BAD TEAM BUILDING ADVICE (A Lesson from Moses and Aaron)

Blogging Exodus 4:14 - 16, 27- 31

¹⁴ So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and He said: “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look, he is also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. ¹⁵ Now you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do. ¹⁶ So he shall be your spokesman to the people. And he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God.  

. . .  ²⁷ And the Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him on the mountain of God, and kissed him. ²⁸ So Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. ²⁹ Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. ³⁰ And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. ³¹ So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped. 

Moses & Aaron

Moses and Aaron were brother-believers.   They both cared about the plight of their enslaved brethren in Goshen.  They’d both accurately discerned the voice of the Lord leading them in His will.  In every other way, they disagreed. 

In Exodus chapter 4, Moses was leaving a peaceful and contented life of shepherding which had been preceded by privileged and pampered life in Pharaoh’s family.  Aaron was basically a slave sneaking off the plantation. 

They had opposing ideas about cultural diversity and ethnic inclusion. 

Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman (Numbers 12:1).

Moses was pursuing a grand vision to free all of Israel from centuries of genocide and oppression.  Aaron was just going to check on his brother ‘cause the Lord had put him on his heart (Exodus 4:27).

Moses believed that a leader should set the standard for righteousness and use his power to enforce a high moral ethic.   Aaron thought that you had to give the people what they want (Exodus 32). 

The common advice about leadership, excellence, and team building is that you should make sure that the people around you agree with you, have the same vision as you, and prefer the same approach to leadership that you employ.  Basically, we’re told to build a team of people who are going in the same direction.

  

When the brothers met on the road at Mt. Horeb Moses was going from Midian to Egypt.  Aaron was going from Egypt to Midian.  They were, figuratively and literally, coming from different places and moving in different directions. 

Combine the prevailing advice on leadership and unity with the age-old caution against working with family, and it's obvious that the partnering Moses with Aaron was bad team-building advice.

Of course, that is exactly the advice that God gave.  

In team-building as in many things, we often confuses easy with good.  God's "bad" advice reminds us that a team-leader needs truth more than he/she needs encouragement.  

God wanted Moses to have a team that included people who did NOT think like him, who did NOT come from the same socio-political place as him.  God wanted Moses to put people in his innermost circle who heard God for themselves.  Sometimes that meant they would (accurately) hear God telling them something different from what Moses had (accurately) heard God say.  

The deepest spiritual truths are found in the uncomfortable void between apparent contradictions.

When the team collectively hears and shares all the different ways that God speaks on their mission, then the leader of the team has all the truth he/she needs to direct the work.

When you only include the people who always agree with you, when you squash dissenting ideas and approaches you block key channels by which God can send you direction and correction.  

And sometimes the opposing voices will be wrong ---- really wrong, like Aaron was about the golden calf and about Moses’ interracial relationship.  But, you don’t have to automatically believe every criticism.  And, you shouldn’t automatically believe every compliment, either. 

Jesus intentionally gathered a team of men who didn’t always agree with each other or with Him.  Sometimes directing them was frustrating, but it was ultimately fruitful.  Jesus’ team was so well-chosen that He told them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” (John 14: 12).

That is why we build teams, isn’t it?  

To get the work(s) done.   To do greater than we could have done on our own. 

To achieve greatness and greaterness, you need people who don’t just receive their leader’s vision, they amplify it.   Like Moses the prophet needed Aaron the priest, you need teammates with perspectives and observations you would not have and could not have arrived at alone. 

You can build a team that always agrees with you, or you can build the team that God wants you to lead.   But don’t get it twisted.  Those are 2 different teams.

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

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Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

FILLING THE CRACKS IN A BROKEN HEART

O.K.  Follow me on this because I’m going to start off talking about architecture and end up talking about the deepest, most important part of you.

Buildings breathe.  And I’m not talking about ventilation. 

As the temperature around a building changes, the walls expand and contract like lungs.  Engineers call this thermal expansion .  If the material doesn’t breathe well enough it cracks, like my driveway. Thermal cracks usually form at corners and joints where material of different types or densities come apart because they don’t “breathe together.”   The most common fix is to spackle the gap with something gooey and quick-hardening.  Unfortunately, this usually adds a third type of material which breathes differently from the rest of the building, so eventually the site of the repair becomes the location of another, new and worse break. 

(Side note:  one of the reasons the great pyramids of Egypt have lasted for thousands of years with very few new cracks is that the Egyptians used the same material throughout the entire structure.)

Your life is a built structure formed from biological, psychological, circumstantial, experiential, and spiritual materials.  Your heart and soul hold all of these materials together, but over time, through the ups and downs, the exhales and inhales of living, cracks form.  The heart breaks.

