Cheon Seong Gyeong (Ⅱ) - 9 - 3 - 2. The Public Life of a Church Leader

[대태양/김현수]

BOOK 9 HOME CHURCH AND THE TRIBAL MESSIAH

CHAPTER 3 The Mission of a Church Leader

Section 2. The Public Life of a Church Leader

1 When I am even a little late for morning pledge service, I cannot hold up my head for the rest of the day. Such is the kind of life I live. Throughout that day and week, I cannot get a grip on myself. The following week I wake up early and offer devotions tenfold or even a hundredfold to indemnify my lapse of the previous week. Only after I have set such a condition can I feel at ease. This is how I live my life. What a difficult life! I may look impressive when talking to you, but to be able to do that I must live a life that is full of restrictions, with no way out for weeks and even months on end. Is it a private life or a public life? It is a public life. You have no idea what a difficult position I am in as a religious leader.( 031-254,19700604)

2 My history will not be written while I am alive; it will be written only after I pass on. If I did anything that cannot be recognized publicly, based on the Principle, then I will be in serious trouble. The question is whether the content of the Principle supports my way of life. If my life is thought to have gone in the wrong direction, I will end up losing everything I have achieved. That is why a person in charge is in a dim-cult situation. A leader should not be the first to go to bed, no matter how tired he or she may be. He or she should not lie down until everyone else has gone to bed, and should be the last to finish praying. A leader should lead a life of faith and offer devotions, even if it means living in poverty with hardly anything to eat or wear. Such is the position of a leader. When a leader lives that way, he or she cannot go wrong, no matter what others think.( 033-169,19700811)

The path of public righteousness

3 Even when you do something as ordinary as eating rice, you should consider whether your act of eating is public or private. When you eat a meal, eat for the thirty million people of Korea and for the people of the world. If you try to make the world exist for the sake of Korea, Korea will be reduced to ruin. If you try to make the world exist for the sake of the United States, the United States will be brought to ruin. The United States can prosper only when it exists for the sake of the world.( 036-074,197011 15)

4 Which should be higher, our direct relationships of love in the fallen world, or our indirect relationship of love with God? We should place our indirect relationship with God higher than our direct love relationships in this world. If that is not the case, we need to elevate our level of love. When we form that bond with God, we create a place where everyone longs to be. It is a bond and a relationship that people respect, whether they want to or not. Then, what can we learn from it and what should we do? We should learn how to love humanity. In today’s world, many view our Unification Church members as having no bond with Heaven and no relationship with God. We may appear so to them, but in fact we have that bond and we have a profound relationship with God. Since we have attained such a position, we need to manifest the love that God desires to give humanity.( 025-286,19691005)

5 You who call each other church members should love each other more than you love other people, more than you love the things of this world. By truly loving one another you create the environment of love that can expand to the world. In this regard, the important thing is how much you appreciate the life of each member. Ask yourself how much you value each of your fellow church members. Even in the fallen world, when a person is going through difficulties other people help by giving whatever they can. If we cannot surpass that level of bonds and relationships, in the future we will be absorbed back into the fallen world. In that case, we cannot become the foothold for God to establish the bond that He so greatly hopes to make with all people.( 025-286,19691005)

6 You leaders need to be clear in your standpoint. Otherwise you will have a negative impact on your members. Whether you are in charge of a business or a church, you should be able to always love all the people with a public mind, that is, a caring heart, as though God had sent them to you. Care for your members as you would care for yourself, according to the law of public-mindedness. If you have the position of a leader, you should love all the people under your charge more than you assert yourself. Your standard in this matter should be higher than any existing relationship in Satan's world today. Otherwise we cannot realize the kingdom of heaven that we desire.( 025-287,19691005)

7 If you do not attend church three weeks in a row, you might even encounter an accident. If you do not attend church for one week, a second week and a third week, you will not feel at ease. You will not be able to say what is really on your mind, so instead you will lie. If this happens repeatedly, you will grow estranged from the church and eventually you will cut yourself off completely. As can be seen, although we witnessed to numerous people, many of them were lost because we lacked a good follow-up system to take care of them. Therefore, rather than focusing on giving Divine Principle lectures and making new relationships, you should take responsibility for those who connected with us in the past and raise them to bear fruit.( 029-194,19700228)

8 As a public leader, your attitude is an important issue. Heaven is in the highest position. That is why Jesus said, "Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:37) Jesus said this to indicate he held the highest position. Heaven strives to love us and establish a bond with us from this highest position. Thus, when you go out and introduce God to other people, how should you approach them? First, do not treat them with disdain. Someone may look plain and simple, but, although you cannot pinpoint it, you may get the feeling, "He is like my elder brother," or, "She is like my elder sister." Or perhaps when the person turns around, you may feel, "I have seen this person before." Surely such a person is meant to have a connection with you.( 050-265,1971 1108)

