Hyung Jin Moon
June 20, 2008
Sun Moon University
The meeting was to facilitate the reorganization of the church leadership in Korea.
Church leaders, good morning! It moves my heart to see all of you, who are working faithfully on the frontline of the providence.
True Parents have taught us many things about the position of a church leader. From the providential viewpoint, the church leader stands in the position of Abel, and the members are in the position of Cain. It is up to Abel to bring Cain to voluntary submission and guide Cain to work together with him.
True Father has taught us that the only way a church leader, who is in the position of Abel, can guide and lead his members, in the position of Cain, is by lowering himself with a humble heart and serving them. This would be true for any other religion, but particularly in our church, a leader should not be autocratic. We may have thought of, or imagined, a church leader as being like a general in the military or a CEO in a company, but it would be wrong for a church leader to think, "You must follow me, because I am a leader and have the authority to make you do so." That is not the Principle way. If a leader were to think in that way, unity and harmony could not be achieved.
We have passed through an era in the wilderness, full of difficulties and episodes, and welcomed the time after the coming of heaven. We are not far from realizing God's will; and at such a time as this, we should all become one and bring to settlement all the foundations we have laid so far. Our church must become stronger and grow further. In this important time, we should inherit True Father's teachings about humble leadership. In particular, young people who hope to become church leaders in the future must remember this.
Recently, I came to know one second-generation member whose father was a famous church leader. Yet, he says he has kept his distance from the church for decades. He asked me, "Can we find passion in our church now? When I was young and we were working to support our eider brother Hyo-jin nim, our church overflowed with passion. At that time, we could have died for each other."
"Such passion can still be found in the church," I said. "If you look at the Unification Church as a whole, you can clearly see that passion. Of course, the church is different from what it was before. A few decades ago, all churches were pioneering churches, but now there are pioneering churches as well as those that have settled down and are more established. Compared to the past, the character of the church has completely changed."
Pioneering churches, for instance the churches in Mongolia and India, are really very passionate. When you are pioneering, you need to move forward with such burning passion, like that of a warrior. However, established churches are different. They are at the center of a nation. Such churches cannot be run with burning passion alone.
When a church grows to a certain level, and becomes established, the local society observes that church and its members from closer quarters. If it overflows with too much passion, they begin to wonder if it is turning into a fanatical group. That is why an established church comes to have a different nature from that of a pioneering church.
Rather than emphasizing its burning passion, an established church should be more stable spiritually. It should have leadership that permits it to receive visiting honored guests well. The church should also have an atmosphere by which it can form a good relationship with those guests and leave them well informed.
Both these kinds of churches can be found among the Unification churches around the world. For our church to develop further, we should harmonize these two different natures. One nature cannot be emphasized as being better or more important than the other, because people's characters are all different. Some people are full of passion; such people fit well with pioneering churches. Some people do better in an organization and have a higher possibility for growth in settled churches. As can be seen, having two types of churches provides more opportunities to people.
In The Way of the Spiritual Leader True Father told us about the six internal attitudes a church leader should have. He should start out from the very bottom. He should move forward with conviction. He should be a little bit simple-minded if he wishes to walk this path. He should endure to the end. He should represent the dignity of Heaven, and his desire to act should lead to actual results.
If I were to add one more to this list, it would be "He should practice sincerity and love." What this means is that a church leader should accumulate sincere efforts rooted in basic moral principles. This is attested by the fact that the Chinese character True Father holds most dear and loves the most is seong, meaning "sincerity." You should bear in mind that sincerity is the fundamental virtue of a church leader.
The Chinese character True Mother likes and loves the most is ae meaning love. It signifies practicing true love. This, together with sincere devotion, is a basic virtue that all church leaders should possess. When we thus practice the six virtues given us by True Father and apply the philosophy of sincerity and love, which represents True Parents, I believe we will be able to inherit the tradition of True Parents and fulfill our duties as church leaders.
Church leaders, we need to bring about development in our church that we have been unable to achieve during the last twenty to thirty years. The Unification Family needs to become more mature. In the last twenty to thirty years, we have received much support from Japan, the mother nation, but now the Korean church must become sturdier, strong enough to fulfill its responsibilities by itself. Not only that, but as the homeland of our faith, Korea should lay the foundation on which it can support the pioneering of churches in other nations, that is, world missions in general. It should play the role of a father in relation to all our churches throughout the world.
