Luke’s gospel speaks of Jesus sending out of the 72. As Christ sends them out, He gives instructions to the group before they go on their way. Once they have gone out and done their work, they come back in amazement at what happened during their journey. Interestingly enough, when Jesus sent these people out ahead of him, He did not accompany them on this challenge. Why is this? What would compel Jesus to send people out with some basic instructions and let things fall where they may?
I like to think of this story as Jesus’ teaching his disciples according to the Adventure Catholic leadership training model (which is obviously based on the way Jesus taught). He gives them the instructions and then sends them out to do what they need to do. He empowers them to use their own gifts and talents to overcome obstacles and challenges. In other words he allows them to fail or succeed on their own. We are privy to observe the details of the events of these 72. What we don’t know is how many times they had to “shake the dust” and move on. We don’t know how many time they failed before the accomplished what they set out to do. All we have record of is their success. BUT don’t overlook Jesus’ pedagogical style.
Experience, experience, experience. He gave them the task, the directions, and sent them on their way. This model is one that we use in Adventure Catholic training and like Jesus we have found great success. We wrote about it in detail in our book “Teaching Teens to Fail.” If you want to explore how to successfully train your young person, your teams, your ministers, then pick up a copy here: http://adventurecatholic.com/our-book/ and dive in to the method that Jesus used. We don’t guarantee that you’ll be casting out demons but we know that his method will help you model Jesus’s way of training his people.
