KISS

As a leader, one of the important principles to lead by is making things simple. How do we have promote clear communication and simplify things. Bill leads us as we learn and apply the K.I.S.S. principle from a biblical perspective.

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We're starting our... We're not starting. We're in the second week. We've just started a new series. What's it on? Taking ownership. Leadership, basically. So we have a favor to ask of you. The last week of the series, which will be in two weeks. We want to take some questions from you maybe, and pastor is going to try to answer some of these questions. So we need you to write down some questions that you might have on leadership. I don't know that we'll get to them all, but you can use one of those cards there in front of you. Write those down, a question you might have on leadership. Give it to pastor. Give it to me. Drop it in the offering. Text Pastor your questions and we'll look through the questions, see how many we have. You know, if we get 50 questions, maybe we can't answer them all, but we'll try and get through some of them as best we can. So just encourage you to throw in some questions about leadership. Don't be smart, you know, like, what's the meaning of life? We don't know. We can't answer those. Let's keep it to leadership.
Now, you've heard these little cute sayings that we all say to each other, right? To encourage each other things like “if there's a will, there's a way.” Right. Which we teach Perseverance. Or “every dark cloud has a silver lining.” Talking about hope, right? One my dad used to tell me all the time was, “If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to fix it?” Doing the job. Right. And by far the most popular, the one that we use all the time, “lefty loosey, righty tighty.” If you had told me when I was a teenager how many times in my life I was going to say lefty loosey, righty tighty, I would not have believed you. Super important.
And sometimes those things aren't just sayings, but sometimes we make acronyms out of them. And, you know, texting has made this crazy popular. Right? Be right back or talk to you later. Right. One of my favorites. And it's not so popular anymore, but the old lol. Now, what did LOL mean? Laugh out loud. But you always had that one friend that thought it meant lots of love, which made for some really awkward conversations. I read a story about a lady who was kind of new to texting and somebody in the family had passed away and she was texting some condolences and she was putting LOL at The end of all of them. Her daughter was horrified. You know, so awkward conversations because we misinterpreted what they said. 
Now, I worked for the defense industry my whole career, and the military loves acronyms. We used to joke that they had a department somewhere where they just thought them up all the time because they just were everywhere. Like, I worked on a project for many years called jumps. JMPS. There's no U in it, but, you know, you add the U and there's your acronym jumps. Joint Mission Planning System. And we just had so many acronyms everywhere. But the really good ones were when one of the letters in the acronyms was another acronym. Boy, you should see the geeks go crazy when that happens. Like, this is so cool. There's an acronym in the acronym, okay? 
And we do these kinds of things and we talk about those. And I'm going to say something here that could be a noun, it could be a verb, it could be an acronym. And I want you to kind of clear your mind and think about the first thing that pops into your mind when I say this, okay? Everybody ready? Kiss. Kiss. Now, how many have thought of some. A kiss? People smooching? Anybody? Some of us. How many of you thought of the rock band kiss? A couple of you? How many of you thought of the acronym kiss? Two of us. Three of us. “Keep it simple, stupid!” Right? And I know we don't like that last word. That's the last time I'm gonna say it, but you know, that's what it stands for. And we don't like to call each other that. But usually when you use this, you're kind of talking to yourself, right? You're like… 
Cause we like to make things difficult, right? We just. We survive [on difficulties]. The more difficult it is, the happier we are. Remember your first crush? Maybe junior high or early high school sometime, right? And man, she was just good looking and she was carbonating your hormones, right? Did we make that simple or complicated? Complicated? Because simple would have been to walk over and say, hey, you want to hang out after school? You would have gotten some direct feedback about what she thought of you, right? No. What do we do? We sent spies into enemy territory. And your friends got to go talk to her friends and figure out if she likes you or not. Her friend said she's never mentioned you. We don't know if she likes you or not. Now they got to try and figure… the drama and intrigue was off the charts, right? We like it complicated. We make things complicated. And we don't need to. 
So today we're going to be talking about leadership and how to keep it simple, silly. Okay, you big silly. So I went to Amazon.com and I typed in “books on leadership”, and Amazon timed out and said there's more than 10,000 hits. More than 10,000 hits. I didn't read them all. Are you surprised? I actually didn't read any of them, but I looked through some of the titles and they had titles like 10 Principles for Building and Sustaining a Culture of Excellence. Does that sound simple? This one's even worse. “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Follow them and people will follow you.” 21! And so it went for page after page. I even found a book that told you what books you should read for leadership. I kid you not. It's called HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership. Somebody wrote a book about what books you should read.
