Exodus 18

Exodus 18:21

Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens.

Maybe it's because primary elections were yesterday, and here in Texas we elect our judges, but this verse caught my attention. Specifically, a couple things here were of particular interest. I'll try to keep this as far from a critique of modern politics as I can.

The first was the criteria for leaders. To begin, leaders must fear God. Any leader who does not honor God will easily become prideful, and try to rule in God's place instead of guiding based on His law. The second is that he be a man of truth. One can be a wise guide of others, but have a nasty evil streak himself (for example, ) which he sees no problem with, as long as it "does not affect his public work." The third is that he must hate dishonest gain. This is almost synonymous with the second, but not quite. Many people can are men of truth, but just kinda look askance (or the other way) when a friend breaks the rules.

The other thing of interest was the division of leaders. You have judges for thousand, hundred, fifty, and ten. I wonder how things would be different if we were to divide our leadership this way. In my department at work, we have leaders of about six, then a leader of 20, then a leader of 50, and a leader of 1000, so we're not too far off. However, at churches today, we have leaders of hundreds, for the most part. If you were ask me who my "leader of ten" was, I couldn't tell you. There's the top leadership staff, and few people at lower levels (though in my case, all those lower levels are also staff, so I don't know if that counts or not). I wonder if our churches would improve if we divided things out more cleanly, so that everyone knew who to talk to with any questions or issues. I think at the least, it would make things much easier on Jim.