Life on Purpose: Living Service
Instructor/s:
Aprilhelen + 18 Service Leaders
Start Date:
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
End Date:
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Times:
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm MT
5:30 pm PT/ 7:30 pm CT/ 8:30 pm ET
Course Description
Explore your unique talents and hone skills needed to develop or improve feasible service projects and to live a purposeful, sustainable, and service-directed life. We invite you to join us in this new course of the School of Service, inspired by higher values and real-world experience.
Enjoy Diversity
This is the first time that UUI is reaching beyond the Urantia Book community to welcome faculty from other faith, or non-faith, traditions. We celebrate a multitude of viewpoints while enjoying spiritual unity. No specific belief, dogma, or creed is required, only a desire to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Students are welcome, whether it be from an established spiritual tradition or no particular religious belief system at all.
Service Leader Guidance
This inaugural program of UUI’s School of Service will provide the opportunity for students to interact with experts in various areas of service. Eighteen expert Service Leaders will guide the course. Each three-Service Leader panel will arrive with experience from a broad spectrum of beliei.
The eight-session course will explore the varying opportunities for service, discovering how service is experienced through five lenses:
Individuals
Families
Friends + Coworkers
Communities + Careers
Global Citizens
Service Projects and Community
The course participants will have the out-of-class assignment of integrating the lessons from the Service Leaders and peers into a service project. After the course, students will have the choice to become members of a social transformation community network to continue to empower and partner with each other in the outcomes of the coursework.
Our interfaith inspiration:
With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status – one must do something as well as be something. The Urantia Book
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. Viktor E. Frankl
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Gandhi
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. AA Big Book
You are the light of the world. …let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:14
The Orientation, “Sharing Circle”, and “Celebration Circle” have unique formats which include space for student presentation of Service Projects. (90 - 120 minutes)
Each of the five service-specific sessions is 90-minutes and features:
Welcome + Centering moment
Introduction to the session
Three-Service Leader panel discussion
Small-group breakout with a Service Leader
Large group reflection discussion
Q&A for the Service Projects
Level: No prerequisite
Size: 20 students maximum
Language: English
Grading: None
Weekly Outline
Session 1 / Orientation (March 28, 2023)
An intro to the course and Service Leaders, service project assignment, and social transformation community network, with Q&A and a call to commitment.
Session 2 / “Sharing Circle” (April 4, 2023)
Introductions of students and their service projects
Session 3 / Individuals (April 11, 2023)
On vital aspects of lifestyle managment for living a service-oriented life
Session 4 / Families (April 25, 2023)
On modeling a service-oriented life
Session 5 / Friends and Co-workers (May 2, 2023)
On living a service-oriented life in relationships
Session 6 / Communities and Careers (May 9, 2023)
On living a service-oriented life for communities and through careers
Session 7 / Global Citizenship (May 16, 2023)
On living a service-oriented life for the world we share
Session 8 / “Celebration Circle” (May 23, 2023)
Service Leaders and students celebrate and commit to the STCN
Learning Outcomes
Your Instructor: Aprilhelen
Aprilhelen's personal motto is “Breathe, Love, Serve.” Being a lifelong second generation student of The Urantia Book, she was raised in an interfaith environment. Her passion for living a life of service is deeply rooted in the genuine desire to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people for the greatest length of time, across all spectrums of demographics. A twenty-five year career in sharing techniques of personal progress of body, mind, and spirit, is exactly why she is humbled and proud to reflect on her purposeful life as living loving service for the edification of humankind as a unique part of the diverse whole.
Your Service Leaders
Pato Banton, Danille Coté, Thomas Pirie, Elisabeth Callahan, Peter Laurence, Ann Biggs, Arlene and Buck Weimer, Kurt Cira, Geri Johnson, Kyle Forsyth, Ruthie Wilde Wenger and Brad Garner, Will Rucker, Dalia Vences, Caitlin Sumner