The Way Of The Spiritual Leader - 324 Chapter 5 - Ministering and Giving Guidance to the Members Section 3 - Essential Elements of Guidance Given to Members 1. Living for the Sake of Others
2) A Church Leader's Purpose of Existence is for the Sake of the Members - 3
When you consider the leader, he is not someone who is always happy. He is a miserable person. Why is he miserable? It is because he always feels a sense of being in debt. He should always feel that he is indebted and be determined to care for the members well. They have to be this way.
When you look at some miserable person, it is your duty to be concerned about his or her life and talk to him or her staying up all night.
When the spiritual leader sees that someone is facing death, it is his responsibility to prevent the person from walking the path of death by sacrificing himself. Isn't this true? He has to be in that position.
Therefore, what does this mean? What matters is how much you lived for the sake of the members. Isn't this true? The question is how much you have cared for them.
They are not some strangers. They are your extensions. They will become your branches. Do you understand? They will become your branches.
In order for the branches to grow well, you have to protect them well. Accordingly, when you witness to someone, we call him or her spiritual children, right? What is that? They are your branches.
Yet, how much effort and devotion did you put in to provide them with nutrition? In order to do this, you have to become a stem or roots.
If you are the root, then the more there are branches and stems the more you need to ceaselessly provide more nutrition than they need from the earth, and this condition of abundance is a prerequisite for the development.
This is the only way that they will grow. If there is a limitation, if you cannot provide the top with the nutrition that it needs, then the top will wither and die. Isn't this so? This is how it will be. (70-147) |