Biblical Perspectives on Leadership: Week 1: Definitions, Orientation, Moses and Leadership

Great class...what an honor to get you meet you all (and re-meet many of you)..
For each week's class session, I'll post some follow-up links, any videos we showed, etc..
Here was the opening clip we showed...Good reminder that as leaders (and people in general), it's good to keep our glasses on:

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We shared our definitions of leadership, and noticed several patterns and themes we'll return to..
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As a way of triggering our memories back to BIB 300A, the three worlds of the Bible, and "Who is Jesus and Matthew, we covered the first two (we'll do the others in the weeks to come) of these literary devices (click chart to enlarge) that Matthew uses to address that question.

The first red diagram is an inclusio, letting the readers know how central to his
message it is that in Jesus, God is with us..

You;'ll remember that inclsuio as a framing devices often calls attention to a central section with repeats the same theme.

We noted Matthew 18:20, where Jesus says "I am with you"
even when two or three leaders are called to make difficult decisions about disciplining a sinning brother or sister..

Like Ken, in the squeaky shoes, remember him?
As his pastor/leader, how could I NOT confront him? (:
Here he is:

The second red diagram lets us see that Matthew has intentionally organized his
material around five obvious teaching blocks (five on purpose, to
represent The Torah (aka The Pentateuch, the
first five books of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that Jews saw as foundational, and as the "Five Books of Moses")--the message being Jesus is the new Moses.
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We looked at Jesus as a Leader, and the backstory of Moses as a leader..

Unfortunately, the Ray Vander Laan video we showed on Moses and leadership is not available online, but it is episode 3 on this DVD, and some of the study notes are here. Van Der Laan's website is followtherabbi.com, and is loaded with great stuff.
And below is a brief excerpt on the same theme from a different episode:

You'll remember he called attention to Moses who was trained as a shepherd, who was to lead like God (who in turn leads like a shepherd):
gentle, defending and protecting the flock, and not with a stick like Pharoah. Remember the word 'shepherd' is related to the word "word." Shepherds/leaders lead by relationship and by word.
Here's the video clip (see 1:30 and following) the little Peruvian shepherd I met, who effectively led hundreds of alpacas from behind, and by gentle word:

(I mentioned there was quite a story behind this video..it's here)
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We then began looking at Leonard Sweet's 12 (okay 11 1/2) "Leadership Arts" for navigating our current "aqua" culture and church...We'll watch three each night of class...Here below are the threes we watched. I love how in the discussion you related these to everything else we talked about (Moses, Nehemiah, etc),
All the episodes are found by clicking the tab on the top of the page..

Free online read of much of Aqua Church 2.0 here
Summary of Aqua Church and the Leadership Arts here

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We had a lively discussion on Sweet's other image for the world we are called to live and lead in: the acrostic EPIC.

Here is a recent article I wrote summarizing Leonard Sweet's EPIC acrostic. We'll pick up this theme next week, so the article may be a good review.

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We read through the first chapter of Nehemiah, gleaning leadership principles,
to get us primed for the paper due next week (see student guide). Remember, you have an extra week if you need it, as the student guide mistakenly left off the reading of Nehemiah for homework.

As promised, here is some help:

1)Read through and listen to the whole book on audio (click here and click 'Listen", or click chapter title, here):

2)This would be helpful to read as you start your paper:

Cultural Background on the Book of Nehemiah

3)These links below may be helpful to read, but please ONLY AFTER most of your own paper with your own insights is almost done. You can incorporate some of these insights if you like: