GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT – GIFT OF ADMINISTRATION
DR. JIM DIXON
1 CORINTHIANS. 12:27-28, EXODUS 18:18-23
JULY 28, 1985
He died in 1935 at the age of 94. One of the greatest legal minds in the early 20th Century, he served on the United States Supreme Court for more than 30 years. A brilliant man, his name was Oliver Wendell Holmes. Brilliant, but in his later years, he was given to some measure of absentmindedness. He once boarded a train and he was seen to be fumbling through his pockets, obviously concerned, obviously looking for something, obviously confused. The young conductor recognized him and asked him if he could help, asked him what he was doing. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “I am looking for my ticket.” The conductor smiled. He said “Justice Holmes, we trust you. Why don’t you just take the train to wherever it is you’re going. If you find the ticket in the meantime, you can give the ticket to me, but if not don’t worry about it.” The Supreme Court Justice looked at the young conductor and he said “Young man, you’ve obviously failed to grasp the nature of my predicament. I don’t care the least about showing you my ticket.” Well, the young man was kind of taken back and he said, “Well why are you looking for your ticket?,” and the Supreme Court Justice said, “I’m just trying find out where in the blazes I ‘m going.” Not a very funny story but a true story, and it is equally true that there are a lot of people in this room—who do not know where they are going. Many companies, many corporations, many churches do not know where they are going and that is why God has given a spiritual gift call the Gift of Administration. Now this gift, this spiritual gift, is manifested in two qualities. If you have the Gift of Administration, you must have both of these qualities.
First of all, a person who has the Gift of Administration is the one who is able to govern effectively. The Greek word for administration is the word “kybernesis.” It comes from the Greek word, “kubern,” from which we get the English word “to govern.” You might think that administration work has to do with detail or accounting. People have many different attitudes and pictures and images of what it means to be an administrator, but above all else, an administrator biblically is one who governs. Now we can understand something of this ability to govern and this Gift of Administration when we look at the biblical character of Moses. The Bible in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, uses this word “kybernesis” to describe the role of Moses with respect to Israel. He was an administrator, and he governed the people of Israel. He was their leader. Now Moses was not a natural leader. Most biblical theologians would agree with that. He was a shy man. The Bible says a meek man. He was not skilled in speech. He was not eloquent. He was a stutterer, and when God called him to go and lead the people of Israel, when he called him to go and govern the people of Israel, Moses begged to get out of it. He didn’t want to do it. He had been a shepherd for forty years. He didn’t feel qualified to lead people. But when God gives a call, God gives a gift.
It is very evident to me, and I hope to you, that Moses had a gift—a gift of leadership, a gift that is sometimes called government, a gift that is sometimes called administration. He did not use that gift wisely at all times, and in the beginning, he did not fully understand the gift that was his. People were drawn to him, they looked to him because of this gift, but he was trying to do all the work himself and he was growing increasingly exhausted, and so in our passage of scripture for today we see how his father-in-law Jethro came to him and said, “Moses you’re exhausted. You’re trying to do all the work by yourself. The people look to you, but you can’t do it all so I will give you counsel” and he instructs Moses to begin to delegate his authority, to pick people who are trustworthy and set them over thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens so that the work of governing is shared. All weighty matters, all great matters, still come to him but small matters can be judged by the people, and he became a better administrator, more able to govern through that. As the years passed, he became great in his leadership. Moses is acknowledged today as one of the greatest leaders in the history of mankind. He is generally acknowledged certainly as the greatest leader among the Old Testament Jews.
The Greek word “kubern” means to govern but it also means to steer and pilot, in fact one form of this word came to be the title of a shipmaster. To govern means to be a shipmaster. It means to be able to take a ship and pilot it to take a ship and guide it, and that is what Moses was able to do with a ship called Israel. If you have the Gift of Administration, you are able to govern and you are a shipmaster. You can take a ship and you can pilot it safely through rough waters by the grace of God if you have this gift.
