For my sins (and I am sure there are many) one of my real ‘guilty pleasures’ is the BBC TV Show ‘The Apprentice’ hosted by Sir Alan Sugar-if you haven’t seen it, it involves a group of young entrepreneurs who battle to be given £250,000 for their business idea. It is very hammy, very over the top, certainly not to be taken seriously -but great fun.
Anyway, a key skill these ‘young bucks’ tend to struggle with is the art of delegation – an art necessary if organisations, businesses, and churches are to succeed- something numerous Chief Executives will talk about in length, but in fact the origins of this skill can be traced back to the Bible and to one individual in particular-Jethro.
Jethro was Moses father-in-law through the marriage of his daughter Zipporah, which came about from Moses defending her and her sisters from being attacked from shepherds (Exodus 2:11-21). However, the point is that Moses was a real workaholic-he was doing everything for the Israelites especially acting as a judge to his people on all issues-whether they be trivial or important. Jethro could see this was not going to work telling Moses:
“What you are doing is not good-you and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out, the work is too heavy for you, and you cannot handle it alone….” (Exodus 18 :13-26)
What he said is now known as the ‘Jethro Principle’. He advised the following:
Select capable and spiritually mature individuals from across the community and appoint them as officials over groups of people
Have these people serve as judges for the people at all times but have them bring the difficult cases to you to decide (Moses)
By doing this it will make your load lighter because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.
Moses, like any good leader, took on board this advice, he enacted it which allowed him time with God, his family and the important work matters that were really his concern.
This guidance holds strong today. Often people tend to keep control of situations tightly to themselves, so they determine everything rather than share their responsibility/burden. It’s clear this kind of behaviour is not only unhealthy but doomed to failure because even if you are the finest leader around, you still can’t do it all on your own.
In my working and personal life, I have witnessed the real positive changes that can flow from someone handing over some of the reins to equally capable people to help them. This wisdom applies equally to our personal lives too-certain members of our families can end up doing most things -arranging trips to see friends and relatives, doing the shopping, managing the children, caring for relatives-and if you are not careful, it can lead to burnout or what they used to call a ‘nervous breakdown’. By allowing others to help you manage your load it can also empower them -so they feel they can contribute to things, rather than just watch the same person sort things out for them.
Discipleship is such a key priority for all churches, but of course we do struggle getting Jesus’ message of love, forgiveness, hope, redemption and the Kingdom of God across to a society assaulted by alternative messages from all angles. We are competing with the likes of Tiktok, Instagram, What’s App, Facebook, YouTube and Facebook- social media outlets that allow its users to disciple people more effectively than we as Christians have able to.
We can make the mistake of thinking that ‘discipleship’ is purely a spiritual activity when in fact the dictionary definition of discipleship is about encouraging someone or some people to follow the philosophies of someone or something-it should be acting out the message of Jesus Christ of course, but companies and society disciple us day in, day out in one form or another – you only have to look at how our world’s thoughts have been transformed through movements such as ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘#Me Too’ & ‘# CancelCulture’ to see how successfully other people have been able to disciple society by changing the thinking and actions of organisations, businesses, governments and a lot of us -and depending on your point of view that may not always have been a positive thing.
So it heartened me a few weeks ago to see on the London Tube the above advert for the ‘Bible App’ (3,000 bible versions in 2,000 different languages) which in a marvellously inventive and funny way is going viral and interesting the ‘unchurched’ (part of its aim). If you cannot clearly see the advert, it is in the form of a review (like ‘Trustpilot’) of the Bible App where it is given ‘zero stars’, and the reviewer comments about it “would not recommend”. The user’s name is ‘Satan’. It is brilliant and instantly gets the message across to people about how good and powerful reading something like the Bible App (others like ‘The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel App are available!) is -so much so that the Devil doesn’t want people to read it. A great way to showcase humour to disciple people- as one person tweeted on ‘X’ : “I saw this on the train yesterday-I absolutely love this advert!!!”
What is refreshing is that the evangelical American church movement ‘Life. Church’ who run the Bible App is taking Jesus’ message out to the people, as Jesus and the original disciples did, to spread the Gospel amongst commuters, to make them smile and hopefully to be one of the 700m+ users who have downloaded the App. This is the kind of thing churches need to do to get people reading the bible and gospels again.
One of the many extraordinary things about the Bible is that there are relatively unknown passages that sit amongst the more celebrated and talked about parts of the Old and New Testaments, but which are often overlooked. One such example is the ‘Book of Ruth’-it sits sandwiched between ‘Judges’ and ‘Samuel 1&2’. It consists of just 4 chapters and in my Bible it runs to less than 3 pages, but for its size it has led to numerous interpretations about why it was written and what it means.
If you are unfamiliar with it, it is a tale of two people, Naomi, a Judean woman, and Ruth a Moabite woman, both of whom loses their husbands (Ruth has married one of Naomi’s sons) and rather than stay in that country, Ruth elects to travel with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem-a foreign land to her. There, depending on what interpretations you accept – Naomi instructs Ruth to seduce or get to know an old, rich man (Boaz) and they later marry giving her and Naomi the financial and emotional security they need. Ruth as an outsider is accepted into the Jewish faith, they have a child (Obed), who becomes the grandfather of King David-and we all know that leads us to Jesus.
