This is the second in a series of newsletters written by Dan Duckworth. Dan currently serves as chair of the Leading Saints Board. He edits The Front Line: A Weekly Dispatch for Underground Changemakers.
Zion doesn’t just happen.
It’s not spontaneous.
It’s not a byproduct of general righteousness or collective goodness.
And it’s certainly not the natural outcome of just getting a bunch of saints in the same room.
Zion, every time, is the result of leadership.
Not necessarily positional leadership.
But someone, somewhere, who saw what could be—and began to move.
Someone who saw through the status quo and chose not to wait.
A changemaker.
A builder.
A leader.
Doctrine and Covenants 38:4 references “the Zion of Enoch.”
It’s almost a passing comment. But for those who’ve longed for Zion, it lands with force.
Enoch built Zion.
It didn’t just emerge.
He forged it—through prophetic leadership, through disruptive community-building, through a vision that refused to conform to the world around it.
He raised Zion as a protest to his real-world context.
Where there was fragmentation, Enoch forged oneness.
Where there was self-preservation, Enoch inspired self-renunciation.
Where there was suspicion, Enoch fostered shared identity.
So when the Lord invokes the Zion of Enoch, He is reminding us: this has been done before.
And not by accident. By a leader.
In every true Zion, you can trace its origin back to someone who moved.
Someone who led. Not because they were appointed, but because they were called—by vision, by need, by the whisper of the Holy Ghost.
And the same is true today.
If you’re hoping your family, your ward, your school, your workplace will someday feel like Zion, the invitation is clear: stop waiting.
Start leading.
Not by declaring yourself in charge, but by stepping into the call to become a changemaker—a builder of exalted community.
The one who initiates love at scale.
The one who embodies loyalty to the community, not the system.
The one who dares to imagine that what’s happening here could be transformed by what’s possible.
There was the Zion of [Enoch]. And there could also be the Zion of [your name here]—in your home, your ward, your school, your company.
Zion doesn’t just happen.
But it can happen—if you build it.
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Sincerely,
Dan Duckworth
Leading Saints
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