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"GETTING ORGANISED"--MO August 15, 1973 DFO No.297

Copyright © August 1973 by The Children of God
P.O. Box 31, London, WC2E 7LX, England, or B.P. 752 75123 Paris Cedex 03 France

1. SOME OF YOU LEADERS ARE TOO EASYGOING, GOOD-NATURED AND AGREEABLE, and somewhat easily persuaded. Your people have almost too much influence on you. Friendliness--you're always doing anything to make a friend. You have a very hard time saying no to people when you're in that position.

2. IT'S LIKE A SHOW WE SAW ON COMPULSIVE GAMBLING: If a fellow is unable to help himself along certain lines, then he needs the help of others. Like one man who gambles in casinos, the casino says no for him when he can't say it for himself.

3. WHEN YOU CAN'T SAY NO FOR YOURSELF, THEN YOU HAVE TO ENGAGE THE HELP OF OTHERS. Fred himself, my employer for many years, was a lot like this, big-hearted, hated to say no. So he hired helpers and put them in places of defense where people couldn't get at him without going through the helpers who could say no. And if some people just couldn't take no for an answer, then Fred's "no'ers" around him knew how to sock it to them or even suggest they might be happier somewhere else.

4. I SUGGEST YOU FORM A COMMITTEE OF YOUR TOP LEADERS--AN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE THESE DECISIONS ON YOUR OWN. You are excellent at detail and spiritual inspiration and guidance. You're an excellent idea man. In business, the idea men are hard to find. They are few and far between. It's a gift, cooking up things and ideas, contraptions, etc. You are good at even thinking or working out on paper the practical details of these things with your committee or department heads.

5. BUT IF I WERE YOU, AS A TOP LEADER I WOULD SHY AWAY FROM THE ACTUAL EXECUTION OR CARRYING OUT OR ENFORCEMENT OF THESE DETAILS. Every big businessman has what they call his executive vice president, executive so-and-so, executive personnel manager, etc. The word {\b \i executive} has as its root {\b \i execute}, and one means of execution is the hatchet!

6. AN EXECUTIVE HAS TO BE A TOUGH HATCHET MAN. He's the man who does the hard, tough, hardboiled job of saying no. Hatchet men will do for you things that you know need to be done, but you haven't the heart to do yourself. You need to make up your executive committee, your executive board.

7. IN A COLONY, THE SHEPHERD IS THE SPIRITUAL LEADER, the idea man. But to handle all these business affairs with the outside world and personnel, where you not only have to be loving and sympathetic but in some cases crack the whip and lower the boom, you need to form an executive committee, a council of elders to help you make decisions, and to confer with before you make any major decisions.

8. IF YOUR OWN FATHER FOUND THE NEED FOR SUCH A GOVERNMENT, CERTAINLY YOU NEED IT! I confer with you on every major decision and ask each of you what you think. Then, we agree together and I let you carry it out. Now you need to form such an executive council officially and let them know they are members of such a council, which should be comprised of only your top department heads, those top officers immediately under you.

9. ONE OF THE SMARTEST THINGS ANY OF US CAN DO IS ASSESS OUR OWN ASSETS AND LIABILITIES, or let somebody assess them for us, or get together and assess them. What can I do and what can't I do? I've had to do this with the MO Letters and the work in general.

10. THAT'S WHY I AM WHERE I AM TODAY AND WHY THE REVOLUTION IS WHERE IT IS. If I had merely stayed at TSC and continued to only teach classes in person, we might still be at TSC or even gone entirely!

11. I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT GOD WAS SENDING ME TO EUROPE FOR--I didn't find out until I got there. I thought I was going there to scout out the land to move our whole Nation to Israel, but I found out the exact opposite! I found that was not God's will nor Word, and we had been completely deceived by that Jewish doctrine all these years!

12. WHAT I HAD TO DO WAS WAKE UP AND FACE MYSELF AND MY OWN MISTAKES and confess them to myself and the whole world, that I was wrong and I shouldn't have even gone to Israel and I was on the wrong track, and with everybody's help I wanted to get back on the right track.

