Every neighbourhood meeting has the same moment. The streetlights have been out for two months, the drain at the corner floods every time it rains, and someone has finally booked the community centre or borrowed the church hall. Forty people turn up. There is a great deal of passionate talk. Then somebody asks, “So who is going to take this forward?” and the room goes quiet enough to hear the fans turning.
Eyes drop to phones. A man at the back suddenly needs to check on his car. And, often enough, the person who ends up with the job is the one who said the least, simply because they did not look away quickly enough.
If that person is you, and you went home that night feeling you had taken on something far too big, you are in long and respectable company.
The most reluctant leader in Scripture
We tend to remember Moses at the Red Sea, arms raised. We forget Moses at the burning bush, arguing. In Exodus 3 and 4 he raises objection after objection. Who am I to go? What if they ask me your name? What if they do not believe me? He points to his own speech: he was never eloquent, he says, but slow of speech and slow of tongue (Exodus 4:10). And when every objection has been answered, he gives the most honest one of all. In effect: please, Lord, send someone else (Exodus 4:13).
It is almost comforting that God did not simply accept this. Nor did he pretend Moses’s weaknesses were imaginary. He gave him Aaron to speak alongside him. The call stood, but Moses was not sent alone.
That pattern is worth holding on to when the task in front of us is not leading a nation out of Egypt but getting a group of householders to agree on a security gate.
Why ordinary people feel unqualified
Consider a woman in her fifties, a retired nurse, who finds herself chair of the residents’ committee on a scheme of a hundred-odd houses. She has never run a meeting. She does not know how to read a contractor’s quotation for road patching. The last chair left under a cloud because people suspected he had mishandled the dues, so everyone is watching the money. Her neighbours are a mix of retirees, young families on their first mortgage, and owners who live in Birmingham or Brooklyn and rent their houses out.
Her reasons for feeling inadequate are real. She lacks particular skills. She is anxious about conflict. She fears being blamed. What she may not see is that the very things she thinks disqualify her are part of what makes her trustworthy. She has no agenda. She is not trying to get the road fixed outside her own gate first. She is nervous about the money precisely because she takes it seriously.
A confident person with an axe to grind can do far more damage to a community than a hesitant person with clean hands.
Jethro’s advice for the overwhelmed
Later in Exodus, Moses has the opposite problem. He is no longer reluctant; he is doing everything himself. From morning to evening people queue to bring him their disputes. His father-in-law Jethro watches and tells him bluntly that what he is doing is not good. He will wear himself out, and the people too. The work is too heavy to do alone (Exodus 18:17-18). Jethro’s answer is to find capable, honest people, people who fear God and hate dishonest gain, and share the load.
Anyone who has led a residents’ association, a strata committee or a church building project will recognise both halves of Moses’s story. First you do not want the job. Then, once you have it, you cannot let go of any part of it. The treasurer’s spreadsheet, the WhatsApp group, the quarrel between number 14 and number 16 over the shared drain: it all ends up on your phone at eleven at night.
A few practical things tend to help:
- Name the Aarons early. Ask one person to keep the minutes and another to handle the money, and let everyone know who they are. Two signatures on payments protects everyone, including you.
- Pick one problem first. Start with the streetlights, say, rather than the lights, the drains, the gate, the speed bumps and the stray dogs all at once. A small visible success builds more trust than a long list of intentions.
- Write things down and share them. A one-page note after each meeting, saying what was agreed and who is doing what, quietly answers a great deal of suspicion.
- Include the owners abroad. A short monthly message to landlords overseas keeps them paying their share and stops rumours travelling by long distance.
- Set an end date. Agree how long you will serve. People are more willing to step forward when they know it is not for life.
Seeking the welfare of the street
Christians sometimes treat neighbourhood business as something separate from faith, a worldly chore to be endured between Sundays. But much of the Bible’s concern for justice and mercy is worked out at street level: in boundary stones, shared wells, gleaning at the edges of fields and elders sitting at the town gate. Caring whether the old man at the end of the road can get out when the gully floods is not a distraction from discipleship. It is part of it.
That does not mean the committee meeting should become a prayer meeting, or that a believer in charge should use the role to preach. Most neighbours will learn more about your faith from how you handle a heated argument over dues than from anything you say. Patience with the man who shouts. Honesty when a project goes over budget. Refusing to take sides in a feud. Returning calls.
When you still feel too small for it
Some tasks will remain beyond you. A dispute may need an attorney-at-law. A retaining wall may need an engineer. A matter may need the parish council or the police. Knowing when to hand something on is a strength, not a failure. Moses was not asked to be good at everything. He was asked to go, to listen, and to share the burden with others who were capable.
So if you are the one who did not look away quickly enough, take heart. You may be exactly the kind of person the street needs: aware of your limits, careful with other people’s money, and humble enough to ask for help. That is not a bad place to start. It may be the best one.
And if you are one of the forty who looked at their phone, perhaps next time you could be the one who offers to take the minutes.
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