PrintToday's "Moment with Mark" (60)
20 January, 2013
Jesus tried to avoid all publicity in order to spend more time with his disciples and teach them. (Mark 9:30-31 NLT)
It's just a passing comment that hardly seems to warrant comment itself. However, in that simple observation there rests a key strategy that tells us much about Jesus' priorities when it came to the fulfilling of His mission. The NIV puts it like this: "Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples."
Investing Himself in the Twelve and spending quality time with them was critically important to Jesus. He had to maintain a balance between time spent with the crowd and time spent with His disciples. The needs of the crowd are like a "black hole"; no matter how much you pour in there will always be room for more.
One of the hardest decisions or determinations that a leader faces is how to allocate time to the multi-faceted task of leadership. Even if your Pastor or Minister gets the balance right in his or her own mind, there is a whole congregation of people who each have their own idea as to what that balance should be. Usually their balance is expressed like so: "You are here to meet my needs, to visit me, to convert my children. Then, if you have time left over, you can do that discipleship training that you seem to think is so important".
I think Jesus would tell such people that their understanding of leadership was very different to His. Good leadership involves finding ways whereby we multiply ourselves through others. There will come a time when Jesus will send these disciples out to engage in ministry without His physical presence. They will come back rejoicing and reporting about people whose lives had been touched and transformed through their ministry.
These are the people whom Jesus couldn't reach because of the sheer constraint of time and numbers.But they were reached because He spent "more time with His disciples".
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