The Way Of The Spiritual Leader - 166 Chapter 4. The Progress of Church and Witnessing Section 1. The Growth and Progress of the Church
4. The Progress of the Church and the Responsibility of a Preacher
4) Be a Leader Who Raises Members - 1
What is another reason that our church could not develop? It is because we could not follow through in taking care of those who joined. Despite the fact that we should pay increasingly more attention to the people whom we have witnessed to, we neglect them after they join the movement. This amounts to killing the new members. At least for three years, you must continue to take good care of them under any difficulty. Why is this so? That person's faith grows gradually. The time that he first encountered the Divine Principle and one-year afterwards are totally different. After one year, new members will be able to understand more its three-dimensional content, both internal and external.
The more they understand, the more desperate they become in wanting to know the Principle. So, they would want to approach one who can guide them. When you reflect on this process through which one becomes a new member, you should spend more time to make more specific plans and satisfy their hearts craving for truth. You should not take the opposite attitude that since they have already become members, you need do no more than just telling them, "You should study on your on from now." You should attend to their well being for at least three years after they joined.
Comparing a year old member and a two-year old member in their normal path of faith, the latter will become involved more deeply and more concretely. He becomes more enthusiastic in more concrete ways, and desires to become involved in all areas. You should try to take care and raise these people. This headquarters also could not fulfill this. Many people passed through this place. At first you asked them to join by introducing the Principle, but then do not pay much attention to them when they come back later. A new member will remain faithful and come to the church for six months to a year because they are pulled by their love for the Principle and the word. But there is no one who can guide them or be responsible for them. The one who is doing the lecturing must put them under the wings and raise them. After about one year, their scope of understanding in Principle will broaden. The scope of their experience and realization will also broaden and deepen gradually.
Thus, they increasingly want to learn more about the Principle, but since they cannot find a subject who can teach them further about the Principle, they become aware of the inattentive attitude of the older members toward them. So when they face difficulty in their environment or have some doubts, you must provide an explanation with the Principle, and make them understand that the formula of progress is that way. If you do this, then they will come to realize that the Principle has deep meaning and is great and gigantic. However, because you did not pay enough attention to them, they completely lost the environment to have a stimulating experience. Therefore, they were first inspired by the Principle, but such feelings could not last.
So you must continually guide them. If you can no longer be responsible, then you must find a replacement who is connected to the foundation of heart on which you have been raising the member, and let him inherit the responsibility.
Taking an actual example, this was the report of those sisters who came back from a witnessing campaign in the countryside recently. According to one sister's report, in some village about thirty young men and women who graduated high school had become extremely zealous about the movement.
At first they were on fire and wanted to go out witnessing, but after 40 days they all went back. After meeting them, if missionaries visited or wrote letters to them even once a month, they could have retained them all. Yet, when they went back after ten years of neglect, they found that none has remained. There have been several succeeding leaders, but those leaders never contacted the pioneers to find out the situation of each member and get advice on how to guide them.
In other words, without even inquiring into background information about their life of faith, the succeeding leaders each took the casual attitude that he was used to and gave orders on his whims, saying, "You should do it this way and do that that way." Accordingly, since some stranger suddenly appeared and played the role of a master, they feel that he is not agreeable. Because a new leader goes to this region with public authority, if there are about thirty members there, he uses the excuse that he wants to solidify the system, and employs dominating methods based on his own concepts.
If you act this way, you will lose all members. You won't be able to fulfill the responsibility of inheriting from the predecessor. Until now, all regional leaders made this mistake.
You should not order members around when you have not even made all the plans about the heartistic and internal things and inherit them, or when you have not even created the environment for the members to voluntarily request that orders be given, more so when they do not desire nor understand the changes you want to make. A new leader should be receiving criticisms from the members at least for the first three months. You should not tell members to do this or do that according to you own opinion while members are still observing you.
Even for someone you have been raising for three years, there can be side-effects if you become too commanding, so it will create more problems for the new member if you tell them to do this and do that as a stranger who has not even established a heartistic relationship. At least for three months, you must devote yourself. In the method of transferring leadership, there has been this type of mistake, and there was also a failure to make introduction to the new leader about the person that you have witnessed to. Because the leader behaved in this way, they felt disappointed.
Even worse, the new leader disappointed them further, instead of resolving their dissatisfaction, embracing and caring for them, providing solutions to their difficulties, or giving them hope for the future that will give them power to move on. When this happens, members simply have no choice but to fall away. If they miss church three times, some accidents will occur, and if they do not come for one, two, and three weeks, they will become much more distant.
They will be worried that when they meet the leader, the leader will certainly ask them why they are not coming to the church. If they are questioned, then although the actual reason is due to disappointment, they cannot give an honest answer but tell some ties. If this pattern is repeated several times, they become increasingly distant, and eventually leave completely. [29-192] |