The Art Of Delegation Series

Date Preached _________

Where Preached _________

Moses the Prince of Leadership

The Art of Delegation

Exodus 18:13-24

Lisa’s Brother Greg and his wife Tammie have 6 children and one on the way or is it 7 children and one on the way. I don’t remember. But I have to stop and wonder how people manage large families? Today we get stressed out with one or two. How do they make it with so many? Greg and Tammie make it by using the secret of delegation. Their older kids help with the younger ones. It is amazing to watch their family in action. Everyone has a job to do, from the youngest ones to the oldest, even if it is just putting the plates on the table for dinner or taking out the trash. The secret is that everyone helps Mom and Dad and everyone has a job to do.

Delegation is a wonderful thing and as we continue to grow, delegation is going to be a necessity. I have been in churches where the minister has had to do everything, from preaching and teaching to leading the choir, cleaning the bathrooms, mowing the yard and on and on. Delegation is important to the growth of the church because it gets more and more people involved in the ministry. That is why it is so important that we continue to have and add ministry teams. You have heard the saying many hands make light work. Well, if any place that this statement is true is in the church. That is why we need every member involved in a ministry of some kind.

Now, many of you are leaders in companies and other aspects of this community and at the beginning you may be involved in most every aspect of the work, but if you don’t learn to recruit and train others you are going to get burned out in the process. Boyle’s law says, “If uncontrolled, work always flows to the most competent person until he submerges.” That’s why in this final sermon on Moses, the prince of leadership, we are going to talk about delegating responsibility.

This principle of delegation is encouraged throughout the Bible. In Acts, the Apostles delegated work to 7 deacons so they cold focus more on the spiritual matters of the church. In Ephesians 4 God appointed some to be church leaders. 1 Timothy 5 says that a leader should be able to mange his own household well so he can manage the church. 2 Timothy 2:2 says that Timothy was to entrust to others what he had learned so they could teach others.

All through the Bible we are told to delegate so they will learn to be responsible too. That’s what Moses had to learn when he led the Israelites out of Egypt. Finally they were free and if you didn’t know the story then you would expect it to say and they went to the land of promise and lived happily ever after but that’s not what happened. Moses had all kinds of problems that tried his patience. He had administrative duties and judicial duties and an endless line of people who had so many petty problems. The burden became intolerable and he was on the verge of burnout but God taught Moses what to do through his father-in-law Jethro. So I want us to look at Moses’ frustration, his instructions from Jethro and then draw some conclusions that I hope will be helpful.

Let’s begin with Moses’ frustration. The source is found in Exodus 18:13: “The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening.” He was trying to counsel all of the Israelite people personally from dawn to dusk everyday. Remember these people were used to being slaves and being told what to do but now they had freedom but they needed Moses advice on everything. Moses was very busy. Somebody said, “If Satan can’t make you bad, then he’ll just keep you busy.” Moses was so busy that he was stressed out. In Numbers 11:11 Moses says, “God what have I done so bad that you have given me the burden of all these people?”

Now Moses made a common mistake. He mistook busyness for accomplishment. He mistook activity for success. We think busyness is a status symbol. We think the more successful we are the busier we should be. Reggie McNeil says this to preachers, “Success can kill you just as problems can. The management of members and church work can leave a minister spiritually bankrupt.” But I think you can put your occupation in there and say the same thing. Psychologist speak of encore mentality, always having to top your self next year which means you have to work harder and longer and it often leads to burnout. Prolonged over commitment can say to the world success is great but it can lead to dire consequences in the individual. It can detract from your personality; cause you to be irritable and inefficient at your job. But most of all it can endanger your personal relationships, your marriages, your parenting and your friendships. You can be out to save the world but at the expense of your family.