There's so much information out there on leadership, you don't know what to do with it all. So today we're going to try and keep it simple. And we're going to look at maybe the greatest leader of all time. Moses. Okay.
And if you're new, you haven't been around too much. Here's a brief backstory on Moses. He's born a slave. His people are enslaved in Egypt. And they're so populous that they're killing the baby males as they're born. Well, his mom doesn't want to kill him, so she puts him in a basket, sends him down the river. Pharaoh's daughter finds him, raises him in the palace. Yeah. He gets the finest education in the world. Remember, Egypt was THE world power. They were, they were taking names, right? They had it all together. They were dominant. He got the best education possible in the world. He grows up, he sees a Egyptian slave master killing, whipping one of the slaves. Moses intervenes, kills him. People find out about it. He has to run for his life. He spends the next 40 years in the desert. 
And I never appreciated how long 40 years was until I just retired and I had 40 years in at work. And I think about being 40 years in the desert watching sheep. Oofta. What do you learn when you're in the desert watching sheep? Patience. A lot of patience. He had to unlearn some of those things he learned in the palace. I don't know. Learn some new things. He sees God in the burning bush, Very popular story. And God tells him to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go. And Moses goes, no, I'm a wanted man. Just don't worry about it. Because I stutter. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Just go. And eventually he does. We have the 10 plagues. The people come out of Egypt. They get to the Red Sea, and the Egyptians are following them, of course. A great delivery at the Red Sea, and God crushes the Egyptian army under the waters of the Red Sea. 
And now Moses is on the other side in the wilderness with over a million people who have been slaves for 300 years. How well do they govern themselves, right? All they've done is follow directions for hundreds of years, and all of a sudden, Moses is in charge of a million of them. I think he was probably wishing he had the sheep back. All right, let's turn in our Bible to Numbers 12. We're going to stay right here the whole day.
Numbers 12. We're keeping it simple. One chapter, Numbers 12. It's the fourth book of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers 12. Give me an amen when you get there. Amen. Still hear a few pages rustling? That's all right.
All right, starting out Numbers 12. Starting at the top. Miriam and Aaron, this is Moses’ Brother and sister began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife. For he had married a Cushite.
He didn't marry an Israelite. He was in the desert. There were no other Israelites. He married the people that lived there were Cushites. It says, has the Lord spoken only through Moses, they asked. Hasn't he also spoken through us? And the Lord heard this verse three. Now, Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. 
Now that's pretty impressive. I've met some humble people. Never once would I say they're the most humble person on the whole Earth. Right? I mean, that's. That's really. That's really... If you can be the most anything on the whole earth, that's pretty amazing, right?
Now, were Miriam and Aaron acting humble at this moment? No. In fact, almost the exact opposite. Right? What are they saying? “Look at me. You don't have to just look at Moses. Look at me. I'm important, too. God talks to me, too. You don't have to listen to him. Listen to me.” Who wants to follow a leader like that? No, I don't. I don't. Right? It's all full of themselves, telling you how important they are. It's not a good look.
So one thing that we can learn is that a good leader is humble. Right? A good leader is humble. Some of us like to watch various sports. Football, just started. Basketball, whatever it is. But there's always some athlete who's, look at me, I'm the greatest. Muhammad Ali. I'm the greatest of all time. They're not very humble, right?
Turns out God wasn't super pleased with this. Let's continue on in verse four. At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, come out to the tent of meeting, all three of you. So the three of them went out. 
You ever get called to the principal's office? This has got to be, like, worse, right? God says, come over here. Oh, no. The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud. And he stood at the entrance of the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam.
When the two of them stepped forward, he said, listen to my words. Oof.
When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, in case you've forgotten who I am, reveal myself to them in visions. I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? 
And the anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them. 
I don't know about you, but that's quite a dressing down, right? He says, don't you know who I am? And don't you know who Moses is? What is wrong with you? Right? You ever been on, you know, the help call, and you want to reach through the phone and strangle whoever is talking to you or that computer that's talking to you on the other end? I get the feeling that's how God wanted to feel, right? You know, I just reach out... Somebody needs a choking, right? I mean, he really dresses them down. He says, why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Right?