9 When you witness to someone, how much importance do you place on that person's life? You need to reflect on this issue. A doctor is responsible to examine and strive to cure any patient who comes to see him. It does not matter if the doctor himself is ill. If that doctor is the only person who can cure the patient s ailment, and if the only way to cure the ailment is by performing surgery, then it is the doctor s duty to forget about his own pain, take up a scalpel and work for hours using all his medical expertise to save that person’s life. Such a doctor can be called a true doctor of doctors. If that doctor died immediately after completing the operation, he would be regarded as having ended his life as a true doctor. And if that last patient were cured, that person would never forget what the doctor had done. The patient would even speak of it as the last words to his or her descendants.( 069-165,19731031)

10 Leaders of this age should not consider themselves great. They should know that they have attained their positions thanks to the merit and sacrifices of their many ancestors. They should not think of themselves as great and claim they have the right to take what belongs to others because they deserve it. Rather, leaders should have the attitude that they must live a public life. A political party should not put itself ahead of the nation; rather, the party should put the nation first. Likewise, the Unification Church should not put itself first, for it exists to save the nation. The Unification Church should not exist to own the world; rather, it should be a church that exists to save the world. When that happens, Heaven will always be with the Unification Church. Church leaders need to understand this tradition as they carry out their work. I am telling the leaders not to think they have risen to their present positions because they are great.( 130-304,19840213)

11 The world in which we live needs to be governed by law. Based on the law, matters are distinguished as right or wrong. Then what about the universe with God at its center? What will be the law by which we distinguish right from wrong? It will be the law of public righteousness, of living for the greater good. This will determine what is good or evil. Even in the family there are laws. Whether something is right or wrong is determined based on the family law of the greater good. The parents are in charge of upholding their family law. Hence, they cannot violate that law, and they are responsible for dealing with any such violation. If the parents do something wrong, the entire family will be affected. This also holds true for any society, company or organization. Each has its laws, and it depends on the leader whether the entity is for the public or private purpose, for good or for evil.( 147-259,19861001)

12 The leader of an organization bears public responsibility. As the person in charge, he or she has to take full responsibility. He or she should uphold and follow its rules and regulations. The leader guides the organization as its subject, which determines whether it will go the way of goodness or the way of evil. The same is true for the ruler of a nation. A nation's ruler is its subject figure who shoulders full responsibility to ensure that his nation upholds the law, which should be based upon the law of public righteousness. That ruler needs to be fully prepared for this role in all its aspects, both internal and external. Thus, leaders should be able to govern by the law of public righteousness, to uphold that law and influence all citizens of the nation to fulfill their responsibilities under it. Otherwise, from the perspective of the law of public righteousness, the ruler cannot represent the entire nation.( 147-260,19861001)

13 The world is surely heading toward unity with the central figure and the public will, centered on the law of the greater good. People in both the physical world and the spirit world are following this same path. Even God cannot just do as He pleases. Having set up the law of the greater good, God can firmly secure His position only by maintaining the centrality of that law and fulfilling His public duties and responsibilities in accordance with that law. He cannot assert His authority by ignoring His own law. The same is true for us, regarding the laws of the family, society and nation.( 147-260,19861001)

14 You may think you deserve to take the money that people have earned and donated, believing it is your due. In fact you are stealing the money, and you will be punished. The money that people offer is more fearsome than poison. If they earned it by shedding tears, going hungry and becoming thin, and you do not treat it with a deeper heart than that, you will be en-snared by that money. If you have not attained the standard of goodness to properly handle the money that was offered with devotion before Heaven, your children will pay the price. It will harm them and consume them. That is why you should regard public funds as precious. This is true everywhere in the world. If the sons and daughters of well-known revivalists or religious leaders go in the wrong direction, it is because those parents incurred such a debt. I know this. That is why when people bring an offering, I do not receive it with my own hands. I tell them to take the money and use it for some purpose without informing me about it. I can live without receiving that money. Or when I do receive such money, I do so in the name of God. I receive it saying, "I will use this as public money." I do not lay hands on even a cent for my private use.( 212-266,19910106)

15 To hold a public position is a daunting task. Those who hold a public position cannot live with selfish motives. When I give a sermon, if other pastors speak for an hour, I ought to speak at least ten minutes more. When mountain climbing, I have to be able to claim that I have taken at least one step more than others; otherwise someone will accuse me for not making a proper condition. That is why I have been living such a pitiful life. I can never live a comfortable life, just taking it easy. Since I live with such caution, Heaven also treats me with caution and heavenly fortune treats me carefully as well.( 212-267,19910106)

