亲爱的巴特勒弟兄和赫斯格弟兄：
我祈愿在即将召开的会议中，主会以大能力与你们同在。你们希望出席的一些人可能会缺席;但耶稣是你们的帮助者。我真诚希望并且祈愿那些在密歇根、新英格兰、俄亥俄、印地安那以及其它州的负责人会对这项工作有更宽广的见解。我希望密歇根会先行一步。我感到遗憾的是存在着这种缺陷，就是人的思想缺乏宽度和远见。应该为各地的工作培训工人。我们到处都需要传道士。我们需要肯毫无保留地献身于上帝圣工的人，带许多的儿女归向上帝。{PC 382.1}
我蒙指示，处于负责地位的人应该避免一种对上帝的工作有害的做法。负责的人不应辖制上帝的产业，指挥周围的每一件事。太多的人划出了界限，希望别人在工作中遵从。工人们以盲目的信心竭力这样做，没有在所做的工作上运用自己的判断力。即使主管的人不在，也照样遵循他们严格的指示。但是我奉基督的名，恳劝你们停止这种做法。要给人机会运用自己的判断力。随从别人的领导，甘愿让别人替他们思考的人，不适合担负责任。我们的领导人在这个问题上是疏忽职守的。上帝并没有赐给一些人世上的全部脑力。身居要职的人应该认识到别人也有一定的见识，有一定的判断力和远见，能做好交在他们手中的工作。我们作领导的弟兄们犯了一个大错误，就是定下工人们应当遵循的全部指示。这样做导致了不足，导致工人中缺乏负责的精神，因为他们依赖别人替他们作所有的计划，自己不负任何责任。要是负起这种责任的人离开了我们的队伍，或者去世了，我们的机构会出现什么状况呢?领导人应该把责任放在别人身上，允许他们去筹划、设计和执行，使他们获得经验。在必要时给他们一句指导的话，但不要在以为弟兄犯错误时就拿走这工作。当一个人毫无疑问地遵循他人的思想和计划时，愿上帝怜悯这项工作。如果存在这样的事态，上帝就不会得到尊荣。我们所有的工人都必须有机会运用自己的判断力和决断力。上帝已经赐给人才干，希望他们运用。祂赐给他们心智，希望他们思考。他们应该自行思考和计划，而不要依赖别人替他们思考。{PC 382.2}
我认为我已经多次把这个问题摆在你们面前。但我没有在你们的行动上看到任何改变。我们希望每一个负责的人都把责任放到别人身上。使别人去做需要他们去计划、去使用判断力的工作。不要教育他们依赖你们的判断。年轻人必须受到教育成为思考者。我的弟兄们，不要有一刻认为你们的道路是完全的，也不要以为那些与你们有关的人必须作你们的影子，随声附和你们的话语，重复你们的想法，执行你们的计划。现今有些人本来可以成为思想广博、智慧可靠的人，但他们却没有成为这样的人，因为他们受到教育要随从另一个人的计划。他们让别人详细地告诉他们怎么做。他们的智力已经萎缩。他们的心思变得狭隘，不能领会工作的需要。他们只不过是机器，要由另一个人的思想开动。不要以为这些执行你们想法的人是唯一可靠的人。你们有时想，因为他们不折不扣地执行了你们的意愿，所以他们是你们唯一可靠的人。如果有人运用了自己的判断力，与你们的意见相左，你们就与他断绝关系，当他是不可靠的人。把你们的手从工作上拿开吧，不要把它紧紧地抓自己手中。你们不是上帝唯一要使用的人。要给主空间去使用祂委托给人的才干，以便圣工可以发展。要给主机会去使用人们的心智。我们因自己狭隘的想法和计划，正蒙受严重的损失。不要站在那里挡住圣工前进的路，而要让主藉着祂愿意使用的人作工。要教育鼓励年轻人们去思考和行动，筹划和计划，好使我们有众多的谋士。{PC 383.1}
我很心疼地看见区会会长们擅自挑选那些他们以为可以培养成在园地里与他们同工的人。他们接纳那些不会与他们意见相左，只会像机器一样工作的人。任何会长都无权这样做。留给别人去计划吧;如果他们在什么事上失败了，不要认为那就证明他们不适合成为思考者。即使是我们职责最重的人也得经过长期训练，才学会如何使用他们的判断力。在许多事上，他们已经显明他们的工作原应做得更好。人们会犯错的事实，决不是我们认为他们不适合于成为管理者的理由。那些认为自己的道路是完全的人，即使现在也在犯许多严重错误，但别人对此仍一无所知。他们提出他们的成就，但他们的错误却没有暴露。所以要善待并体谅每一个本着良心进入园地作主工人的人。我们负有重责的人制订了一些不明智的计划，并予以实施，因为他们以为自己的计划是完美的。他们需要结合其他人的心智和品格的力量。他们原该与其他与他们观点完全不同的人们联合。这样他们就会在他们的计划中帮助他们。{PC 383.2}
在欧洲这里也发现了这同样性质的精神。安德鲁斯长老多年阻止工作前进，因为他不敢将它委托给别人，惟恐他们不会执行他明确的计划。他决不会允许不出于他的任何事存在。拉夫伯勒长老在加利福尼亚和英格兰的时候也将一切的事抓在自己手中，结果在英格兰的工作多年落后。威尔科克斯长老和塞耶姐妹所抱的精神也是要在凡事上发号施令。没有人在接受训练，以便知道如何自己把握工作。把一项重大的使命交托在一个人手里，使他可以随心所欲，按自己不健康的思维安排实行它，这是多么愚蠢啊!心地狭隘，伺候惯餐桌，没有远见的人，没有资格指导圣工。那些想要控制圣工的人以为，除了他们之外谁也做不好工作。于是圣工带上了他们缺陷的标记。{PC 384.1}
怀爱伦(签名)
Dear Brethren Butler and Haskell,
My prayer is that the Lord may be with you in great power during the coming Conference. Some may be absent that you might wish were present; but Jesus is your helper. I sincerely hope and pray that those who bear responsibilities in Michigan, New England, Ohio, Indiana, and other States, shall take broader views of the work than they have done. I hope Michigan will take a step in advance. I feel to regret the fact that there is such a dearth of breadth of mind and of far seeing ability. Workers should be educated and trained for the fields of labor. We need missionaries everywhere. We need men and women who will give themselves without reserve to the work of God, bringing many sons and daughters to God.?{PC 382.1}
I have been shown that there is one practise which those in responsible places should avoid; for it is detrimental to the work of God. Men in position should not lord it over God’s heritage, and command everything around them. Too many have marked out a prescribed line which they wish others to follow in the work. Workers have tried to do this with blind faith, without exercising their own judgment upon the matter which they had in hand. If those who were placed as directors were not present, they have followed their implicit directions just the same. But in the name of Christ, I would entreat you to stop this work. Give men a chance to exercise their individual judgment. Men who follow the leading of another, and are willing that another should think for them, are unfit to be entrusted with responsibility. Our leading men are remiss in this matter. God has not given to special ones all the brain power there is in the world. Men in responsible positions should credit others with some sense, with some ability of judgment and foresight, and look upon them as capable of doing the work committed to their hands. Our leading brethren have made a great mistake in marking out all the directions that the workers should follow, and this has resulted in deficiency, in a lack of the care taking spirit in the worker, because they have relied upon others to do all their planning, and have themselves taken no responsibility. Should the men who have taken this responsibility upon themselves step out of our ranks, or die, what a state of things would be found in our institutions. Leading men should place responsibilities upon others and allow them to plan and devise and execute, so that they may obtain an experience. Give them a word of counsel when necessary, but do not take away the work because you think the brethren are making mistakes. May God pity the cause when one man’s mind and one man’s plan is followed without question. God would not be honored should such a state of things exist. All our workers must have room to exercise their own judgment and discretion. God has given men talents which he means that they should use. He has?given them minds, and he means that they should become thinkers, and do their own thinking and planning, rather than depend upon others to think for them.?{PC 382.2}
