Assuming: The Great Sin of Great Leaders
Numbers 13:25-26 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned 26 to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.
1 Corinthians 11:17 In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.
Dare I speak a disparaging word about my favorite pastor, Pastor Moses? That’s right, Moses was a shepherd of God’s people and he was a good one. No leader in history has been more thoroughly prepared than Moses. He was a Jew who through a miraculous set of circumstances grew up in Pharaoh’s palace but was raised by his Jewish mother. Moses set about to bring justice to his people who were starting to experience the early onset of racial prejudice. His efforts to help blew up in his face. That’s good, because every leader needs to be humbled by failure. The realization that everyone knew that he had killed an Egyptian who was abusing a Jew sent him running to Midian, where he met his wife and became a shepherd. While there, he served under the tutelage of his wise father-in-law Jethro.
Add a meeting with God at a burning bush and you have the foundation for a great leader. But great leaders make mistakes and in my humble opinion Moses made the classic mistake at the border of the Sinai and the land of Canaan; he assumed. Great leaders are optimists; which is good and bad. How else could he have marched up to Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go” if he wasn’t an optimist? How could he stand with his two million charges at the Red Sea with the army of Egypt bearing down on them and boldly lift up his staff for the sea to part, if he panicked in the presence of risk?
Only Joshua and Caleb saw the giants of Canaan the way Moses saw the challenges of Egypt. “But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.” Numbers 14:24-25
Wise parents don’t assume their children process information they way they do. Wise CEOs don’t assume the people in human resources have his or her vision of how people are to be treated. Wise athletic coaches don’t assume the players understand their strategy. Wise pastors don’t assume their Life Group leaders share their idea of what a disciple of Jesus Christ acts and thinks like. Again, there is no belief on my part that the positional leader is always right, but leaders and influencers must live transparently with one another and communicate incessantly. There is no such thing as over-communication. We cannot over-communicate.
Moses should have met the twelve influencers at the border before they talked to anyone else and asked, “Where did you go?” “What did you see?” “Do you think we’re ready?” “How do you assess the wealth?” “What do we need to be concerned about?” “Do you remember what God said?” It’s first of all about showing your influencers that you care about them. It’s about respecting their opinion but realizing they haven’t had your experience. The influencers weren’t there at the burning bush. They had never confronted a Pharaoh. They had never thrown down a staff and have it become a snake. I can’t prove it, but it’s possible that if Moses had met them before they started an emotional firestorm he could have turned them into giant killers instead of grasshoppers.
“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:33
If you are a parent reading this, God wants your kids to be giant confronters instead of little grasshoppers that are going to hop to whatever the song the secularists are singing. For that to happen, you are going to have make a habit of meeting them on the way to the land of giants they travel to every day and on the way back. You are going to have to be a nosy parent or a nosy pastor. Assumptive pastors and assumptive parents have similar results; which is God’s good people getting caught up in ideas that lead them to a place of spiritual death.
That statement in Numbers 13:33 needed to be said, but only 13 people should have heard it and the 13th guy should have been Moses. Those 13 guys shouldn’t have left that meeting until they were all in agreement because the 2 million Jews would have followed whatever direction the 13 leaders set for them; that is the power of Leaders and Influencers in unity. The world has yet to see what God could do if the people of God became one.
John 17:21-22 (NLT) 21 I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
22 I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one.
Next week I will write about Jesus and the 12 influencers eventually got leader and influencer unity nearly perfect.