Not many years ago, in fact it was in the year 1978 — seven years ago — a man, named William Smith decided to sail a ship from Scotland to Yarmuth, England. There was only one problem. He was not shipmaster. He didn’t know what he was doing. On his way to Yarmouth, he decided to pull his ship into Bridlicton Harbor. There was only one problem. He missed the dock by 400 yards, and he rammed. a jetty. He was kind of hung up there for a couple of days and then he continued his journey down. to Yarmouth. The only problem was he didn’t know how to navigate. He missed Yarmuth by 90 miles and his ship ran aground near the region of Kent. When he finally did reach Yarmuth, he came into the harbor, and he immediately smashed his ship into a floating museum. The tourists fled and the museum closed down. He turned his ship about and immediately ran into a small cruiser. He then annihilated a yacht that had been entered in the Tall Ships Yachting Race and he then hit still another ship. Finally, he found himself safe on shore and the reporters were there to interview him. He said that it had been a great voyage and he announced that he, next year, would be taking another cruise all the way down to Australia and he invited people to go on the boat with him. Now I think most of us would hesitate to get on his boat because William Smith obviously is not a shipmaster. There are many people like that in the world. Some of them are in the business world. Some of them are in the ecclesiastical world.
In fact, some years ago a man named Jose Ramon DelKuett was mayor of a town in Mexico called Quocaloro. He is described in the Book of Failures as the worst mayor in the history of the world. Jose Ramon DelKuett, during the time of his administration, let all the city properties fall into ruin, the police force—the police department—disbanded, crime was rampant on the streets, and finally the city government went broke, but in June of 1978, he resigned, and he made a confession. He said that his administration had been corrupt, confused and inept, and he said that he personally had been a totally ineffective Administrator. He came to that confession with the help of 4,000 citizens who stormed the city hall and forced him to eat bananas until he would resign. He ate 12 pounds, 42 bananas, before he would sign that piece of paper saying he had been an inept administrator. It’s not easy for most of us to admit that we don’t have the gift of administration. Most of us like to think that we can take a ship and we can pilot it. We like to think of ourselves as leaders. We like to think that we can guide, and we can direct, but you see, the world is filled with people who do not have the gift of administration and most of us simply do not. God gives the Gift of Administration to some and it’s for the purpose of keeping ships afloat and for steering ships through dangerous waters.
If you look at this world, and you think about this world – think about our society – who do you view in the business world as a great shipmaster? I think many people probably think of Lee Iacocca. He is a professing Christian, a practicing Catholic, he’s become an American legend in his own time, the living embodiment perhaps of the American dream. One of the most successful, one of the most powerful executives in the world, he brought Chrysler back from the brink. I think people view Lee Iacocca with mixed feelings. Some people view him obviously as a genius. Some people feel that he’s a little too sold on himself, a little egocentric. Some people feel that he told too many tales concerning past associates in business, but I think most people would admit he is indeed a shipmaster. He is indeed able to govern, able to take a ship and guide it and direct it. He received degrees from Lehigh and Princeton Universities in Engineering, in the year 1946 Lee Iacocca was hired by Ford Motor Company as a student engineer. He soon discovered that he didn’t like engineering, he would rather work with people than with machines, and he also discovered he was very good in managing people.
In the year 1953, Ford Motor Company promoted him, and he became. Assistant Sales. Manager in the Philadelphia District. In the year 1955 he was promoted to District Manager in Washington, D.C. for the Ford Motor Company and some of his ideas began to be part of Ford’s national strategy. In the year 1956, Lee Iacocca was transferred to Dearborn, Michigan, the world headquarters of Ford Motor Company, and there he was put in charge—he was made National Sales Marketing Manager in Trucks. In the year 1959 he also became National Marketing Manager in Cars, and in the year 1960, he became Vice President and General Manager of Ford Division, and ten years later, in the year 1970, he reached the pinnacle, the zenith of his profession, he became the President of the Ford Motor Company. Now they gave him a real nice office. His office was a grand hotel suite. He had white-coated waiters who served him every hour of the day, private bathroom, private living quarters, and received a salary of $970,000 a year a little bit more than most of us make. He ate every day in the executive lunchroom, and they flew in Dover sole in every day from England, fresh fruit in every season, the finest chocolates, exotic flowers from all over the world were placed all over the executive lunchroom. These guys were worth it. The Ford Motor Company spent $104 per head per meal in that lunchroom.