16 A church leader should never be dry-eyed. The most pitiful and sorrowful person in the world is a church leader. When I think about Gods heart and the providence of restoration, I often feel that God is to be pitied. When I think about all I need to do on the path of restoration, I feel so sad that I choke, my throat closes up and my heart bursts. Many times I feel as if I am about to faint. Without such a heart, I could not have lived for God and carried out His work. When passing by a village somewhere, if I happen to see something bad, I think, "I will let it go right now, but you wait and see. Later I will clean up this place with my own hands." That is the kind of person I am.( 046-298,19710817)

17 You need to pray a lot. Without praying, you can neither win God's sympathy nor receive His help. That is because if you are focused on yourself, you do not have a basis to receive sympathy. This is something to feel sad about. However, if you become someone with whom God can sympathize, you will never be lonely. Even if you lie down in your room in the dead of winter on a cold floor that feels like a block of ice, you will not feel miserable. Was that not the reason Jesus prayed a lot? If you do not have time to pray, you should pray while you are walking down the street, or you can witness instead. That is, you can witness to others, substituting that for your daily prayer.( 046-298,19710817)

18 Leaders need to give, not receive. When giving, they should not give the same thing over and over. They need to give something new. It is difficult to give sermons, isn't it? In giving lectures on the Divine Principle, you can just repeat what it says, but giving sermons is difficult because you should not give the same message repeatedly. When parents feed their beloved children, they pick and choose a variety of nutritious foods. Likewise, you should not give the same message again and again. If you have nothing to give, pray to receive inspiration from God. Then feed what you have received from God to your church members. Discuss with Him what to feed them.( 046-299,19710817)

19 You certainly represent God. Some-times you may pray without being entirely aware of the content, yet you are deeply moved by your own prayer. When you are in such a state, everyone present will be captivated by God, and will recognize through personal experience that God is the driving force and the source of life. Through that experience, they will come to feel that they absolutely need God. To give people such powerful and moving experiences, your prayers are absolutely necessary.( 046-299,19710817)

20 People in charge should never be arrogant. A leader should be like a parent, a mother or father. The leader is a representative of God. The leader needs to invest greater effort than anyone else, day and night, and take responsibility to resolve all kinds of situations, whether spiritual or physical, internal or external, with a sincere heart. He or she should be the one to whom others come for advice, the subject partner of heart that people love more than they love their own parents. Without the ability to lead in this way, one cannot fulfill the mission of a leader.( 068-273,19730805)

The way to live for the greater good

21 You should be loyal to your society, loyal to your church, and loyal to your family. What is the purpose of the church? It is where you shape and cultivate your character. You need the church because of the Fall. Your family and society are not sufficient to perfect your character. You cannot perfect your character just the way you are. You may have gone to college; you may even have earned a doctoral degree, but it does not mean that your character is ideal. That is why you need the church. Through me, you need to establish a bond with the new Parents and become their new children. Then you can begin your family anew, bring it under Gods dominion and advance toward a new world. In doing so, the church serves as your foothold. Otherwise you cannot be successful. Your new family is formed through the church, and a new society is also created through the church.( 025-126,19690930)

22 What is the basis for asserting that a person is upright? An upright person brings together the heart of Heaven and the heart of the people at one central point. You ought to be such a person. At church you should offer all your devotion to win a central place in the hearts of its members. For this, you need to invest all your heart and soul. You should offer devotion beyond what you offer for your family, school or personal success in life. That is why Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matt. 22:37) You should love God with all your devotion and all your soul and all your heart.( 025-127,19690930)

23 The church exists for the purpose of saving the nation. Christianity, however, does not know this. Christianity believes that the church exists for the purpose of going to the kingdom of heaven. Even that purpose is for the individual. This has resulted in nations, like the United States, that embrace individualism. The Unification Church is striving to reform the world that consists of such nations. We witness to others not for the prosperity of the Unification Church, but to make the nation prosper. Religious people should not simply dwell within a nation, but work to save it. Judaism declined because it lost its leading role in saving the nation of Israel. The policy of the Unification Church is to work for the sake of the nation.

