BUILDING
READ Numbers 11:16–17, 24–25
So the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself. … So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.
MEDITATE
When I was in graduate school, a friend and I wrote papers on the Sermon on the Mount. My friend referred to lots of modern authors. I referred to lots of ancient ones. Our professor, the legendary W. D. Davies, introduced our papers in an indomitable Welsh accent by saying, “Mr. Levison and Mr. Hauck have both climbed onto the ass. Mr. Levison has fallen off on one side, Mr. Hauck on the other.”
When it comes to building community, it’s easy to fall off the ass. One way is to allow a single leader to provide vision for the whole community; that’s top-down. Another is to hope that vision will emerge from within the community; that’s also usually a mistake because, often enough, nothing gets accomplished. Both approaches can lead to a precipitous plunge from the ass.
There is middle ground—in the biblical book of Numbers—between vision-from-above and vision-from-below, where a group of people, not just an individual, is inspired to lead. The episode begins when Moses is fed up with the Israelites, whom he led from slavery to freedom. Their demands, their civil suits and unending complaints, have gotten the best of Moses, so he lodges a complaint with God. God reacts by commanding Moses to gather seventy of the registered elders at the tent of meeting where, God promises, the Spirit that rested on Moses will be distributed on the elders.
Who are these elders? Actually, we’ve met them before in the Bible. They are the men who had already ascended Mt. Sinai with Moses and experienced a remarkable vision of God. Earlier in Israel’s story, the elders of Israel had climbed Mt. Sinai, where they “saw the God of Israel.… they beheld God, and they ate and drank” (Exodus 24:10–11).
The elders of Israel who receive the Spirit from Moses in today’s passage—in the desert—already had a shared vision with Moses on Mt. Sinai. They had shared Moses’s burden before. But they’ve dropped the ball! They’ve stopped helping Moses, left him in the lurch, so Moses again finds himself alone, isolated atop a mound of unruly sojourners. What does God do but offer the same solution a second time? The elders will help Moses again by sharing this inspired vision—not now in the sacred confines of the holy mountain but at the tabernacle, smack in the midst of the tedium and chaos of everyday life—precisely where leadership is critical.
We gain two essential insights into inspired community from this story. First, healthy community demands communal leadership. Community isn’t the work of one man, one woman. The weight is just too heavy for his or her shoulders. And second, community demands constant tending, sometimes even a redo.
I caught a glimpse of something like this recently at Seattle Pacific University on June 5–6, 2014. A few hours after a random shooting, I found myself lunging toward community. As soon as Priscilla came home from Whidbey Island, we rushed to campus, where we sat with students on a golden evening in a grassy collegiate quad. We prayed, sang, picked at the grass, grieved, and simply took time to breathe. The next day, after another service of lament, I found myself hanging around that same quad for hours—chatting, joking, talking with students, trying to notice whatever pain was in their eyes. I wasn’t alone. Other faculty were scattered throughout the quad, hanging around, chatting—you could pick out their grey hair in the sea of students—just being present in a shattered community.
I noticed through all of this that our students craved, for once, grey hair in their midst. Elders. They needed to know that their faculty—all of us older, some of us obsolete, but each of us more seasoned in our experience of God, more black and blue, too—could come together to lead in this desert of desolation. And I’d venture to say that these students fired up some of the inspiration we older grey-haired types may have lost over the years in the tedium of grading and the responsibility of teaching.
We shouldn’t need heartbreak to rediscover the Spirit at the heart of our community. But tragedy can, in an inevitable sort of way, refocus a community and rekindle the fire of leadership—not just a single leader but a community of leaders who rediscover the Spirit in the throes of crisis.
BREATHE 
PRAY
Holy Spirit
Train me to lead, but not alone
to walk alongside, not in front
Train me to follow, but not straggling
to walk alongside, not behind
Train me to accompany, shoulder to shoulder
to walk alongside, all along the way nearby
Amen