But something horrible happened on July 13, 1978, Lee Iacocca was fired after a dispute, a personal dispute, with Henry Ford. He was allowed to stay with Ford Motor Company for a while, until he could find another job. They did switch his office. In fact, he was put in a little office in an obscure. warehouse. A desk and telephone jammed into a little tiny cubicle, cracked linoleum floors and he drank coffee out of a little plastic cup. It was Siberia for Lee Iacocca, but his gifts and his talents, his leadership and his administrative ability was still there, and many people knew it. It was only a short time later, on November 3, 1978, that he was asked to head up Chrysler Corporation, certainly a sinking ship. In the third quarter of that year Chrysler lost $160,000,000. The first thing Lee Iacocca did was he fired all 31 vice presidents. He said that they were all running their own little empires and they weren’t communicating with each other, and so he brought in his own people, and he established a system of communication and a system of financial control. He soon went to the United States government, as you know, and he asked for a loan of one billion dollars, and for various and sundry reasons the government approved that loan, though I think most people very much doubted if Chrysler would ever pay that money back. But Lee Iacocca began immediately to drop salaries throughout Chrysler Corporation and he, himself, personally took a salary of $1.00 per year. He began to modernize the plant and to be innovative in car design and in car marketing strategy, and incredibly by July of 1982 Chrysler Corporation paid back the entire billion dollars to the United States government, and today, Chrysler Corporation is sound. Lee Iacocca, certainly an administrator, a shipmaster—able to guide, to direct, to steer a ship, able to govern. However, it’s just possible that Lee Iacocca doesn’t have a spiritual gift called Administration.
Everybody, you see, who has the Gift of Administration is indeed a shipmaster. Everyone who has the Gift of Administration is able to govern, but not everyone who governs well, not everyone who is a shipmaster, has the gift called administration because there’s a second quality that must be manifested if you have this gift and this leads us to our second and final point.
If you have the spiritual gift called the Gift of Administration, you are not only able to govern effectively but you must be one who is able to make decisions spiritually. I want you to understand what this means. If you are one who is able to make decisions supernaturally, if you have the Gift of Administration, and we’ve already seen that the word in the Greek for administration is “kybernesis” and that it’s rooted in the word “kubern” from which we get the word govern, but the word kybernesis itself was generally used with reference to a decision maker and Christians used it to describe one who could make decisions supernaturally in accordance with the guidance and the will of God. It is interesting that the Greek word kybernesis is the word from which we get our modern word cybernetics. Cybernetics is the scientific term for the study of control systems, the basis for the development of the computer. These cybernetic systems are programmed, and after they are programmed, data and information is then fed into the cybernetic system and decisions are made, they are given – they are rendered – based on the interfacing of that new information with past programming.
What God would have us to understand is that if you’re a Christian with the Gift of Administration, then you literally have been programmed spiritually. You have been programmed by God and the Holy Spirit and in your governing, in your leadership—when a decision needs to be made—you interface the information with the spiritual programming that is yours and you reach spiritual decisions, and they reflect the will of God. Moses had this ability and we saw it in our passage of scripture for today. The people knew that he was able to make decisions spiritually, the people reflecting the will of God, and that’s why Moses said, “the people come to me to inquire of God, and when they have a dispute, I decided between a man and his neighbor, and I make them known the statutes of God and his decisions…decisions made on earth that reflect the will of God in Heaven.”
Now in the latter portion of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, they began to make ships that were made of iron and steel, and they began to need two compasses. There was a lower compass on the ships called a deck compass, and it was on the deck mounted near the wheel, and this was the compass that was most often consulted. However, this compass was flawed because of all the steel that was about it and it sometimes was encumbered by its surroundings and inaccurate, so periodically they went up to a higher compass that was mounted on the mast. They would climb up to this higher compass and they would get a reading that was unencumbered and pure. What we’re saying here is that somebody who has truly the Gift of Administration has a higher compass, able to receive readings that are unencumbered. Their judgment is not perfect because we are human, but if that gift is there, there is oftentimes this insight that comes from Heaven, a higher compass.
Many years ago, there lived a man named Admiral Sir Thomas Williams. He was a committed Christian and he loved Jesus Christ. He was a great sea captain. He took many voyages – he captained many voyages across the Atlantic, and on one such voyage his course took him 700 miles northwest of St. Helena, 500 miles south of the equator. His course took him very close to a little island called Ascension Island. Thomas Williams could see the island far in the distance. This island was uninhabited – it is not uninhabited today, 1,200 people live on the island and its four-square miles—but in the time of Williams, nobody lived on the island, it was considered kind of a mysterious place. Once or twice a year ships went there to acquire sea turtles which had natural breeding grounds there, but most of the ships didn’t stop and he wasn’t going to stop, the Island of Ascension would remain a fuzzy blur in the distance. He had somewhere else to go and he was already late, but as he looked over and he saw the faint outline of Ascension Island, Admiral Sir Thomas Williams began to feel a growing uneasiness in his Spirit. He began to develop a sense of urgency that he ought to go there, that he ought to turn the ship about. He didn’t understand it. He began to pray. The more he prayed, the more the sense of urgency came until he knew that he had to go there. And he turned to his lieutenant, and he said “Put about ship, and fix your course for Ascension Island. ” The lieutenant respectfully protested. He said that it would delay their arrival time at their expected port, it’s too far off course, but Thomas Williams stood firm, and they fixed their course for Ascension island, and as they drew near the island the whole crew came up around the front of the deck. Looking out towards the island they wanted to see what was there and why in the world they were going there, and as they drew near to the island; they began to be able to make out some object that was white. As they got closer, they could see that it was a white flag and they soon could see that it was a distress flag, and when they arrived on the shore of Ascension Island, they found 16 men near death. Their ship had crashed two weeks earlier. They had no hope. No one ever came there. No hope of rescue, but they were rescued because Admiral Sir Thomas Williams had a higher compass. He made a decision that this world can’t understand. It wasn’t based on mathematical iodic. It was spiritual. It was God-led, and there were times when that’s how he piloted his ship. What God would have us to understand is, if you have the Gift of Administration, this is going to be manifested to some degree in your life. You’re not simply a talented administrator. There are many unbelievers who are talented administrators.
