Back in the day I went to a leadership camp for the Boy Scouts. The lesson that stayed with me after all these years: He who can get ten people to work is more valuable than the one who does the work of ten. Jesus certainly knew that. He might have been the savior of the world but he couldn’t do everything himself. He needed to get the ten (or in his case twelve) people to carry on his work. Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. You can be sure that they did not do things the same way that Jesus did. Each of the twelve brought their own personality into the mission. An important lesson for any leader is to let people do things their way and not insist on them doing things as you would have done them. One other important note: there is a patristic tradition that Jesus sent them out two by two because they would learn right from the beginning that forgiveness is essential to the message. Whenever you have two people there will be the giving and taking of wounds. The pairs of apostles would model how forgiveness shapes the gospel message.
