1973.
The New School of Urantia Book Teacher Education
The Urantia Book Teacher Education Program is the outgrowth of an original concept by Gard Jameson and Marilynn and David Kulieke, who gathered a small group of individuals from various Urantia organizations for the purpose of creating an educational center for the Urantia community (UEC). Its primary purpose is to create a repository of educational materials about The Urantia Book and to develop an enduring school to support the dissemination of the Urantia revelation.
They envisioned an educational program that would prepare motivated students from around the world to effectively present the ideas and ideals of the Urantia revelation to people of all cultures. The founders invited representatives from Urantia Foundation, Urantia Book Fellowship, Urantia Association International, and Urantia University Institute (UUI) to collaborate in developing the curriculum.
Program Goals
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Provide people who have an inner prompting to share the advanced teachings of the Urantia revelation regarding God, the cosmos, and our planetary history and eternal destiny, with a coherent body of knowledge and skill set they can use to communicate more skillfully with spiritually hungry people looking for answers to life's big questions.
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Prepare people who feel called to teach or minister to the spiritual family of God in the light of the Urantia revelation and to spread the expanded gospel of Jesus presented in The Urantia Book to their faith communities and the broader culture.
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Provide a program of study leading to a comprehensive and integrative understanding of the major themes and concepts of The Urantia Book that enables participants to better articulate the revelation to their native cultures and to a wide swath of individuals and groups.
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Nurture the development of the participant’s inner spiritual life towards the goal of authentically embodying an awareness of the Presence of God in one’s life through faith and spiritual practices.
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Provide training for effective ministry based on Jesus’s model of loving service with an emphasis on personal spiritual transformation and mastering techniques of meeting individuals where they are at in a dialogue of souls.
Trimester Program Structure
Students explore the following themes and major concepts of The Urantia Book. During the first nine weeks of the trimester, students engage in reading, reviewing and thinking anew about the revelation and in teaching and sharing their expanding, integrated understanding of the text.
Trimester 1
(10 weeks)
September - November
During the first trimester students will review the major themes and concepts relating to the nature and functions of the Three Persons of the Paradise Trinity and their relationship to the unfolding master universe and all its personal beings.
Getting to know and love God (your personal theology) through the functions of the Paradise Deities and their divine offspring is the primary objective for the first trimester of this program. We also explore the cosmology of The Urantia Book and the evolutionary plan for the grand universe in which we originate, grow, and progress from mortal form to spirit status.
Outline of the Weekly Topics
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The Nature of God: Through the Lens of Evolution & Revelation
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The Universal Father
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The Family of God the Eternal Son
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The Family of God the Spirit
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The Architecture of the Universe
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There is a Plan: Ascension and Evolution
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The Ascendant Career: Personality Integration
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The Problem of Evil
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Unity
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Final Projects and Presentations
Trimester 2
(10 weeks)
January - March
In the second trimester students focus on the overarching theme of evolution in The Urantia Book, which is principally addressed in Part III and also threaded throughout the revelation. We explore the dynamic physical, biological, religious, and cultural evolutionary processes of our world that nurture the development of mortal ascenders.
Students become more aware of how our world and humankind are part of a local outworking of the inconceivably vast Plan of the Paradise Trinity for the progressive perfection attainment of all beings and things – from the lowest level of freewill creatures on evolutionary worlds like Urantia to the highest level of the Evolutionary Deity – the Supreme Being.
Outline of the Weekly Topics
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Progressive Evolution
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Urantia Beginnings: Early Physical, Biological and Human Evolution
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The Plan, the Prince, and the Rebellion
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The Legacy of Adam and Eve
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The (Continuing) Evolution of Religious Culture
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The Melchizedek Mission and Its Enduring Impact on Evolutionary Religions
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True Religion: The Reality of Religious Experience
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The Indwelling Spirit, the Soul, and Personality Survival
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Experiential Deity: Personal and Universal Evolution in the Supreme Being
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Final Projects and Presentations
Trimester 3
(10 weeks)
April - June
Having learned about Creator Sons and their bestowal missions in earlier parts of The Urantia Book, Part IV of the text re-creates the entire life story of Jesus and his incomparable teachings that have survived, in part, for the past 2000 years, and continue to inspire many today.
