3.6 The responsibilities and attitude of a leader Among the people who follow the goals of the Unification Church, there are probably some people who are right up the front in 1st place, and some people who are coming in last. There will also be some who have dropped out of the movement altogether. There are a lot of differences among the different members of our church. The kinds of things that take place at sports competitions also happen in your families, or at the place where you do church activity. But whether we are talking about a nation or whether we are talking about an organization of some sort, the problem is how one can train and produce athletes of top quality. In other words, what kind of education and training must one carry out in order to produce athletes of the highest order? This is your mission. But in order to train or coach athletes, you yourselves must first possess at least the level of skills you are seeking to develop in them. You must also be able to train your trainees to surpass your own personal records. Then, based on the goals of the Unification Church, you have to train the kind of people who can be "marathon runners" on the world level. The leaders who can raise such people will go down in history with them together. When you meet your successors in the future, you have to be able to criticize them coldly and dispassionately. You must be able to tell in what areas they are like you, and in what areas they are not. If there is no single person qualified to totally inherit your responsibility, you must set up even a few people to whom you can teach everything together. Then how should you teach them? As each person has a different path, you have to educate each individual based on the field in which he or she has been given responsibility. They have to undergo education and a course by which they can become one. During the 1960s I traveled around South Korea and trained all the core personnel. As long as there are three members in each district, this will suffice. There is no need for a lot of people. Among the three, one should take care of educational matters, another church-related matters and the other economic matters. Each should be responsible for his own area. If they can die for sake of God's Will, the time will surely come when they can move the whole nation. That time will come. Right now I am getting a sense of what percent of you leaders here come up to the standard of jeongseong (devotional effort) made for the sake of your missions. I do not look at you with secular knowledge as the standard, but rather the extent of your devotion and effort. Some leaders deliberately avoid the suffering course. When it's time for a reshuffle of personnel, I send such people off to remote places they never dreamed of, telling them this is my special instruction. They may complain, saying, "Oh, I did this and that and now all I get is a demotion!" A demotion? From whom did they learn the concept of "demotion"? Do I have a special position or something? Is what I do a "job"? The church should not be run based only on the Principle. Of course we have to establish the ideological foundation based on the principle, and also strengthen our lives of faith based on the Principle. But in addition to that, you also have to carry out large-scaled social movements, and also carry out education. Education is the most important. It has to be implemented properly. It has to begin in the family, based on the village community life if the family lives in a small village. Everything will be based on the church itself if it exerts its influence on the area of education. It is not enough for our members to meet only on Sundays, and only study about a life of faith. To have influence on the materialistic aspects of life, there are things like agricultural improvement. You need to guide your members about things which are useful in their daily lives and which are directly related to economic aspects. You have to give them the benefit of such areas as education or agricultural know-how. They will not follow you or the church should they make any loss. Anything ranging from materialistic and spiritual aspects to general education, so long as they are positive contents about the church, related people will automatically be attracted to the church. The conclusion is that a regional leader has to be knowledgeable in the overall basics of education. A regional leader is God's representative. Is God unidirectional? God is the one in charge of leading the entire fallen world into the ideal realm. Likewise, a church leader should not take charge of the church alone, but should also influence people in the general administrative area, and get them involved in discussions. Therefore, not only must you lead our church organization spiritually, but you must also think about how to create better conditions in your community in the fields of everyday life and education. If people feel the church is an indispensable part of their lives, they will naturally set up more churches. So you have to think very hard about different kinds of concrete activities. What will happen if you become people who are eloquent in speaking, good at liaison work and making money? All of you will be made leaders. What should you do to train and educate people how to assume leadership? Only through activities. How difficult and serious it is to have to go and fundraise when you have no money and only have your own bare hands. Every day, you need to put on your thinking cap and think about how to convince and persuade people. To save people under the bondage of Satan, you have to launch a campaign to liberate them from that environment by giving them internal guidance. You have to take responsibility to guide and teach them from the position of servant of servants. Those believers who vow to be God's sons must forget all thoughts of eating well and living comfortably. God needs children who can say, "I'm in charge of teaching these people who come from the most difficult and lowly positions in society, including even beggars who live in caves. I also have to educate the provincial governors, and even the president himself!" You should not become worthless sons and daughters. You have to teach people of all walks of life, from the bottom to the top, in place of God. You are not worthy to be God's children if you do not walk the path of dedicating your entire life to teaching everything you know. Now, leaders, after listening to my speech, you have to think like this: "As a new person, I have been entrusted with the duty to establish the tradition of a new way of life in this land, in this nation." You have to stand in the vanguard. Whenever I have the time, I educate the elder 36 and 72 blessed couples, too. When I am in New York, I always tell them to come to East Garden. I cannot educate Korean leaders when I stay in America, but I have to be responsible to teach them before die. Once I start something, I will always finish it. I know I am responsible for training people who can go straight to the world, to heaven.....It is not easy. It is not the kind of thing that can be done in just one year. As the trunk is, so the boughs and twigs will be, too. I am the root. The root does not go up to the branches, and neither do the branches go to the leaves. When others see Unification Church leaders, they should be able to catch the traditions and ideas of our church. You have to become those branches. This is my policy. Any leader who does not conform to this principle will be replaced. Otherwise, I will have to educate them myself again at another training ground, for example in Keumgang (Diamond) Mountain [in North Korea]. You have to stand on your own two feet, set up your strategy for living and raise the people of Heaven. You have to work twice as hard to raise them as you would to establish your own livelihood by receiving education in a specialized field. Doubling the amount of effort is more significant. You can lay the foundation upon which church members can live and cooperate, without being indebted to them. Leaders who can only handle economic problems will be insignificant in the future. The political, social and scientific problems are also unimportant. Instead, the central position will naturally fall to leaders who can teach and train others with God's love, armed with Unification Thought. |