13. IT'S A VERY HARD AND EMBARRASSING THING TO CONFESS YOU'RE WRONG, and it was only by the grace of God I could do it. You know how rabidly pro-Jewish I was, but that trip to Israel cured me! But if it hadn't been for the fact that I had the Lord, I could have gone off my rocker and quit and run away and hidden or gone on and tried to pretend and deceived the people and not confessed or admitted it, or weaseled out some other way.

14. SO I HAD TO FACE MY FEARS HEAD-ON AND ATTACK: "Here's my weakness, I'm going to have to change by the grace of God and attack it and fight it and change, change my whole thinking on this issue, change my doctrine, my whole tactics. This is not where it is at!"

15. IT'S JUST LIKE SALVATION: IT IS NOT UNTIL YOU RECOGNISE YOU'RE A SINNER THAT YOU'RE DESPERATE ENOUGH TO SEEK SALVATION. But when you break down and confess you're a sinner and recognise you need help, then you cry out to God to save you and God shows you the answer.

16. NONE OF US ARE ABOVE THIS: WE MUST BE WILLING TO FACE OURSELVES and our own weaknesses and our own strength and to know the difference, I got desperate and said, "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?" It was like the end--death to all my dreams and aspirations!

17. HERE I HAD FINALLY ARRIVED in the place I had always wanted to be and thought I was supposed to be and where I wanted to take all my family and my followers, and had to wake up to the fact that all this was wrong!

18. IF I WAS WILLING TO DO THAT IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT, YOU SURELY OUGHT TO BE WILLING to stand back and size up the situation and say. "I can do this but I can't do that. This is my calling but not that. I need help on this but not that. I must do this, but not that. These are my talents, but not that. This is what God wants me to do, this, but not that. God wants somebody else to do that."

19. I'VE TALKED TO YOU ABOUT THIS BEFORE, BUT IT NEVER SEEMED TO SINK IN, and this is the solution God gave me. When I got desperate and cried out to God and said, "O God, this is not it, this is not the place!"--It was a terrifying shock to me! It just wiped out everything.

20. BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT? IT WAS LIKE DEATH! But because I cried out to God, it was also like a miraculous birth and glorious resurrection! I had been entombed in the flesh, and in the energy of the flesh, but suddenly I was born again into a world of the Spirit such as I had never know before!

21. I WOULD SAY IT WAS THE GREATEST CRISIS EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE I thank God for the other crises, but God had to give me all those others to prepare me for that supernatural spiritual anointing to pull me through the death, to help me cross the Jordan, to help me over the Dead Sea at which I was soon to arrive.

22. IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR THAT AND GOD SPEAKING THROUGH ME AND GIVING ME THE ANSWER, I WOULDN'T HAVE SURVIVED. I really believe it would have killed me. If anything. I would have died of shame and embarrassment and humiliation for making such a terrible mistake. Here I was supposed to be a prophet of God, and yet to be so deceived.

23. BUT BECAUSE I CRIED OUT TO GOD IT WAS NOT THE END, BUT IT WAS THE BEGINNING of a ministry I never dreamed of! When I came to the end of myself, my dreams, my interpretations, my human vision, the things I had been taught by others who had deceived me because they themselves had been so deceived for centuries--when I came to the end of my self in that impossible situation, then God was able to do the miracle.

24. IT'S JUST LIKE SALVATION: YOU CAN'T GET A GUY SAVED UNTIL HE FINDS OUT HE'S A SINNER and just can't make it without the Lord. Well, I came to that point, somewhat like my Garden of Gethsemane, and when I wrote those first Letters to the kids, that was just about like my crucifixion! I didn't know but what maybe everybody would desert me and forsake me and I was dead: "Well, if he could be so wrong about that he could be wrong about everything!"

25. THIS IS THE WAY MOSES MUST HAVE FELT in the things he had to go through. The people said, "Maybe you're wrong about them too.--Maybe we shouldn't have even come out here!"

26. THAT WE HAVE SURVIVED AT ALL IS JUST THE LORD--IT'S GOD!--Particularly when you consider how many Jews we have! Most of our top leaders are Jews, and I dare say it was probably our Jewish flavour that helped bring some of them in. But God had to bring them in that way in order to bring them out. He was leading them step by step out of the old Judaistic ideas, because they wouldn't have been ready at first for the transformation from Judaism into a totally spiritual concept.

27. THAT'S THE WAY THE LORD DID WITH THE ORIGINAL JEWS: First He gave them the tabernacle, and then the temple that He might finally bring them to the totally spiritual concept of the temple--the body of Christ, the Church of the spiritual nation and of a spiritual salvation.

28. YET THERE WERE SOME WHO COULDN'T TAKE IT, who just couldn't face it. Even Paul himself had his times of weakness when he virtually backslid into those old concepts still trying to save his Jewish brethren and his former religion when their minds were already made up. They didn't care to know the truth, they didn't want to be confused with the facts:

29. THAT IT WAS NO LONGER TO BE A PHYSICAL NATION NOR A PHYSICAL CITY NOR A PHYSICAL PEOPLE, and no longer to be a physical salvation. It was all now to be a totally new city, a totally new nation, a totally new people, and a totally new salvation--totally spiritual!

30. NOW THERE WILL COME A DAY WHEN THIS NEW PEOPLE AND THIS NEW NATION AND THIS NEW SALVATION WILL HAVE ITS PLACE and its city and all the rest, and we'll take over the material and we'll rule it and have our own capital, Space City. But that new people, that new city, that new nation and that new salvation can never have the power nor ability, or even be able to do the job God has for them to do until they come to the point where they have the right concept of the whole thing, that it is now totally spiritual.

31. THE SPIRITUAL MUST BE SUPREME, AND THE NEW NATION MUST BE SPIRITUAL FIRST OF ALL! Salvation cometh not from below but from above. The Jews were trying to work it up from below, from flesh-and-blood Israel, a materialistic nation and government, and trying to save themselves by their own arm of flesh to establish themselves.

32. WHAT IS WORSE, THE JEWS ARE STILL AT IT, STILL TRYING TO SAVE THEMSELVES by their own arm without God, Oh, they give God some lip-service just like the church of today, but it doesn't mean much. They are still trying to establish a material kingdom of God on earth with a flesh-and-blood children of God, themselves, and with their own political government.

33. THEY ARE STILL TRYING TO CALL [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "…"] MODERN FLESH-AND-BLOOD JEWS AND MODERN ZIONISTIC ISRAEL "THE CHOSEN PEOPLE" AND "THE PROMISED LAND", "THE KINGDOM OF GOD" and "the Children of God!" Whereas God had to show me this materialistic conception of Israel is absolutely of the Devil! They are fighting Christ every square inch of the way! They have even stolen the land from the true Children of God--those dear Christian Arabs who used to live there, but whom they forced out of their homes into poverty-stricken exile!

34. [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "…"] But this is what the physical is always trying to do: --usurp the spiritual!--And this is always what the Devil is trying to do. But God helped me to survive it, and having gone through the death and burial of my old traditions and concepts, I was born a new man, a new creature! Hallelujah!

35. IT HAD TO COME THEN AND EARLY IN OUR HISTORY, because what if it had come now? If it had come now it might have destroyed the work! I had to cross the Jordan early, or we never could have occupied the spiritual territory that we have and grown powerful as a nation around the would as we have.

36. WE WERE BOXED IN AND BOUND BY THE OLD JEWISH TRADITIONS OF THE FLESH, and if we had continued there, that probably would have been the end, with one big Colony in the physical land of Israel! So these deaths--death to self, death to sin, death to your own ideas, death to your own strength, death to your reputation, death to your pride--are hard to go through,

37. BUT IF YOU CRY UNTO THE LORD IN THIS TIME OF TRIAL, in this time of Gethsemane, followed by this crucifixion, God will answer, and it will result in glorious resurrection which can surpass all your wildest dreams and is mightier and greater than anything you ever thought of!

