I am grateful that I was able to attend the Presbytery meeting today of the National Capital Region South Metro Presbytery (NCR SMP).

Today marks our 38th Stated Meeting. The theme is taken from Exodus 18:17-23. It is about leadership that prevents burnout.

As I arrived home, I was thinking of composing a Filipino rap song that would capture our theme. And so I started with the grammatical analysis of the passage to come up with a central idea. After a few minutes of exegesis, the central idea has something to do with leadership or doing God's service the wrong way. The passage provides Christian leaders a realistic outlook on service done in God's name. We see here that not all service done in God's name is good.

Here is the grammatical analysis of our passage:

As you can see, three groups of ideas divide the passage. The unifying theme is about Christian service or leadership.

With leadership as a central idea, I came up with the following analytical question:

How should we realistically assess leadership in God's name?

I already noted above that

Not All Service/Leadership Done in God's Name is Good, Verses 17-18.

This is the plain meaning of the response of Moses' father-in-law after observing the way he leads the people of Israel:

What you are doing is not good.

Moses was tiring himself out in serving God. He was faithful in keeping God's decrees. He wanted the people of Israel to know and live out the will of God as they march to the Promised Land.

However, he was doing service the wrong way. His system of leading people was mistaken.

How do we know that Moses was doing God's service the wrong way? The result is our proof. He was wearing out both himself and the people. Leading the people of Israel under a single leader was too heavy. It is a kind of burden that an individual leader could not handle.

How many leaders today burn themselves out in Christian service? We don't question the sincerity, faithfulness, and motivation. However, if the outcome is exhaustion, I think it's high time to have a realistic assessment of the way we lead the people of God.

There is a Solution to the Kind of Leadership that Wears People Out, Verses 19-22a.

The solution is threefold:

• Practice the principle of representation

• The need for biblical instruction and practical training of capable men

• Deploy capable men to Christian service. Or to restate it, delegate leadership to capable men.

Capable men are described as "men who fear God" and "trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain." In today's politics, I think nobody will meet these criteria. No wonder most nations' societies are in chaos. How about in the church? Can we find men who meet these criteria?

Once the Solution is Implemented, the Leadership that Wears People Out will be Transformed, Verses 22b-23.

How do we know that leadership has been transformed? Again, the result is our proof. Both leaders and the people will experience the fruit of such transformation. On the part of the leaders, they will be able to stand the strain. In other words, despite the pressure of leadership and the fact that they already delegated the load, their burden will be lighter, and they will be able to carry it. There is power in load-sharing. Unfortunately, not a few leaders trust their subordinates to share their burden.

Another fruit of transformed leadership is people's satisfaction. Yes, indeed, people are basically complainers and hard to please. However, we need to distinguish between dissatisfaction due to a lack of gratitude and dissatisfaction due to poor leadership. If people remain dissatisfied despite leaders' efforts to delegate tasks, that is beyond leaders' ability to remedy. Matters of the heart such as chronic complaining and attitude problems require a different kind of response.

Check out When Faithful Leaders Burn Out, a Christian Rock anthem version of this article generated by AI here.