The President's Leadership

The wise president, with the interests of the young people pulsating in his heart, will seek to know the youth

By Louis K. DICKSON, President, Northern California Conference

Our youth must bring the cause of Christ to final triumph. With this knowledge of their glorious future in the last great conflict, we as presidents of conferences must by our intelligent leadership win them to their place in the lines. A successful leader must always find a way to be one with the led. In no part of the president's work is this so essential as in his relationship to the youth of his constituency. He should seek continually through prayer and study of the youth to attain the qualifications of mind and heart needed to evoke their interest and enthusiasm, and to guide them with unusual skill. This is just as definitely a part of his duties as that of the Missionary Volunteer secretary.

The wise president, with the interests of the young people pulsating in his heart, will seek to know the youth. As he comes in contact with them in the churches, he will not be too hurried or feel too important to spend time with these future warriors for Christ. It is not in the least beneath his dignity to attend their meetings and take part with them in molding their work into a more potent force for God.

We may say that these services are too medi­ocre or merely entertaining, but what are we doing to help them make their plans and meetings more missionary and evangelistic? This is a great problem to young people's leaders, and to all of us, in the light of the large number of youth in our churches who engage so little in youth-for-youth evangelism.

The call of God to the youth of the advent movement to rise and finish the work is now due, and it is your responsibility and mine, brother president, to sound that call in such a way that they will catch the true vision of their place in the ranks of God. They must be won, not bemoaned or driven. We must dis­cover the method by which their response and enlistment may be assured.

There is no finer work, none more interest­ing or more potential, than the development of our young people's work. This development, however, will not come except with the help of the united leadership of this whole movement. How can we seek to inspire our youth to the great work which stretches out before them, and withhold the interest and personal attention it takes to mobilize them into an unshakable unit for the great final drive against sin and error?

The strength of the church consists not only in the truthfulness of her principles, but in the vitality of her youth. The continued suc­cess of the church program is, under God, ultimately determined by the character of the young lives within her, and by the acceptance in their lives of the sacrificial service to which they have been called. All of this, to a large


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By Louis K. DICKSON, President, Northern California Conference

September 1939

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