I marvel at how some people divide the Gifts of the Spirit. Some are mystical and some are natural. Tongues is mystical. Prophesy is mystical. Miracles, mystical. However, teaching and administrations, normal, healthy. But you see, God wants us to understand all the Gifts of the Spirit are mystical—every one of them—because they are from God. And he is supernatural, and there’s a supernatural dimension to every one of the Gifts of the Spirit, and someone who truly has the Gift of Administration has a higher compass reflected in decision making. Why did Moses take 1,000,000 Jewish men, women and children and lead them into the depths of the Red Sea? Not a logical decision by earthly standards. Why did Joshua take his entire army, surround with city of Jericho and march around it seven times? Why did Gideon reduce his army of 32,000 men down to 300 men and then go to war against the Mideonite nation? These men were not poor leaders. They were some of the greatest leaders this world has ever known but they had a higher compass. They made decisions perhaps this world-could not always understand. Why did the apostle Paul, the great apostle of God, the leader, the administrator of the gentile churches, why did he—having made a decision to go to the established churches of Asia Minor and work with them and build them up—why did he suddenly turn and move into Europe and begin to launch into a whole new ministry, establishing entirely new churches? He did that because he had a higher compass, and he was able to hear the voice of God in his decision making.
No one had a higher compass than Jesus Christ. He knew the will of his father perfectly at all times. His decisions were not based on earthly standards. They were supernatural. Why did he pick twelve men, half of which were fishermen? He said, “I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” He chose 12 men through whom he would establish his church and his eternal kingdom. Why did he choose those twelve? Why didn’t he go to the great cultured educational centers of the Greeks? Why didn’t he go to the theological schools of the Jews? Why did he choose one man who was a traitor whom he foreknew was a traitor? Why did he go to the cross? A stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, but the Bible says, “the power of God unto salvation.” What the Bible is saying is if you truly have the Gift of Administration, you’re going to begin to exhibit some of those qualities that were in our Lord and in the saints from the generations past. You will begin to make some decisions that reflect a higher compass.
This past Friday, and with this we’ll close, I had breakfast with a man who is going to start a church in San Diego, California. I hadn’t seen him in many, many years—I used to know him in college. He wanted to get together. We talked about many things, but he began to kind of quiz me. He wondered if could help him with some ideas regarding establishing a church and how to organize it how to administrate it. He obviously thought I had the gift—the spiritual Gift of Administration. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I had to tell him that if have the Gift of Administration, it’s in small measure. I’m not sure that any of us on this staff truly have what might be called the spiritual Gift of Administration. However, God loves this church, he cares greatly about it, and he cares greatly about you. I believe that sometimes God chooses to manifest this gift or its equivalent corporately. I believe that this gift is manifested corporately through the staff and elders collectively as we pray and as we seek to shepherd this flock and to lead this ship.
Some of you may have the Gift of Administration individually. You might sense in your spirit that you have this gift. Perhaps you don’t have this gift, but you know you need it. God wants you to pray for it. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the Gift of Administration. You might. God is sovereign, and I can guarantee you won’t get the gift if you don’t ask for it. Perhaps you know you have the Gift of Administration. God’s message to you is to use it to employ it for the service and for the sake of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, no matter what your call is that you would seek to use this gift to glorify God and that you would express this gift with a servant’s heart, and you would express this gift with an attitude of love. Jesus said, “You know how the rulers of the gentiles loved to lord it over them and their great men loved to exercise authority over them, well it shall not be so among you. He who would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life, a ransom for many.” Let’s pray.