We try to fill the gaps in our souls with all kinds of quick fixes: drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, money, work, etc. etc.  But more and more of us look for a filler in social media. We log on and ask the world to plug the holes in our souls with whatever’s streaming, trending, or posting to our feeds.  We let corporations and people we don’t really know fill us with whatever they decide they want to put in us today.

Only,  you and I are not made of whatever. Your consciousness is made of spirit breathed out of God Himself.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

So, the content you use to fill the gaps in your time and attention don’t match the original material from which you were made.  It doesn’t breathe right.  For a while, the hole in you is filled, but over time new and worse brokenness emerges. 

That’s why you feel so empty so often.

The typical response is to just pour more whatever into the new cracks in your soul, but that just exacerbates the problem.  May I offer a better and truly lasting solution?

Remember, your consciousness (heart and soul) are made of Spirit.  Jesus described the Holy Spirit as living water: the conscious, fluid presence of God. 

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive. (John 7:37-39)

Because the Holy Ghost is conscious, He understands your brokenness.  The Bible teaches that God knows the pattern of hair follicles on your head.

 

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:30)

He knows the place and pain behind every tear you’ve ever shed.

You number my wanderings;  put my tears into Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? (Psalm 56:8)

And God knows the pattern of cracks in your broken heart. 

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)

Because the Holy Spirit is fluid, He fills every empty and broken space  while letting you still be you.  The Holy Spirit will repair brokenness in your soul with the original material from which it was breathed.  (If you let Him.)

Unlike the Krazy glue on that cup way in the back of your cupboard, the Holy Ghost won’t finish stiff and tacky.  Unlike the caulk pushed into that gap in your window frame, the Holy Spirit won’t make you hard or flaky.  Unlike the discongruous filler material spackled into the gaps of man’s aging architecture, the Holy Spirit breathes with you.  Rather, when you are filled with the Holy Ghost you come to breathe with the very Breath of life in you.  Out of you will flow living water.

You are too fearfully and wonderfully made to spot your life all over with whatever the world decides to use on you any given internet news cycle.  That’s stuff’s O.K. for adornment and use in a few places, but don’t let it infiltrate the core structure that holds you up.

Instead, focus on God.  Fill your heart with His Word, His praise, His presence.  

the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (Philippians 4:7-8)

Let God pour through you and then just --- be still.  Allow time for the Holy Spirit to settle into yourself.   Meditate on Jesus.  Breathe with His Spirit in you, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 

When your heart breaks, fill it with the original Spiritual building material.  

 ---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to  this blog:  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

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#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

How Black Churches Go Bankrupt

From what I see, the average age of a Black church trustee is around 50 years old.  Average, not every. 

So, consider this:
When a board of trustees (with approval of the church and quarterly conference) take out a loan to buy/ build a new building, they typically get a 30 year mortgage.

The trustees sign for that loan and hold it "in trust" for their church.  But, the trustees are 50, and the loan is for 30 years.
Fifteen to twenty years into the loan, those trustees are retiring. They no longer tithe (assuming they do tithe) from their salaries.  Now they tithe from their retirement. 

At 15-20 years on, a church building begins to need new roof, new a/c units, and other major maintenance items.  Utility costs rise constantly and even basic maintenance becomes progressively more expensive.

So, at the very moment when building expenses are peaking, the people primarily responsible for the building are physically and fiscally least able to take care of it.

Now, they (the 65-70 year old trustees) need younger adults to take on the responsibility of the church.  But if those younger adults were not genuinely involved in the decision to buy the new space, and/ or if they have not been consistently validated and appreciated as leaders over the last 15-20 years then the younger adults may feel like "That's THEIR building." 


We have people make a 30 year purchase so they can have a this year building.  We bet our fiscal house that people are going to be dropping more money in the offering at 80 year olds than they were at 50.

We hand the next generation a debt they had no hand in creating, and we expect them to take it gladly, gratefully "cause it's for their church."  Fifteen-twenty years ago "their church" was a Sunday school classroom, and a few minutes at Easter and Christmas.  Other than that, they needed to know their place and let the 50 year olds decide what to do.

It was "our church" when it was new.  Now that it's old and expensive, and we're broke, suddenly it becomes "their church, too."

But the children from 15-20 years old aren't children anymore.  They don't want to sign their names onto a 10-15 year mortgage.  They don't want to be responsible for ya'll's church note.  They didn't vote to move to this new building.  As a matter of fact, nobody ever even asked for their opinion.

So the 65 year olds and 70 year olds who have been trustees for 15+ and 20+ years have to figure out how to get young money to cover old debt.

And that, in a nutshell, is how Black churches go bankrupt when "They used to have such a pretty and nice church."

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can read more on Pastor Graves's personal blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  .

If this message helps or touches you, please help support this ministry. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116