Do you know the story of the woman who liked to sit for an hour or so every evening at her front window? She would just sit, looking at the traffic racing by. After the children had been coached through their homework, after her husband had been reminded about the jobs on his "To do" list; after even the dog had been shoved out the back door to do its duty .. after all of those chores this woman would spend an hour just sitting and watching the traffic. Someone asked her why she did this, "What attraction could there possibly be in watching cars and trucks stream by?" She answered, "It’s just so good to see something move that I don’t have to push!"
I know what she moans. It’s so good to see something move that we don’t have to push! I expect many of you feel the same thing. The world seems to be full of the irresponsible, who don’t get at their tasks without our pushing and shoving. Many of us seem to get caught into the pushing and shoving jobs, and we don’t like it!
One of you told me this week about what it was like to try to manage an irresponsible family member. You told me about his drinking, his money-wasting, his couch-sitting. And then you said, "It is running me ragged trying to get him just to take care of himself.” Many of us get caught into pushing and shoving jobs, and would like to find another style of leadership.
And so it seems like a fantasy world, doesn’t it, when you hear this story of Moses at Mount Sinai. The response he gets from the people is so clear, so immediate, and apparently so complete, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.” Everything?! Wow! How did he get that kind of result? “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.” How can we become leaders who get results like that?
In this Lenten season we are concentrating on the discipline of listening to ourselves. As we study the life of Moses, we are looking at a person who was forced to listen to himself, at various points. At the burning bush, where God first called him, Moses had to listen to himself and discover that he had a valuable place in God’s plan. Out in the brickyard where the slaves worked, Moses had to listen to himself and feel his own brokenness and just go ahead and do for the people what they needed, whether they liked it or not. Moses has thus far given us some great lessons in listening to ourselves.
Today through Moses we will learn to listen for leadership. Leadership. Ands when, again, we read that the people responded, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do,” we immediately say, “That can’t happen for me. That’s not the kind of result I can expect to get. I guess I’m just not a leader.”
My guess is that most of us, if we listen to ourselves, very seldom hear the voice of leadership. We very seldom think of ourselves as leadership people. Oh, of course there are some exceptions. In fact there are some very vigorous, effective leaders in this room today. But that’s not what most of us hear when we listen to ourselves. We do not hear the voice of leadership; we hear the footsteps of followers. Most of us in this room today feel as though we do need to lead anything; we just want to be supporters.
But there is more than one kind of leadership. There is more than one leadership style. Watch Moses again, listening to himself and hearing God’s voice.
I
The first thing that Moses hears to help him become an effective leader is that he is to bear witness to what he has seen and experienced. He can bear witness to God’s redemptive activity. He does not have to do everything himself, he does not have to create everything out of his own imagination. He can begin work as a leader simply by bearing witness to what God is doing.
The Lord says to Moses, “… tell the Israelites, ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.’”
Good leaders, Christian leaders, do not lead simply out of their own resources, their own strengths; instead they look at the actions and commands of almighty God. They recognize that if anything important is being done, it is because God is doing it. To be an effective leader is simply to be witness to what God is doing rather than always trying to pump up enthusiasm for your own programs and your own ideas.
Today there are plenty of churches which are growing very rapidly. There are churches in our area which have shot up from a dozen or so tired saints to lively congregations of several thousand. The key to that is not very hard to find. There’s no mystery about that. We know what causes a spurt in the growth of a church. It is caused by dynamic, positive, extroverted, definite, hard-driving leadership. Get one of these pastors who can make them say “Amen” during the announcements and shout “Hallelujah” when he says hello, and you’ve got a keg of dynamite. Get one of those deacons who can twist the arms off a marble statue and can wring ten dollars out of a homeless beggar, and you’ve got a church that really looks successful.
But let me tell you that the issue then is, “To what, to whom are we bearing witness?” Who is being worshipped there, really? And will the people stay with it, once those hard-driving personalities are in their graves?
If this area has a number of churches which appear to be growing rapidly because of power-punching leadership, it has even more churches which consist of a few hardy souls meeting in a huge white elephant of a building, because the popular dynamic, hard-driving leaders are gone. Sometimes they had to go, in fact, because they got to thinking of themselves as above God’s law. And the church folks found out that they had not been bearing witness to God and to His work, but they had been praising and worshipping the pastor, the deacon, the music leader. That has an ugly name, doesn’t it? It’s called idolatry.
God says to Moses, if you really want to be a leader; if you truly want to build something lasting and important, then it’s not a question of having a personality that reaches out and zaps people. It’s not a question of whether you can instantly get people to do what you want to them to do. It’s a question of whether you will bear witness to the acts and words of almighty God. “Tell them, ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wing and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.’”
Listen to yourself; listen for leadership. Just bear witness to the greatness of God, and the rest will take care of itself.
II
But now the other thing that Moses hears when he listens for leadership is also helpful, also very important for us. It’s something else that fits very well with the personality of our church and the style of our leaders.
Moses learns in listening to himself and the voice of his Lord that leadership is actually improved because he does recognize his limitations. Moses learns that he doesn’t have to know everything to be the kind of leader God can use. Actually, it will be the very fact that he doesn’t know it all that will install confidence in the people who are to follow him.
Listen to this text very carefully: “The Lord said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.”
Listen to that again; this is a tremendously revealing sentence: “the Lord said to Moses, I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.”
God is showing Moses the gift of mystery. Mystery. God is saying, “Moses, leader, I am going to reveal myself to you; I am going to be speaking with you. But when I do so, it will be in a dense cloud. It will not be crystal clear, it will not be picture perfect. And the reason for that, Moses, is that when the people see you struggling with what I tell you, then they will learn to trust you, just because you are struggling. You will not be a dictator, announcing to them what they need to know. You will be a fellow struggler. You will not be an arrogant know-it-all expert; you will be a fellow pilgrim on the way. And that breeds trust. That creates confidence.” “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.”
I want to let the congregation in on a secret. I’ve spent a good deal of effort lately working through the process of enlisting deacons. Once theme stands out in my mind from all my interviews. Not one of those deacons, either the new ones or the returning ones, thinks that he or she is a natural leader. Not one of them believes that he or she is gifted with all that it takes to be a deacon. Not once of them thinks of himself or herself as go-get-‘em leader! Not one of them thinks he or she knows all there is to know about being a deacon, being a church member, or for that matter, being a Christian. So I found myself saying to each of them, “If you thought that you were qualified, then we wouldn’t be asking you to serve! We wouldn’t trust you!” If you believe you possess all the attributes of leadership, then actually you have none of those which really matter! The way you lead, under God, is to know your own limitations. The way you lead, under God, is to know that God comes to you in a dense cloud. But He does come. And when you share your struggles with others, they will learn to trust you.
Our gracious God has blessed this His church with spiritual leaders who are qualified to be leaders precisely because they think they are not qualified to be leaders! They are men and women who have taken the time to stop and listen to themselves, and, hearing God’s call to leadership, have answered it. They have answered it not because they thought they were ready, but because they could witness to the saving grace of the Lord, and because they knew that they didn’t know, but they can struggle.
God grant us the wisdom to follow such leaders. It then becomes easier to say, “Everything that the Lord has spoken [through such as they] we will do.”