There's all kinds of implications here. Didn't you think I would notice? I like getting other places where God says, did you think the arm of the Lord was too short? Did you think I couldn't handle this now? 
Now, You ever been under a leader, Maybe at church, maybe at work, whatever? And they say sometimes, you know, we need to get people together to support us, to support our position. Maybe there's a big vote coming up. We gotta get the people to support with us. We gotta do this. We get the people to support our leadership. There's people out there mumbling against us. That's always a bad sign. That's always a bad sign. 
See if you are following God and you are faithful to Him. He will protect your leadership. Right. You don't need to be protecting your leadership and say, I've got to protect my leadership. I've got to build up my strength. I got to get all the people on my side. We see this happen sometimes when the world church gets together, we're going to vote on some important issue. Everybody's champion on my side. Vote this way, vote this way, vote this way.
If you're following God and you are faithful to him, he will protect your leadership. 
Now, I mean, let's be honest. There are times to rally the troops. We need to get together and pull and get this done. Right? We've rallied the troops here. Some of you remember when we did a big remodeling effort and we didn't have the money to do it right? We rallied together and do it. So there's a time to rally the troops, but you don't rally the troops to protect you and your leadership. If God wants you to be the leader, God's going to take care of that. Amen.
Now, I used to use this thing when I wanted to rally the troops at work that I called “social engineering.” And I probably didn't invent this. There's probably 10,000 books on it on Amazon, but I didn't read any of them, so I invented it, and this was just something I used to do. Now, we built very complex systems at work, big systems that took teams of people years to build. And this one particular system we were working on was a distributed system. So it had parts running on different computers. Well, we've got to get the part on that computer to talk to the part on that computer. Well, how do you do that? Well, you buy this stuff called middleware, messaging software, so that this computer can send a message to this computer, tell it what to do, he can do his thing and then send results back, right? So we had some very specific requirements. We had a lot of data we had to transfer. And so we checked out these messaging softwares and we purchased one to use. And the people that worked at that company, we found out later, were just liars because everything they said their software could do, it couldn't. And we ended up with a mess.
And so we were trying to fix stuff, and we're trying to work around this and work around that and do it this way and do it that way and not do this and not do. And imagine like a miner's tunnel and they've got the little wood things propped up to hold the ground back, and then there's beams to hold those beams in place, and then there's beams to hold that beam into place, and pretty soon you can't get through anymore. And that's what our software started to feel like.
And I, as the leader, kind of said, you know, we need to start making some changes. So here's how social engineering works. I walk around the bay and I start talking to some of the leaders, and I start saying, hey, this isn't working so well, right? We need to make a change. And, you know, this is the path we're on, and maybe we need to switch a little bit and do something a little different. Instantly the first response is, no, we can't do that. We've spent way too much time, way too much money, way too much effort. We can't redo all this work. I said, yeah, but we can't continue the way we're going. It's not going to work. Think about it. Think about it. Then I'd walk around and I'd talk to somebody else, have the same conversation, talk to somebody else, and I'd let it simmer for a while, and then I'd talk to a couple more people and let it simmer for a while. 
About a month later, we're sitting in a meeting where we're planning what we're gonna do next, and somebody speaks up and says, I've been thinking about our messaging system, and I don't think what we're doing is gonna work. I have this idea. Instead of doing this, what if we did this? And I immediately say, what a great idea. Because now it's not my idea, it's your idea, right? Some of you were looking at me like, did you ever do that to me? Right? 
Because as the leader, I could have said, listen, this doesn't work. I hereby decree we're going to do this instead. How would everybody feel about that? Grumbling, why are we redoing all this stuff we just did? Stupid, wasted time, right? They might do it because I'm the boss, they have to do it. But this way is better. This way is better. 
This works with your family. Maybe you're having a disagreement with your spouse. You want to do this, they want to do that. Well, maybe propose something, some kind of compromise, and maybe they'll say, no, it's okay. Just think about it, Let it simmer. Maybe they'll come back with another. Maybe they won't come back with the same thing you want to do. Maybe they'll have a different compromise. That's fine. But then you're working together. You're moving forward to fix whatever the problem or issue is. It's not just a decree. Hey, I wear the pants in the family. We're doing this. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. So try social engineering sometime. You'll like it. 
All right, let's go back to Numbers, chapter 12. Let's pick it up in verse 10. So when the cloud lifted from above the tent, Miriam's skin was leprous. It became as white as snow.
Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had a defiling skin disease. And he said to Moses, please, my Lord, I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother's womb with its flesh half eaten away. So Moses cried out to the Lord, please, God, heal her. The Lord replied to Moses, if her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days?
Confine her outside the camp for seven days. After that, she can be brought back. So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move until she was brought back. 
What do we see Moses doing here? Is he saying, serves you right. That's what you'll get for talking about me. God's going to get you. No, he listens to Aaron and intercedes. He has empathy, right? Says, please, God, heal her. 
Good leaders listen and have empathy, right?
And we see Moses doing this time and time again for the nation of Israel. They would wander away from God and get into trouble, and there would be some plague or something that happened. There was snakes. There was fire. The ground opened up. I mean, all kinds of things happened to him. And time after time, we see Moses interceding his empathy for the people. And sometimes he gets pretty blunt with God. We'll save that for another time. But he really, you know, goes in hard on this, and a good leader has empathy.
Now, in our society, if you have empathy for somebody, that kind of means you can let them do whatever they want to do. If you have empathy for me, that means I can live this life. That's bad behavior, out of control, whatever. No, that's not what that means, right? Imagine you have a friend that's fallen into alcohol or drug addiction, right? We have empathy for them, but we don't support that behavior that got you to that place. So, you know, we need to be that way with everything in our lives. We don't support this behavior, but we still love you. 
So in review: 
a good leader is humble. 
If you're following God and you're faithful to him, he protects your leadership.
A good leader listens and has empathy. 
Remember to try that social engineering thing, all right? 
Reflection. What kind of leader are you? Are you humble and do you have empathy, or is it my way or the highway?
And your challenge. I want to unpack this challenge a little bit here. If you're not 100% following God, start working towards that goal. Start asking God how you can turn everything over to him. Right?
Maybe I don't even know how to do this, God. I don't know how to do it. Because if we're really blunt with each other, are we really 100% following God or are we still on the fence a little bit? There's still something I'm hanging on to because I really like this, God. I've given you 95%. Can I just have this? Some of us might be there. Some of us might still be on the fence trying to decide if this is what we want to do or not.
Does the fact that we come to church for an hour once a week mean we're 100% following God? Imagine that you were in some sort of romantic relationship, dating, married, whatever, and you told your partner that you were gonna see them for one hour once a week. How many people do you think would accept that? Not many. Not many. I see some of the people that are dating [elbowing] each other, right. It takes more than one hour once a week.
We talked a little bit about this last time I preached. Right. When Peter gets out on the water with Jesus to walk on the water, does Peter hop out of the boat and walk away from Jesus or. Or towards Jesus? Towards Jesus. He's walking towards Jesus. Is Peter perfect? No. But when Peter starts to sink, where's he headed? Towards Jesus. He's close to Jesus’ hand. When you're headed that way, you're not so close to Jesus’ hand.
So let's make sure that we are 100% following. Not that we're going to be 100% perfect. I think that's unachievable. But I'm 100% committed. I'm 100% headed that way. I'm 100% trying my hardest. I'm 100% asking God every single day, “Lord, help me with this. You know, I struggle with this. Lord, help me to represent you well. Lord, help me to turn it all over to you. That new car that I've got my eye on.” How many of you were watching the Powerball, thinking, hmm, what I couldn't do with $1.4 billion. Are you all in with Jesus? Or are you still worried about what's going on in this world? Because someday that's going to be a far distant memory. That's not going to seem very important. The number of guitars you had isn't going to matter. I'm going to pay for that later. How new your car is, the number of shoes. That stuff isn't going to matter. What's going to matter was, were you all in with Jesus?
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to be all in with you, Lord, just like Moses was all in with you. We want to be all in all the time, Lord. There's going to be things to try and trip us and tempt us and dissuade us. Lord, help us to keep our eyes on you because you are the only one that has always been all in for us.
Everybody in this world has let us down at one time or another, but you have not. We've had difficulties, we've had problems, but you have always been there.
Lord, help us to be all in. Help us to be good leaders for you at home, at work, just with our friend group. We may not be the boss or supervisor of our friend group, but we have influence. Help us to be a good example and a good leader, Lord. Keep us safe and bring us back again in Jesus’ name. Amen.
 Remember to turn in any questions that you may have about leadership. See if we can answer them the last week. Thank you.