38. FOR IT WAS THERE IN ISRAEL, in the stinking dead land of Jewish physical bondage that I was in a sense born again spiritually! That was where I learned what God really wanted me to do, and through finding out what He wanted me to do, I was therefore able to find out what He wanted all of you to do.

39. GOD ALWAYS BEGINS AT THE TOP WITH A MAN, a voice, somebody He can work through, a messenger, I then found out, thank God, that I was to be merely a voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the Lord's way!"--Not my way!

40. COMPARED TO WHAT ASPIRATIONS AND HOPES AND DREAMS I HAD HAD BEFORE, WHAT GOD HAD IN MIND WAS SO MUCH GREATER than anything I'd ever dreamed of--another huge Colony is Israel, or whatever--God's vision was just completely out of sight compared to what my narrow finite mind had conceived of before!

41. NOW GOD WAS LEADING ME THERE, STEP BY STEP and let me go through all that so I could find out what it wasn't before I could find out what it was and where it wasn't before I could find out where it was!

42. I'M AFRAID YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAKE UP AND FACE YOURSELF AND LEARN THE SAME LESSON, because you're pretty stubborn about some things and pretty insistent on your own way. But I know this: If I had stubbornly clung to my own way we would never be where we are today, or ever have gotten where God wants us to go--which is a whole lot farther! We had to accept God's no in order to find His yes!

43. IT WAS A VERY HARD AND TRYING EXPERIENCE THAT NEARLY KILLED ME, dashed to pieces my preconceived ideas and hopes and dreams and my fairy castles in the air which I found out were all false!

44. BUT THEN GOD REVEALED TO ME THE SPIRITUAL REALITIES which He was trying to show me all the time: That my ministry was not to be that of a great and flaming evangelist or great personal leader speaking before great multitudes in person.

45. I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING FOR GOD, to lead God's people, to do God's will, and the churchy way was the way I'd always seen other people do it, so I was just following their example.--But God didn't want it that way! He was breaking that old churchy mold which had gotten into such a rut, in order to create a new man with a new message and a new method!

46. HOWEVER, IT WAS REALLY A REVIVAL OF SOME OF THE OLD: a little like Moses something of David, something like the Early Church, and yet still totally different from any one of them, but all of them put together for a new day!

47. IF I HAD NOT COME TO THAT HORRIBLE RECOGNITION OF ERROR, GOD COULD NEVER HAVE DONE IT! If I had not come to the place where I was willing to admit I was wrong and mistaken and on the wrong track and confess I needed help, that I needed an answer and solution to my problem, God would never have had the opportunity to do the miracle.

48. BUT I HAD TO REACH THE END OF MYSELF: MAN'S EXTREMITY IS GOD'S OPPORTUNITY! I had to come to the corner before I could turn the corner and see what was on the other side. I had to come to the end of my rope and let go and trust God to bear me up on His wings to heights to which the rope of the traditional never could have borne me!

49. NOW, UNTIL YOU ARE WILLING TO DO THAT AND CONFESS THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS YOU CAN'T DO or you're unable to do that are not your calling or your job, and leave those things to others whom God has sent to help you, you are going to become so involved in those things you shouldn't be doing that you are not going to be able to do the things you should be doing!

50. THAT TAKES HUMILITY OF THE KIND ONLY GOD CAN GIVE, because the flesh is not willing to do those things! It's always vindicating itself, protecting itself, justifying itself and trying to prove it can do it.--The flesh likes to think of itself as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, and that there are no Alps! Because it's just the inborn sinful nature of man to want the glory and so be unable to confess.

51. NOW YOU MAY THINK I'M MAKING A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL, BUT IT IS SOMETHING WE ALL NEED TO LEARN: If you're going to do what God wants you to do and accomplish what only you can do, you are going to have to recognise your limitations.

52. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE DIE TO SELF and some of the things you want to do, and just say, "Lord, I'm going to have to leave that up to someone else in order to do the things You want me to do!"