(034-330,19700920)

24 The church is to seek and establish Gods nation. Its purpose is not to seek and establish the church. God's original ideal of creation is to make this world a unified world centered on that nation, and therefore the aim of the church should be to seek that nation. How do we do this? Cain and Abel must become one. Unless Cain and Abel become one, we cannot establish the nation.( 149-050,19861102)

25 You blessed families should know that your mission is truly great. You need to be parents who can influence your sons and daughters. This is your first mission. To do so, you have to be thorough in conducting your church life and public life, and you should be exemplary in your personal life. These are absolutely necessary in training your children to go the way of the providence in the future.( 031-277,19700604)

26 Which type of life is more internal, the habitual life you lived in society before joining the church, or the life you have lived since joining the church? When asked such a question, you may answer that it is your church life. Yet how seriously have you valued your internal life? Some think they are going the way of the Will, and lightly say, "What I am doing now is for the Will" Can God dwell there? As I have walked the path of the Will, my main focus has been to seek the place that God can dwell. Where is the central place where He can reside? How can we unite centered on that place? How can we create harmony there? How can we establish a foundation of unity at the place that God can officially recognize, and how can we adapt ourselves to it internally? These are the questions I have focused on as I have pioneered my way until now.( 022-038,19690119)

27 Nonbelievers may simply base their social lives on their families, but people of faith need to base their social lives not only on their families but also on the church. Nonbelievers desire recognition and fame in their social lives. People of faith, in contrast, should place greater importance on their church lives. Social life and church life can be likened to the positions of Cain and Abel. Social life, being external, is Cain-like; whereas church life, being internal, is Abel-like. Therefore, your social life should become a reflection of your internal life. It should be the object partner. Your internal church life should become the center of your external social life. If you cannot stand in a position to be publicly recognized by God in your church, you cannot represent God in your social life. Therefore, the question is whether you can be publicly recognized by God in your church.( 022-036,19690119)

28 Some people do well in their church but not so well in society. Conversely, there are others who do well in society but not so well in church. Those who do well in society but not in church do not possess the essential qualities necessary to bear spiritual fruit. Who is better, a person who does well in church or a person who does well in society? It is those who do well in church. Those who have the qualities that can bear fruit can go forward with hope for tomorrow, but the relationships of those who lack those qualities cannot be fruitful.( 036-020,19701108)

29 The offering of devotions is a lifeline for people who take the path of serving God. Like a water pipe that carries water from the source, the offering of devotions should be constant. The leader who is responsible for a church should be united with at least three men and three women among the members. Unless those seven people including the church leader are always united in heart, the church cannot grow. It is not enough for the leader to unite with three people who suit his taste. The leader needs to strive to unite at all times with one person who is the most close to his heart, one person who is the most distant from his heart, and one person who is in the middle. That unity should reach the point where those three people offer devotions for their pastor.( 056-009,19720510)

30 When a church leader goes somewhere on a speaking tour, he or she should not go alone. During the tour, there should always be people praying for success behind the scenes. In particular, during my speaking tour, what would happen if you knew where I would be speaking and you prayed, offering devotions for me? In that case God would certainly be there working with me.( 056-009,19720510)

31 A leader needs a base for his or her activities. Unless that base is stronger than the places where activities are carried out, he or she cannot prosper. When you look at a tree, its branches sprout and extend from the trunk. The trunk is bigger than the branches. Similarly, without a base of operations, a ministry cannot grow. Church leaders need to understand this. It is the reason they need to bring three men and three women into total unity to support the church. When they all act as one, they can become the greatest nucleus for the development of the church. They need to maintain that structure for the sake of church activities. When each of the six people in that structure forms a trinity with three other people, they will naturally become a group of twenty-four people. When the three men each form a trinity, they will naturally become twelve people, and combining the trinities of the three men and those of the three women adds up to twenty-four people. With the church leader as their subject, they become inseparable. The amount of devotion the church leader offers for those people determines how much they in turn offer devotion for the leader.( 056-010,19720510)

32 To become a true leader, you need to formulate both internal and external strategies for your mission field. Employing those strategies, you should digest the difficulties of your mission field with the heart of a true parent. To devise your strategies you need to collect various types of materials and study them, and to succeed in your mission field you should make greater effort, sleeping less than others. What determines whether a community will be drawn to you or not is the amount of encouragement you give the people and the positive conditions you make for them. No one likes to be indebted to others. The same is true of me. You need to consider what you have to do to carry out your parental responsibilities, both internally and externally. And you need to consider how to maintain a relationship with God.( 046-296,19710817)

33 A leader needs to offer devotions. Only if you truly yearn for God can you pray all day long. You have to yearn for Him more than for people. Your heart of love and reverence for Him should never waver. You should long for Him with an indescribable feeling, thirsting for Him like a hungry baby wanting its mother s milk. At such times, although others are unaware of it, you will subtly receive spiritual food.( 046-297,19710817)

