Observation: This is my favorite Old Testament story that most folks have never heard. Moses is fed up with the peoples' complaining about only having manna to eat. He is frazzled, and exhausted with the burden of being the one and only leader of these hundreds of thousands of people. So he asks God for help. Not only does God promise to provide enough meat for the whole nation to eat for a month, but God does Moses one better: God asks Moses to gather seventy leaders, with whom God then shares the same Spirit who has been inspiring Moses. When this happens, all seventy of them start prophesying, which causes a couple of guys from Moses' inner circle to freak out. They come to Moses and ask him to put a stop to it. Moses responds as any good leader should: "Stop them? I wish everyone was like them!"
Application: I found this great diagram that explains the difference between conductors and insulators of electricity. It was an interesting reminder for me of how it works: conductors are materials that allow their electrons to wander. The diagram calls them "bad parents". But the insulators are "good parents" because they hold tight to their electrons. Consequently, if you want to get electricity from one place to another, you'll use a conductor that allows for freedom of movement. But if you want to stop electricity in its tracks, you find a good insulator.
God's power is like electricity. It needs and wants to move from one person, one group, one community, one nation to another. To the extent that leaders let that happen, God does amazing things. But to the extent that leaders try to stop the flow of God's power, the community becomes stagnant and lifeless.
For too long in Western society, we have been like Eldad and Medad, trying to stop the flow of God's power. we are afraid of what will happen if more people have access to it. We have trained leaders to "take charge," to be the gatekeepers of what gets done and what doesn't. We limit the scope of our ministry to what our leaders can do themselves. What the leader is good at, the community does well. What the leader is bad at, the community doesn't even try. We have asked them to hoard power. To be insulators.
Jesus' way was different. Like Moses, he gathered seventy people, and gave them the power to do everything that he was doing. He was a conductor. His mission was to build a network where the power of God's Reign of love, healing, reconciliation and justice flows freely. In order to do that, he gathered other conductors around him: those who he knew would catch his message and mission, and allow it to flow freely to others. Eventually, this network grew to include even those from whom the rest of his culture insulated themselves: tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, and in time, people from all nations.
We need to learn from the example of Moses and of Jesus. We need to start working from a mentality of abundance, rather than scarcity. Power shared is power multiplied. The more voices are heard in God's Church, the more the Church reflects the super-charged spiritual juggernaut that God intends us to be. Christian leaders, both professional and lay, desperately need to unlearn the cultural model of leadership that we have inherited from the world, that says our job is to hold onto power like an insulator hangs onto electrons--trying to stay a "good parent" to the fully grown adult disciples of Jesus with whom one ministers. Instead, the task of Christian leaders in this and every age is to model ourselves on Jesus and Moses before him, conductors of heavenly power, builders of a network of God's gifts, with the mantra, "would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and the Lord would put his spirit on them!"
Prayer: Lord, let me be a conductor of your power of healing and peace, and your message of grace. Let me stop asking how to hold onto your power, but how to give it away. Build a network of conductors around me, and around all your leaders, that your beloved community will charge up the world. Amen.
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