53. WHO WOULD HAVE EVER DREAMED I WOULD GO INTO TOTAL SECLUSION AND JUST WRITE, and through that God would create a greater Revolution than I could have ever thought of! Yet God showed me that right away in Israel in "I Gotta Split!" Who knows?

54. MAYBE IF MOSES HAD STAYED UP ON THE MOUNTAIN and just sent the law down and he had kept hearing from God and sending down the messages, maybe they would have gotten a lot further in a shorter time! Moses never did get to see the fulfillment of his dreams!

55. BUT BECAUSE JESUS WAS WILLING TO GO and leave His disciples and go to be with the Father and work from the spiritual plane and the spiritual realm and send them the messages by the Spirit, He was able to do a lot better job than when He was here in person in a physical body in only one little country of Israel--it doesn't even bear comparison!

56. MAYBE YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO COME TO THAT REALISATION that everybody has to come to sooner or later: You're never going to accomplish as much if you keep trying to do it in the energy of the flesh and all yourself instead of sitting down and saying, "Now God, what do You want me to do?

57. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO THAT I ALONE CAN DO, AND WHAT CAN I LET OTHERS DO FOR ME? What shouldn't I be doing that's taking my time, my strength and my energy and that's a drain on me spiritually and on my talent, a strain on the leadership that You're trying to give me that's far beyond running one little Colony or country!"

58. WELL, YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO FIND THAT OUT UNTIL YOU COME FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE FACTS that you can't do it yourself, or it's not what God wants you to be doing! I've tried to get this across to you so many times in Letters, that you leaders should not get so involved in all the petty little details and technicalities of administration, but to merely sort of oversee.

59. IF GOD WANTS TO SAVE YOU FROM YOURSELF AND ALL THESE NAGGING LITTLE DETAILS and the thorns and the thistles and everything that tries to choke out the word, then He must have already raised up some people who could handle these details if you would let them, merely with your supervision to check on them to see if they're getting the job done.

60. THAT'S WHAT I DO: I CHECK ON YOU TO SEE IF YOU'RE CARRYING OUT THE JOB. But I'm not the hatchet man or executor who carries it out. If you yourself try to carry it out, you will not possibly have the time for your own ministry. You must have a specific individual who actually has to do the "dirty work" for you.

61. THERE MUST BE PEOPLE AROUND YOU who have the spirit and vision and burden and talent to do these various things, and they in turn should get people to do the technical execution of every little detail.

62. NOW THE PICTURE I SEE--AND LORD, WE ASK IN JESUS' NAME THAT THOU SHALT SHOW US and keep it clear and not let us be misguided in any way, but give it as You burden my heart with it!--The picture I see is that you are going to have to go and make it official and say, "Now we are going to form an Executive Council here at this particular Colony who are going to have the responsibility of administration of not only each member of his particular Department, but as a body the total administration of this Colony and its work.

63. "I'M NOT GOING TO BE TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO. I refuse to handle all these details because I have a higher calling God wants me to do. But I'll hear from the Lord or MO and come and tell you, and each of you will have a voice, and we'll pray together about it and then take a vote on it, or decide unanimously by the Spirit what ought to be done. I'm going to turn over this administrative work to you, then, to carry it out. You are now officially the Executive Council."

64. I WOULD INCLUDE YOUR TOP MEN AND WOMEN IN THAT COUNCIL. You don't want it too big, because then you can't get anything done. But you don't want it too small either so that it won't be representative of every phase of the work.

65. FIRST OF ALL YOU SHOULD DECIDE ON THE HEADS OF YOUR DEPARTMENTS. The General Council should include all heads and leaders of all departments, but preferably not more than 24. In a large metropolitan area like London this should include also the heads of the other Colonies in the local area.

66. BUT THERE SHOULD NOT BE MORE THAN A DOZEN ON THE TOP HARDCORE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. Visiting leaders might sit in as guests if involved in the subject. But sometimes even a council of twelve is hard to assemble on quick emergency decisions. So when you're not able to get the entire Executive Council together, you need a little top body, a mere handful. Possibly you could call these the Executive Council, and the twelve could be called the Council of Elders, and the 24 could be called the General Council.