34 People will never miss you unless you miss them with all your heart. Therefore, as a pastor, you should always wake up early and wait for people to come to see you. You should open your door by four o'clock in the morning and hear the first crowing of the rooster. If the rooster crows before you get up, you should be upset and say, "Hey, you rooster, how dare you get up before me and crow!" Unless you live this way, the members will not wake up early in the morning and yearn for you as their teacher and leader. Nor will they pray for you. If they have no reason to do so, you will never have any results.( 030-149,19700321)

35 A tower built with sincere effort will not collapse; it is a matter of sincerity. How much have I yearned for you? No matter how much I explain it to you, you cannot understand. That being the case, how much have you yearned for me? How much have you yearned for the sons and daughters of God? How much have you yearned for the family and the people, the nation and the world of His hope? You do not know what it means to yearn for all of this. Money is not the issue. Even if you seem like a beggar, if you yearn for people, that in itself is glorious. Forgetting about worldly success and working to pave the way to Heaven is glorious. That is a marvelous thing.( 030-150,19700321)

36 It is right for people to give food to the hungry. Even if it is food you obtained from begging, you should still share it with others, for that is an honorable thing to do as a human being. If you have plenty of food at home yet grumble at a hungry person who asks for a meal, your household will not last long. You should just provide such people with free meals. While doing that, you should also express concern for them with a public heart. That is how you can receive blessings. If you provide many people with free meals and at the same time demonstrate concern for them with a public heart, no one will dislike you.( 056-037,19720510)

37 If you are the first to welcome new members to the church, you will be blessed. But you have to serve them and help them settle down completely until they can sustain a life of faith on their own. When you do that, you will participate in their victory. If you have that kind of relationship with more than ten people, when you find yourself in the jaws of death, they will come to your rescue. You will reap such benefits. This is how you will be blessed. That is why you should be hospitable to new visitors who come to the church.( 037-329,19710101)

Working proactively

38 Think about your past and present and ask yourself: Does your past stand as the subject partner, or does your present? If your past and your present cannot form a subject-object relationship, you should look toward the future as the subject partner of hope. What happens when you slack off and cannot devote yourself with hope in the future? In that case, you will inevitably view the past as the subject partner and the present as the object partner. Therefore, in your life of faith you should not just let the grace you received in the past slip by. As you walk the path of faith, you will encounter lax times without realizing it. When that occurs, you can deal with the present reality by taking your past life of faith as your subject partner. Read again the diaries you wrote in the past, or reflect on what you experienced during your prayers when your life was filled with grace. You need to revive the heart you had at that time, and repeat what you did back then. Then you can make a resolution with a motivation even greater than you had in the past.( 042-096,19710228)

39 As you walk the way of the Will you should have a subject partner, someone who represents the entire church, someone on the side of truth. But what if you do not have a relationship with such a person? You need to compare your present life with your life in the past, and if you find the past to be better than today, you should bring your past life back into your present. The question remains, how can you rekindle the determination you had back then? How can you re-experience the heart you felt back then? How can you re-create the circumstances of that time, when you fought your way through? If you cannot resolve these issues in your own prayers, you should find a way to resolve them by taking some kind of action.( 042-097,19710228)

40 While walking the way of the Will, you can easily become estranged from the church. It means sometimes you are not within the church, but are living centered on yourself. If you are not within the church, that is, if you do not center your life on the church in all aspects but stand in the position of a third party estranged from the church, then you will drift away. The church will no longer stimulate you, and your ties to it will weaken. Then inevitably, although you did not intend it, you fall into a situation where your church life becomes lax. What then should you do? You need to work for the sake of the church in all aspects and unite with its leader. You should not isolate yourself from church activities, but instead be active and keep pace with the leader. By fighting your way through while keeping pace with the leader and fighting evil, you can experience the circumstances faced by those at the forefront, the decisions that they make, and the conditions that motivate them. When you do that, you will not only follow in the footsteps of the leaders representing the church, but will even arrive at a position ahead of them.( 042-097,19710228)

41 What must the Unification Church teach? It should teach about the relationship you should have with me. Once you have an internal relationship with me, you can set up a clear model for applying it to your external relationships. You have to absolutely value your relationship with me. Otherwise you cannot establish the realm of the absolute object partner, the most precious position in the church. Then what should the Unification Church actually do? What you and I feel in our hearts should be the core, and then we should apply that core to our relationships. Then, what should I do? My part is to share what I feel about God with you. Thereupon, al-though you do not know what I know, you will know what you feel about me and that feeling will be your own. That is how you cultivate the field of your heart and mind, and open the door of your heart and mind. However, even when you have finished cultivating the field of your heart and mind, that is not the end; you should then apply this to your own relationships.( 076-155,19750202)