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  TWO WORLDS
  by Herbert Henry Farmer
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Summary: True leadership requires the ability to navigate two worlds
simultaneously: one's own vision and the perspectives of others.

Topics: "Christian Leadership", "Spiritual Guidance"
Scripture References: Proverbs 11:14, Proverbs 16:9, Matthew 20:22, 1 Corinthians 13:2, Philippians 2:3

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DESCRIPTION
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Herbert Henry Farmer delves into the complexities of leadership,
emphasizing the challenging dynamic between a leader and their
followers. He highlights the delicate balance leaders must maintain -
being ahead yet not too far ahead, speaking two languages
simultaneously, and seeing truths that followers may not yet grasp.
Farmer underscores the essential quality of a leader's ability to
understand and empathize with their disciples' perspectives, even when
those perspectives differ from their own, as crucial for effective
leadership.

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CONTENT
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"Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?...They say unto
him, We are able"

(Matt. 20:22).

There is always a certain obliquity, a certain element of cross-purpose,
a certain displacement of perspective and vision, between a leader and
his followers. That is what makes leadership the most difficult and
sometimes the most heart-breaking of tasks. To be a leader you must be
ahead of others; yet not too far ahead. You must talk two languages at
one and the same time, your own and theirs. You must be one of them and
yet not one of them, in their world and yet out of it, sometimes
entirely out of it. You must see things which they do not see and for
the time being perhaps cannot see, things which, none the less, alone
determine the path you want them to choose to follow. A leader has to
work with his two eyes as it were out of focus, one apprehending the
truth, the other the half-truth, or even the untruth, which holds the
minds of his disciples in thrall. If he lacks the capacity for this, if
he cannot put himself in his disciples' shoes and look out on life in
some measure through their eyes, he lacks the first essential of
leadership and is doomed to failure. And, of course, the more
transcendentally great he is in character and vision and desire the
bigger the distance between him and followers, the more he towers above
his contemporaries--then the more urgently necessary, and the more
impossibly difficult, will this essential quality of appreciating two
worlds at once become.

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/herbert-henry-farmer/two-worlds/
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