Aaron's Leadership- Part 1

As I read through the bible with Hillcrest, I am struck by the leadership of Aaron, Moses' sidekick of a spokesperson. Much of the attention in the bible's first five books , and rightly so, is devoted to Moses, but Aaron is an interesting leadership case study. Aaron's role in the golden calf incident in Exodus amazes me. The thing that jumps out at me Aaron’s vacancy of leadership. When the people come to him and complain, instead of redirecting them, he agrees and leads them somewhere else. When being grilled by Moses as to why this happened, he essentially says the same thing- look I agree with you, but I just caved and I didn’t say no. It’s as if he says, look, you are the leader around here, and without you here, I didn’t have anything to go off of, and I just let them do their thing. I mean, you were gone 40 days! I am not the man, you are, so what did you think was going to happen!

I think this idea of not saying no, of not feeling like the real leader, of over deferring, can be an issue for me and other leaders. I think through smaller things, whether it's a calendar issue, an event issue, a financial issues, etc, where I knew the right answer was to say no, but didn't, and then seeing the fallout that I presumed would happen, happen. Part of it is personality, but part of it is having an Aaron complex, vacating leadership or deferring leadership when I should have led. So I have tons to learn in that area of leadership, and I have much more common in Aaron during this event then I’d care to admit.