I think I have laid out this matter many times before you, but I see no change in your actions. We want every responsible man to drop responsibilities upon others. Set others at work that will require them to plan, and to use judgment. Do not educate them to rely upon your judgment. Young men must be trained up to be thinkers. My brethren, do not for a moment think that your way is perfection, and that those who are connected with you must be your shadows, must echo your words, repeat your ideas, and execute your plans. There are men today might be men of breadth of thought, might be wise men, men to be depended upon, who are not such, because they have been educated to follow another man’s plan. They have allowed others to tell them precisely what they should do, and they have become dwarfed in intellect. Their minds are narrow, and they cannot comprehend the needs of the work. They are simply machines to be moved by another man’s thought. Now do not think that these men who do follow out your ideas are the only ones that can be trusted. You have sometimes thought that because they do your will to the letter, that they were the only ones in whom you could place dependence. If any one exercised his own judgment, and differed with you, you have disconnected from him as one that could not be trusted. Take your hands off the work, and do not hold it fast in your grasp. You are not the only man whom God will use. Give the Lord room to use the talents he has entrusted to men, in order that the cause may grow. Give the Lord a chance to use men’s minds. We are losing much by our narrow ideas and plans. Do not stand in the way of the advancement of the work, but let the Lord work by whom he will. Educate, encourage young men to think and act, to devise and plan, in order that we may have a multitude of counselors.?{PC 383.1}
How my heart aches to see presidents of conferences taking the burden of selecting those whom they think they can mold to work with them in the field. They take those who will not differ from them, but will act like mere machines. No president has any right to do this. Leave others to plan, and if they fail in some things, do not take it as an evidence that they are unfitted to be thinkers. Our most responsible men had to learn by a long discipline how to use their judgment. In many things they have shown that their work ought to have been better. The fact that men make mistakes is no reason that we should think them unfit to be caretakers. Those who think that their ways are perfect, even now make many grave blunders, but others are none the wiser for it. They present their success, but their mistakes do not appear. Then be kind and considerate to every man who conscientiously enters the field as a worker for the Master. Our most responsible men have made some unwise plans, and have carried them out because they thought their plans were perfect. They have heeded the mingling of other elements of mind and character. They should have associated with other men who could view matters from an entirely different point of view. Thus they would have helped them in their plans.?{PC 383.2}
This same character of spirit is found here in Europe. For years Elder Andrews held the work back from advancing, because he feared to entrust it to others lest they would not carry out his precise plans. He would never allow anything to come into existence that did not originate with him. Elder Loughborough also held everything in his grasp while he was in California and England, and as a result the work is years behind in England. Elder Wilcox and Sister Thayer have the same spirit of having everything go in the exact way in which they shall dictate, and no one is being trained in such a way as to know how to get hold of the work for himself. What folly it is to trust a great mission in the hands of one man, so that he shall mold and fashion it in accordance with his mind, and after his own diseased imagination. Men who have been narrow, who have served tables, who are not far seeing, are disqualified for putting their mold upon the work. Those who desire to control the work think that none can do it perfectly but themselves, and the cause bears the marks of their defects.?{PC 384.1}
(Signed) Ellen G. White -
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