In the larger world outside the school, community enterprises help to
generate unity of thinking and consequent unity of action. The pastor
finds it one of his larger tasks to establish a focus for the thinking of
his people in order to induce concerted action. If the enterprise is one
of charity, the neighbors soon find themselves vying with one another in
zeal and good will. In the zest of a common purpose they see one another
with new eyes and find delight in working with people whose society they
once avoided. They can now do teamwork, because they are all thinking
toward the same high and worthy goal; lines of demarcation are obliterated
and spirits blend in a common purpose. Unity of action becomes inevitable
as soon as thinking becomes unified.

Coöperation follows close upon the heels of community thinking. In the
presence of a great calamity, rivalries, differences of creed and party,
and long-established animosities disappear in the zeal for beneficent
action. In the case of fire or flood people are at one in their actions
because they are thinking toward the common goal of rescue. They act
together only when they think together. Indeed, coöperation is an
impossibility apart from unified thinking. Herein lies the efficacy of
leadership. It is the province of the leader to induce unity of thinking,
to animate with a common purpose, knowing that united action will
certainly ensue. If he can cause the thinking of people to center upon a
focal point, he establishes his claim to leadership.

What is true of individuals is true, also, of nations. Before they can act
in concert, they must think in concert, and, to do this, they must acquire
the ability to think toward common goals. If, to illustrate, all nations
should come to think toward the goal of democracy, there would ensue a
closer sympathy among them, and, in time, modifications of their forms of
government would come about as a natural result of their unity of