This is the third 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.
In Doctrine and Covenants 38:7, the Lord says something that should haunt us:
“I am in your midst and ye cannot see me.”
This isn’t a comment on His invisibility.
It’s a piercing diagnosis of our blindness.
It raises a question that every changemaker must confront: what kind of world are we living in where Jesus can be among us—and we cannot see Him?
Here’s the uncomfortable answer: a managed world.
A world ruled by roles, scripts, structures.
Where we no longer see reality—we see categories.
Expectations.
Optics.
In that world, the humanity of others fades. The presence of God disappears.
We don’t see the mother grieving quietly in the pew—we see a less-active member.
We don’t see the fire of moral conviction in a teen’s question—we see a disruption to the lesson.
We don’t see the Lord working through dissent, discomfort, or difference—we see risk.
And so we manage.
But what we call management is often just oppression in polite form.
We call it leadership.
Accountability.
Order.
But look closely—look spiritually—and you’ll see what’s really going on.
The system we’re operating in has suppressed our vision of what’s real.
And until that vision is restored, Zion cannot emerge.
Because Zion is not something we build through bricks or bureaucracy.
It’s something we see.
Something we awaken to.
In Zion, Jesus doesn’t finally show up—we finally see Him who has always been in our midst.
And we see one another—not as problems, or functionaries, or members. But as divine human beings.
That is the work of leadership.
Not to architect Zion. Not to command people into a new reality.
But to awaken them to what is real around them.
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Sincerely,
Dan Duckworth
Leading Saints
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