67. YOU CANNOT CHOOSE THE PEOPLE ON THE COUNCILS JUST BECAUSE YOU LIKE THEM or they're easy to work with. You must choose them from your oldest wisest heads, those who are most important to the functioning of the work. Give them authenticity and authority.

68. THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF 24 OUGHT TO MEET AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH and include the heads of other local Colonies. The Elders' Council of 12 should be more or less all your top Department Heads and meet at least once or twice a week. You need to decide the frequency of the meetings and the extent of their jurisdiction.

69. YOUR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL NEEDS TO MEET DAILY to discuss problems and any business to be prepared to bring before the Council of Elders on which you want to get their approval or their ideas. The Executive Council needs to be concerned primarily with daily affairs.

70. THE COLONY COUNCIL OF ELDERS SHOULD HAVE ITS MEETINGS AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK and be concerned with more the general affairs of that one colony and its business. Then your General Local Area Council could meet once a month and be concerned with the affairs of the general local area and all of its Colonies and ministries, etc.

71. NOW YOU MIGHT THINK I'M VIOLATING MY RULE AGAINST TOO MANY CONFERENCES, BUT THAT HAD TO DO PARTICULARLY WITH CALLING PEOPLE IN TOO FREQUENTLY FROM AFAR. These Councilors are people who live here and need to confer together regularly. In saying I'm against too many conferences I don't mean I'm against conferring! I'm against calling people in frequently from afar at great expense and waste of time and effort.

72. THE JURISDICTION OF YOUR INNER OR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL: They should have the authority to make daily and emergency decisions affecting your immediate Head Office Colony, or the Head Office Colony in relationship with the other local Colonies, or any major personnel problems, decisions that have to be made regarding personnel which falls within the realm of the Head Office's ministry, although the major task would be to handle the business of the local Head Office Colony and to carry on its daily administration.

73. THESE DECISIONS SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO THE FINAL APPROVAL OF AND AT THE WEEKLY MEETINGS OF YOUR COLONY COUNCIL of Elders. Any lasting decisions which affect the whole Colony should be subject to the approval of the weekly meeting of the Colony Council of Elders. If the decision affects any particular department, be sure that department head is always there to participate in the discussion and decision. If it is a decision affecting any particular Colony, be sure that Colony is represented.

74. ALWAYS INCLUDE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE, INVOLVED OR AFFECTED BY YOUR DECISIONS. Include them in your conferring and your council. The more you let them make the decisions, the more they will be inclined to obey them and carry them out without your having to push them and pull them and drag them along! Let them do it.

75. TO SUM IT ALL UP: I DON'T WANT YOU AS TOP LEADER TO PERSONALLY MAKE A SINGLE DECISION by yourself alone or issue a single order of any kind which affects any one of these Councils or its members or Colonies or departments without conferring with the appropriate Council and getting them to make the decision and appointing them to carry it out.

76. I DON'T WANT YOU MAKING ANY DECISIONS FOR THEM. You are merely to be an advisor a Shepherd, a counsellor to them--not driving them, You are to simply supervise them. You call the meeting, act as its Chairman, open the meeting and present the problem and ask for discussion. Then frame it into a motion or resolution and take a vote on it, and be sure you have appointed somebody to carry it out.

77. WHAT IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS IS NOBODY'S BUSINESS! So unless you appoint a person or Committee of two or three to carry it out, it will never get done. If it affects a certain Department, then the head of that Department should be appointed to carry it out. The hatchet man to execute it should be the head of the Department involved.

78. YOU SHOULDN'T COME DOWN BULLDOZING INTO THE DEPARTMENT personally and telling them how to do it. You shouldn't concern yourselves with those things in person.--Concern yourself, yes--but not in person. The Department Head should do this and be responsible to see it's carried out. Things will have had to have gotten to a very serious pass for you to come storming down and butting in and telling people off in front of their Department Head or personnel! It destroys confidence in the Department Head and also in your office, belittling both of you!

