Leaders in History

On Wednesday we talked about examples of leaders throughout history ranging from President Hinckley to Adolf Hitler.  (Yes, putting those two in the same sentence makes me squirm just a little.)  We discussed why these leaders were so effective and why we still remember their legacies.  The commonality that struck me was this: all of them proposed something new and radical.  Leaders don't make history's headlines by observing the status quo. 

Of all the leaders we discussed, President Hinckley is the nearest to my heart since he was the prophet for most of my life.  When I think about the prophets of the Church, "radical" is not the first word that enters my mind.  But when I step back and try to look at the Church from the perspective of one who hasn't grown up in it, some of the things we believe seem quite radical indeed.  A 14-year-old boy seeing God and Christ in a grove of trees, angels helping push handcarts across the plains, 19 to 21-year-old kids being sent all over the world to tell the story--it's definitely radical.

So to add to our assertion that a leader is one who proposes radical, new ideas I would say that an effective leader is one who makes the radical and impossible seem indubitable and achievable.  President Hinckley's vision of building temples all over the world may have seemed ambitious and not realistic when it was proposed, but now all those temples stand as a legacy of achieving the improbable.  Great leaders make achieving the impossible seem like second nature.

So, what radical proposal am I, as the secretary in the Relief Society, going to make not only  a possibility, but a given? 

100% Visiting Teaching every month and 90% attendance every week.

Obviously, a lot of this lies outside my realm of choice and accountability.  But, if the record I keep is accurate and detailed then the presidency will always have a very clear idea of which girls in our Relief Society need extra encouragement and motivation to come to RS or visit their sisters.