For the past few weeks (during which my blogging has been iffy and sporadic, I apologize) we have been discussing a concept called divine-centered leadership. As indicated by the name, this is a style of leadership that strives to emulate Christ's method of leading and influencing others. There is a list of several criteria that pertain to leading as Christ would have us lead.
One in particular off that list caught my attention as being especially pertinent to my leadership role: knowing each heart. Christ knew the hearts of all the people He loved and served and led; He knew how to best love and serve and lead then because He didn't just know them, He knew their hearts. Knowing someone's heart is deeper than just knowing someone. When you know their heart, you know what makes them tick and how to motivate them and what obstacles they are facing and how you can help them overcome those challenges. Knowing each heart also calls attention to the individuality of the work of leadership, especially in the church. Some of my training materials for my calling as the secretary said that while we count numbers to have records of attendance and visits, we also count names. It shouldn't just be, "We had 7 sisters missing from Relief Society today." But we should also talk about specifically who we missed that day and how we are going to reach out to each of them individually.
As the secretary, it's my job to keep track of everyone--who comes to church, who is getting visited and taken care of, and who might need some extra love and support. When I do my job right and try to know each heart, to discover the motivations and fears of the girls I serve, then I can be a more divine-centered leader and also allow the Relief Society presidency to be more divine-centered leaders. (Random shout out: our RS presidency is wonderful. All three of those girls really do love and look out for all our girls and I'm thrilled to get to work with and learn from all of them.)
The object of divine-centered leadership is to lead as Christ would have us lead. We can't lead exactly how Christ Himself would lead because we aren't Christ. But we can lead in the way He would have us lead and I think the core of leading as He would is loving others and trying to know them and see them as He does. In my leadership role I have the opportunity and responsibility to keep tabs on everyone and see how their doing. It's a very individualized process. What we do to serve one of our girls will be completely different from what we do to help another, depending on each girl's unique interests and set of challenges. The commonality in everything we do to reach out to our girls and help them is that we try to do it in the way Christ would, lovingly and patiently motivating them to overcome their challenges.
Quote of the day: This is from Jerry Jaccard, one of the elementary music ed faculty members, and hopefully one of my future teachers! "Reaching the individual and the group at the same time is the art of teaching."
Thanks for reading as always and I hope you have a happy happy day today. =)
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