79. CONFINE YOURSELF TO OPERATING STRICTLY WITHIN THE CHAIN OF COMMAND. God has so confined me that I have to! But if the guy or Department Head in between fails, you may have to go over his head. If you give him the order and he won't or can't carry it out, it is better to appoint somebody else to do it.

80. DECISIONS WHICH AFFECT OTHER COLONIES IN AN AREA SHOULD NOT BE MADE WITHOUT CONSULTATION WITH THEM, either getting their vote by phone, or in an emergency meeting, or waiting until the monthly Council Meeting.

81. BEYOND YOUR GENERAL LOCAL COUNCIL YOU SHOULD FORM A REGIONAL COUNCIL composed of the Regional Shepherd plus the Shepherds of each Colony and their wives if possible. They could meet once or twice a year, every six months or even quarterly. But you need the Regional Shepherd to be somewhere near or have an office where you can keep track of him and ride herd on him and make sure he is shepherding his region.

82. I'M CONVINCED THAT A REGIONAL SHEPHERD SHOULD NOT BE A MAN WITH ANY OTHER JOB whatsoever, nor any office whatsoever except some place where keeps a secretary or his family while he spends most of his time on the road. It's got to be someone who likes to travel, or is willing even if they don't like it, and they have got to travel and they have got to keep on the road and constantly be checking on the Colonies.

83. I HAVE BEEN HARPING ON THIS SUBJECT OF BETTER ORGANISATION AND SUPERVISION FOR TWO OR THREE YEARS and it is a miracle we have survived without it! A Regional Shepherd or District Shepherd like that is not even always welcome, because the local Colony Shepherds may even count him as a spy! But they need him nevertheless! Leadership is not a popular job, not that of a good leader. You need to teach them to love you, but also to fear and obey you.

84. WE NEED DEFINITE AUTHORITY AND DISCIPLINE WITH DEFINITE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE FROM DEFINITE BODIES AND DEFINITE COUNCILS. Otherwise you end up running all these things by yourself and take too much on yourself You need to share the responsibility of leadership instead of acting like a dictatorship, because no one person is that wise or that strong.

85. LET THEM RUN THEMSELVES and tell themselves what to do with your oversight and guidance and spiritual leadership. You need to create a machine that can run itself with you at the wheel and sometimes at the controls, an organisation that will operate on its own without you, so that things will carry on whether you're there or not.

86. IF WE DON'T LEARN THESE THINGS NOW WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO RUN THE LORD'S KINGDOM and carry out His orders as they ought to be carried out. The Head Office Colony is perhaps the most important in your area, so it must lead the area and set a good example. It must be a Colony that runs itself and makes its own decisions and carries them out. Then the leaders, instead of tending tables, can minister the word and inspiration, feed the sheep and guide them spiritually.

87. EACH DEPARTMENT MUST HAVE DAILY CONSULTATION ALSO. They themselves under their Department Heads should have their own little meeting of their Departmental Staff. Every little cell right down to the bottom should counsel together. You've got to take time to do it and you've got to put it into effect.

88. MAYBE THE GENERAL COUNCIL NEED NOT EVEN INCLUDE EVERYBODY ON THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. The more you can spread the responsibilities around, the better off you'll be.--You should make the General Council broader based with more representation by the people with greater ability to carry it out, because there are more people to do the jobs.

89. THE REASON NITLER'S GOVERNMENT IS COLLAPSING RIGHT NOW IS BECAUSE HE AND TWO OTHER MEN WERE TRYING TO RUN EVERYTHING, ignoring Congress and even his own Council or Cabinet. No three men in the whole world are that smart! He's turned everybody against him. Why? Because he tried to be a dictator and do everything himself, and he put no trust in anyone else or gave them any say-so. No one or two or three or a handful of people are all that smart!