The story can be understood in a variety of ways- how someone outside of a faith can be accepted, how women needed to find themselves a financially secure man for them to survive in a fiercely patriarchal society, you can see it as a story of God’s love for the dispossessed and oppressed or a justification for ‘mixed marriages’: the choice is yours.
I feel though to understand its story we need to appreciate the legal and historical background to Ruth’s predicament. At that time (we are probably talking about 500BC) a widowed woman such as Ruth was not allowed to marry a man outside of their family in that someone within the family had to accept them and the inherited land-again except in rare circumstances, women were not allowed to inherit their land. Ruth was a Moabite – a land now part of modern Jordan across the water from modern day Israel- but who were disliked by Jewish people. Moab was a son who was conceived following Lot’s daughters tricking their father into an incestuous relationship with them to carry on the family line and they worshipped a local icon and not God, so the combination of a Moabite and Jewish person having a strong relationship was unexpected.
Sex rears its head again here, as Naomi realises that a wealthy landowner Boaz, who just happens to be related to her late husband, is on good terms with Ruth. Naomi who can be viewed as a bit of a schemer or ‘gold digger’ asks Ruth to in effect ‘tart it up’ and seduce Boaz for his affections telling her “Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying, then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.” (Ruth 3:3-4).
After their night together, Boaz, an upstanding individual, realises that there is another member of the family closer to Ruth who could marry her, but that person wants her land but not her! That leads to Boaz and Ruth marrying, starting their family and ultimately that leads to Jesus.
What though are we to make of Ruth and her story? To me it demonstrates the strong commitment Ruth had for Naomi her mother-in-law. In Ruth 1:16-17, she says this to Naomi when she is asked to go back to the kingdom of Moab: “Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me”. Strong emotional words that tell of their sisterlike bond.
Although it is rather uncomfortable to see how Namoi effectively acts as matchmaker to ensure she and Ruth are well looked after, it is understandable-how else were women like themselves to survive as they were not allowed to marry men outside of the family and were not entitled to their husbands’ land?
I also love how Ruth, although being an outsider to the Jewish faith is accepted as part of the greater family, accepts and honours God and of course ultimately plays a key role into Jesus’ earthly family heritage.
For a book that can be read at one small sitting, it packs a big spiritual punch!
The call to God’s service can be long, sometimes unwelcome but ultimately extraordinary. I thought of that when I was on one of my regular visits to London a weekend or two ago. With time on my hand, I went for a wander just beyond Cannon Street station and headed to the area known simply as ‘Bank’ where the Bank of England is based. To get there you have to pass the ancient church of St Stephen Walbrook. There has been a church on the site since around 700AD, but despite the Great Fire of London and the Blitz, a church on the site survives to this day.
Something else is remarkable about St Stephen Walbrook. It is the place where that magnificent organisation The Samaritans was formed. Its origins go back to 1935 when the Rector of the church, one Rev Chad Varah was an associate curate in Lincolnshire and had conducted his first ever funeral, that of a 14 year old girl being buried in unconsecrated ground who had killed herself because she had started menstruating, but she thought, due to lack of any sexual education, that she would instead die a slow, painful and shameful death. Chad Varah made a promise to that girl’s soul :” I stood at the end of the grave and I said, little girl, I never knew you, but I promise that you have changed my life…”
The years progressed and he became aware of others with suicidal thoughts and the need for somewhere for desperate people to turn to- a kind of ‘999 for the suicidal’. He recalls saying to God “ Then I said to God, be reasonable! Don’t look at me…I’m possibly the busiest person in the Church of England…It’d need to be a priest with one of those city churches with no parishioners…”. And yes you know what happened next! After returning from a holiday, he received a telegram offering him the Rectorship of St Stephen Walbrook- exactly what he knew was needed-how could he resist?
So, his little organisation was set up in 1953 in the crypt of St Stephens – the number of the phone line was MAN 9000, and following publicity, a newspaper coined the service ‘Telephone Good Samaritan’- and the name stuck. Its aim was very simple “to befriend the suicidal and despairing”. It has now grown from one phone number and line to a service that now operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, has over 200 branches in the UK, more than 20,000 volunteers and services in 40 other countries. Its aim now includes “..providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress..”, and its service is still desperately needed.
Each year over 5,000 people commit suicide in England and Wales alone- and of those, 74% are men. In just one year the Samaritans had over 5 million calls of assistance to them by telephone, email, letter and now face to face.
And what about the Rev Chad Varah? He was an amazing man- not only did he set up the Samaritans and established its ethos, he also had a sideline of co-creating and co-writing the classic children’s comic The Eagle (Dan Dare Pilot of the Future) and its sister title Girl (Kitty Hawke and her All Girl Crew, anyone?). When he retired from St Stephens, Walbrook in 2003 at the ripe old age of 92, Chad was the oldest incumbent in the CoE……
