What Teaching Genesis to Adults Taught Me About Leading Adults

I sat down to teach my adult Sunday School class through Genesis 31 with a lecture half-built in my head — the whole chapter as a timeline of Laban’s shifting wages, the warning dream, the flight, and the covenant at Mizpah. Then I reread the passage and noticed something I’d walked past before: before any of that unfolds, Jacob doesn’t just tell his household they’re leaving. He calls a meeting.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: I almost taught the itinerary and missed the invitation

My draft plan was information transfer — here’s what happened, in order, here’s what to take from it. But the actual move in verses 4 through 16 is Jacob, who already has a direct word from God to leave (v. 3), still stopping to call Rachel and Leah out to the field, laying out exactly what happened with their father, and letting them arrive at the decision themselves. He had every reason to just announce it. He didn’t.

H – Hear: Calling a Meeting

“So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to him in the field where his flock was… Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, ‘Whatever God has said to you, do.'” (Genesis 31:4, 16)

This is not a verse about Jacob needing his wives’ permission. It’s a man with God’s own instruction already in hand, choosing to call a conversation instead of issuing an announcement. Stay with what is said: sent and called. In Hebrew, qara — “called” — is the same word used for a formal summons, the kind used to convene people for a covenant, not just a word tossed over the shoulder on the way out. Jacob didn’t drop information; he convened a moment. And Rachel and Leah’s response isn’t grudging compliance. It’s full ownership — “whatever God has said to you, do” — because they’d been let into the case, not handed the verdict.

That’s what God’s patient love does with us, too. He doesn’t only issue commands from a distance — He reasons with us, through Scripture, until we arrive at the very conclusion He already gave us.

E – Exchange: Teaching the Case Instead of the Conclusion

So I taught the class that way. Instead of narrating the chapter’s events and telling them what to conclude, I asked what Jacob risked by stopping to explain himself when he could have just moved the household. The room did the work I usually do for them — and landed somewhere truer than if I’d told them.

That’s the exact correction I keep having to make with senior people I lead and coach. Experienced, capable people don’t need the material delivered to them — most could reconstruct my conclusion on their own. What they need is to be let into the reasoning the way Jacob let Rachel and Leah into his. Every time I skip that and hand over the verdict instead, I get compliance. Every time I lay out the case and let them answer it themselves, I get “whatever God has said to you, do” — ownership, not just agreement.

Because God’s love confidently invites reasoning instead of demanding compliance, how does that change the way you lead people?

W – Walk: Call the meeting instead of sending the memo

Set a timer for sixty seconds and think of the last decision you announced to someone fully capable of reasoning their way to it themselves. Then pick one decision this week you’d normally just announce to someone you trust completely. Instead, lay out the actual case the way Jacob did — what happened, what you saw, what’s at stake — and let them answer it in their own words before you tell them yours.

Closing question: How can you invite your team’s reasoning and input into your next big decision?