Exodus 18:13-27 click here for the reading
Moses was a workaholic. It's obvious that he tried to take on too much all by himself. This reading is as much about healthy and unhealthy leadership as it is wisdom incurred at the feet of one's in-laws.
Unhealthy leadership: doing it all without asking for help.
Healthy leadership: sharing the load, delegating.
There is a biblical model that God shares with us in managing people, managing a business, managing a family.....you can't do it by yourself. Yet this scripture butts heads with the ideology of the self made man we think exists in our society. Pick yourself up by your boot straps is not necessarily beneficial for the community as a whole. And Jethro's advice makes sense to us but we all probably wrestle with how to practice it. Sometimes we feel it is just easier to do it by myself. how many times have you uttered, "if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself."
Yet thinking that we might accomplish more by ourselves misses the point of healthy leadership. Sharing the load is not for the task of perfection, it is the building up of the community. By placing others in leadership positions, it becomes important so that when Moses dies someone will pick up the staff of leadership to continue to lead the people of God into the promised land. By doing so, Moses too, probably had more time for his family...that he once sent away.
Unhealthy leadership: doing it all without asking for help.
Healthy leadership: sharing the load, delegating.
There is a biblical model that God shares with us in managing people, managing a business, managing a family.....you can't do it by yourself. Yet this scripture butts heads with the ideology of the self made man we think exists in our society. Pick yourself up by your boot straps is not necessarily beneficial for the community as a whole. And Jethro's advice makes sense to us but we all probably wrestle with how to practice it. Sometimes we feel it is just easier to do it by myself. how many times have you uttered, "if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself."
Yet thinking that we might accomplish more by ourselves misses the point of healthy leadership. Sharing the load is not for the task of perfection, it is the building up of the community. By placing others in leadership positions, it becomes important so that when Moses dies someone will pick up the staff of leadership to continue to lead the people of God into the promised land. By doing so, Moses too, probably had more time for his family...that he once sent away.
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