In this trimester, students review and reflect upon the events and decisions of Jesus’s life that shaped his experiences, developed his character, led to his unbroken communication with and faith in God, and aided in his self-mastery and self-conscious realization (in his human mind) of his Divine nature. Students further study Jesus’ life of loving service through his private and public ministry, his teachings, teaching methods, and the impact of his ministry upon this world.
Outline of the Weekly Topics
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The Life of Jesus: Bestowal - Early Adulthood
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The Life of Jesus: Man to God
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God to Man: Jesus’ Public Ministry, Crucifixion and Resurrection
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Eternal Life/ Salvation by Faith/ Quest for Perfection
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The Will of God
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God’s Indwelling Presence
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The Family of God (Kingdom of God, Brotherhood of Man)
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Values of the Kingdom
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God’s Love
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Projects and Discussions
Becoming More Effective Teachers, Messengers, Ministers, and Leaders
(339.6) 30:3.9 The entire ascendant plan of mortal progression is characterized by the practice of giving out to other beings new truth and experience just as soon as acquired. You work your way through the long school of Paradise attainment by serving as teachers to those pupils just behind you in the scale of progression.
In keeping with this universe pattern of progressive growth, it is incumbent upon advancing students of the Urantia revelation to serve in some fashion as teachers, spiritual companions, trainers, ambassadors, and ministers in order to share what they have learned with others and to offer encouraging support to people who are beginners on the path of spiritual understanding, practice, and growth.
We believe the Urantia Book Teacher Education Program is poised to achieve the long-sought goal of establishing a high-quality school for teachers and servant-leaders of the Urantia revelation.
Content Knowledge and Practical Skills
Through a comprehensive one-year program, the Urantia Book School of Teacher Education provides participants with the knowledge and skills to become more effective teachers of the Urantia revelation and spiritual educators in a variety of arenas.
Aware of the importance of cultivating symmetry in the practices of study, worship, and service, the program is designed to offer participants a balanced approach to intellectual development + practical teaching skills and spiritual growth + loving service skills.
Graduates may go on to serve study groups, spiritual communities, and churches, or teach in schools and centers of spiritual education and philosophy. Or they may create new ways of using the internet and multi-media to spread the Urantia revelation – the possibilities are boundless.
More about the Program
Knowledge Base
The Urantia Book Teacher Education Program curriculum builds on the student’s well-developed knowledge of The Urantia Book gained from years of prior study. It offers eager students the opportunity to develop a more comprehensive understanding and integrated perspective of the Urantia revelation through intensive study of the major concepts and themes of the text.
Skill-building Practices
We hone what we learn through doing, by engaging in activities that help to integrate and actualize the ideas we acquire through receiving information. During this first course, we will engage in thinking, writing, speaking, and creative activities that help us grow in insight, God-consciousness, and the ability to effectively communicate with others about the ideas and ideals of the Urantia revelation.
The program acquaints students with modern teaching methods as well as educational principles and models from the past that are described in The Urantia Book, particularly the teaching techniques used by Jesus the Master Teacher.
Spiritual Practices ~ Worship and Service to Others
At the heart of this education program is the formation and cultivation of spiritual habits that enhance our ability to practice the presence of God – to love and know God – and reinforce the practice of doing good for others – love in action. Students cultivate the strong, Jesusonian spiritual habits of contemplative prayer, worship, practicing the presence of God, embodying Supreme values, and the practice of discerning and doing the will of God.
Bringing the Training Home to Your Own Culture
The study of prior epochal revelations informs us that each had an educational and outreach program, from the schools of the Planetary Prince and Adam and Eve to the Salem missionary school of Machiventa Melchizedek, and the apostolic and women’s corps of Jesus.
In every case, interested people and prospective teachers and missionaries studied for a period of time at some kind of teaching hub and then returned to their own lands to present what they had learned in a language and form that was comprehensible to their particular culture. The Urantia Book Teacher Education Program undertakes to follow this model.
Contact us at: UUI.Teacher.Education@urantiauniversity.org
Urantia University Institute is grateful for the generous support of the Urantia Book Teacher Education Program by Urantia Foundation through a Mustard Seed Grant.