90. EVERYBODY'S GOT HIS OWN JOB AND EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE SOME SAY-SO. Everybody should have some authority. That's the way God meant for things to be. That's why the Deacons were first chosen, and why Jesus chose the Apostles.--And the Apostles let the people choose the Deacons!

91. YOU SHOULD NEVER MAKE A DECISION that you can possibly avoid making or getting someone else to make. You should let the people concerned make the decision, and once they have you let them carry it out.

92. YOU CAN PRESENT A MOTION OR RESOLUTION IN YOUR VARIOUS MEETINGS, but it should be only a temporary measure under consideration under which you may temporarily operate until you get the appropriate Council together that you can finally approve it. It shouldn't become law until the people or their representatives make it a law.

93. WE'VE HAD TO ORGANISE ALL THESE ORGANS OF THE BODY. Even each organ consists of various parts, and the various parts of the organ each consist of various cells, each with their own jobs and duties. Until now you've been like the head saying to the big blob of the body. "Well now, please let's run. I want to run."

94. SO THE BODY LOOKS AT ITSELF and says, "But I don't know what are the feet and what are the hands! Who is supposed to be doing the running?"

95. YOU MUST DELEGATE SPECIFIC DUTIES AND GIVE SPECIFIC TITLES. Let a leader know his exact authority and jurisdiction and say, "Now don't bother me about it!--Get out there and let your people in your Department make the decision."

96. IF IT'S GOING TO INVOLVE OTHER DEPARTMENTS, YOU MUST NEVER MAKE ANY DECISION AFFECTING SOMEONE ELSE'S DEPARTMENT without conferring and agreeing together and passing the laws together.

97. YOU AT THE TOP WILL MERELY BE THE TITULAR HEAD--THE GUIDING LIGHT, getting your light from the Lord and me, so that you are only approached if a certain Department says, "This concerns more departments than mine."

98. FIRST OF ALL, THE TWO DEPARTMENT HEADS INVOLVED SHOULD GET TOGETHER and try to come to an agreement on it. Then each department Head should take that agreement to his Department and get his people to agree on it.

99. BUT IF THEY CAN'T AGREE, THEY HAVE TO GO TO THE NEXT COUNCIL UP. Let's say the General London council has a problem in one of its colonies. Either the General council and the colony should settle it or if they don't feel they can handle it and it needs help from above then they could bring it to the Colony Council. If they still can't settle it they should approach the executive Council.

100. THE COLONY REPRESENTATIVE SHOULD ATTEND THE MEETINGS OF EACH COUNCIL and present the problem. Then that Council should present a resolution to the representative of the General council and he should take it back and present the resolution to his Council and try to get them if possible to agree on it.

101. IF THE LOCAL AREA COUNCIL CANNOT AGREE on something to be done in the central Colony, they can take it to the Executive Council to get a resolution on it to take back to their Council. Try your best to let the people make their own decisions about themselves.

102. A POP FESTIVAL, FOR EXAMPLE, IS IN THE WITNESSING DEPARTMENT. If they can't handle it, they should take it before the General Council first, then Central Council, etc. If several Departments were involved, then those Departments should get together first, and then come and present their plan before whichever Council it affects.

103. IF PEOPLE WANT TO MAKE ANY CHANGE IN THEIR MARITAL STATUS, for example, they must consult with their immediate leadership first, such as the Colony Shepherd and his wife. If it's more than they can handle, they should next bring it before the Colony Council, and finally the General Council. There will be a Letter with more suggestions and basic rules on this soon, God willing. Meanwhile, do what you feel is best as you are led by the Lord and your leaders.

104. IN THIS WAY AN IDEA OR PROBLEM MAY ORIGINATE AT EITHER TOP OR BOTTOM, AND THUS WORK ITS WAY EITHER DOWN OR UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND UNTIL ALL AFFECTED ARE AGREED. Amen?--"Let everything be done in decency and in order," and "be diligent in business" that your light may so shine before men that they may glorify your Father in Heaven!" Amen? Hallelujah! God bless you as you agree together in love on your work and witness!


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