To achieve this goal, we should not follow the old ways. We need to nurture a sense of responsibility a spirit of ownership, and professionalism. We need to improve not only ourselves but also the church. At this time, a new system is being implemented to a certain degree. However, it is not the end. The church needs to continuously grow stronger and more mature; only when it does will an increasing number of people be able to connect to it.
The path to becoming children of True Parents will become even wider than before. Making effort for the sake of changing the church is not something that can be done just once. What we are doing now is only one process. Through this process, we will be able to attain even greater success.
You may remember that I said at the time of my inauguration as regional president of the Korean church that I will guide our church in a direction in which we will have more transparency, equality and better results. We will report the results we have accomplished to True Parents.
I have said that one of the six internal attitudes in a church leader is representing the dignity of Heaven. We must not bring shame to our True Parents. Instead, we need to serve them in such a way as to glorify and honor them more. We need to lower and humble ourselves when dealing with other people. In particular, the leaders who are in a higher position should be humbler. Then other people in society will say, "These people are special. They are so humble, even though they are in positions of authority.
One of the problems in the Korean church system is that the flow of information from the headquarters to all churches is very weak. We need to further strengthen our organization in many ways.
As I said at the inauguration, I will not give a person a good position just because I know him or her well. Such a tradition is absolutely bad for the development of the church. What is important is not whether we like a leader, or not. The point in question is whether he or she is the best choice for the church, or not.
Only True Parents are eternal. All of you, and I, too, are passing through. We cannot be the True Parents. No one other than True Parents can stand in that particular position. As time passes, the eras of the second generation, third generation, fourth generation, and the tenth generation will come. What is important is that as the generations come and go, the realm of True Parents' true love will widen further. This is the most important point in our church.
In the time of pioneering, we needed leadership centered on charisma. However, in order to lead the church in the age of settlement, what is required is an organization with charisma rather than a charismatic individual. When people view our church, they should be able to think, How nice this is; it's an organization to be trusted. Only when we can show others that ours is a holy church that can render help to others can new members join it. When we look at religions with a big and organized framework, like the Catholic Church, we can see there is still a process we need to first create and then go through.
When you study religions, you can see that we are now standing at a very important point in time. We need to do the most important and necessary work now, not only for our generation but also for future generations. Centering on True Parents, it is important for all of us to unite and bring about sustainable success.
Such work cannot come to a successful conclusion through only one person's charisma. This is because there won't be anyone in the generations to come who can lead the organization with charisma comparable to True Father's. Now is the time for us to prepare the church for our future generations.
As you may have heard, the CARP leaders got together and selected a new overall leader by voting. They actually chose the incumbent chairman. Many people think this is the same as the democratic system, but it is not. If we had followed the democratic system, all members would have cast a vote. Instead, we had the church leaders working in the field cast votes to choose the person among them who will work best as the CARP chairman. The basis for this lies in strengthening the organization by having the leaders cooperate to choose their own leader. After the Day of All True Things celebration in 2000 (in New York), True Parents held a leaders' meeting, at which they had national messiahs vote for the continental directors.
The leaders you are about to choose by vote are not being elected based on personal popularity. We will objectively choose leaders suitable for and capable of doing God's work.
Until now, the Korean church had twenty administrative regions. We will now have just twelve regions, and we will choose the regional leaders based on ail of your opinions.
We will make our church one that cares for its members and allows them to shine; if we think of our members as lambs, we will develop a culture in which these lambs can grow healthily. We will create a loving realm in which we can embrace even the newest lambs. We will develop a church tradition of truly taking care of our existing and newest members. This should begin with us, and it should begin now.
Our members have been waiting for too long. The church leaders should serve our members well, as if they were our older brothers. If we serve them well with a humble attitude and they grow to lead successful and glorious lives, we will be acknowledged as church leaders who have fulfilled our mission well. When the members are glorified, True Parents, the church and other church members are also glorified.
What position we are in and what authority we hold are not important. The most important thing for us, as leaders, is to love our members. All of us should become beautiful children of True Parents.
I always emphasize that a church leader should play the role of a bridge. No one else can be the True Parents. True Parents are unique and come down to earth just once. As church leaders, we should be bridges, helping our members come closer to True Parents.
We should be of the mind to make our members even more successful and greater, even if they step on us and climb over our backs. If the church leaders practice such a pastoral philosophy, they will be able to bring more members into the realm of True Parents' love. If the church leaders can do that, a tradition of serving and attending True Parents and a tradition by which members can become closer to True Parents will take root in our church.
My beloved church leaders! Today is truly a historic day. From deep within my heart, I thank all of you participating here.