Episode 1331: Crowd or Community

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,331 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Julio Muhorro: I'm Julio Muhorro, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out.

[00:00:19] Having the ability to develop yourself is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this the Inspired St. Stewardship Podcast with my very good friend Scott.

[00:00:36] Scott Maderer: A, A crowd is a group of people all focused on their own individual needs, their individual mindsets. This is the crowd mindset where we begin to think together. But the reason we're thinking together is because we're focused as individuals who have common hungers and needs. We're angry about something or we're frustrated with something and we're [00:01:00] reacting to it.

[00:01:01] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others.

[00:01:22] And develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk with you about Matthew chapter nine, verse 35, through chapter 10, verse eight. I share how our work is not our call, and I also talk about how we are called to be a community, not a crowd. Matthew chapter nine, verse 35 through chapter 10, verse eight says, when Jesus went about all of the cities and villages teaching in their [00:02:00] synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease in every sickness, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

[00:02:11] Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, asked the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Then Jesus summoned his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to cure every disease in every sickness.

[00:02:28] These are the names of the 12 Apostles, first Simon, also known as Peter and his brother, Andrew, James and Ebadi, and his brother John, Phillip and Baru Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector. James son, Valassis and Thas Simon, the Canadian and Judas Isca, the one who betrayed him. These 12 Jesus sent out with the following instructions, go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no towns of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

[00:02:57] And as you go, proclaim the good news. [00:03:00] The kingdom of heaven has come near. Cure the sick, raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers, cast out demons you received without payment, give without payment. One of the first things that we do when we meet other people often is ask them their name, and then usually the second thing we ask is, what do you do?

[00:03:19] We often introduce ourselves, understand ourselves, and measure ourselves by the jobs that we have. You look at other people and you tell them what you do, or maybe you describe yourself in terms of the role that you are. I'm a father, I'm a husband, those sorts of things. It tends to be the work that we say is what defines us, and yet there's work that our faith demands of us as well.

[00:03:49] We talk about the calling of our lives as the work of the faith, and it gets tricky here. Faith we often think of as something that's supposed to help us live our [00:04:00] lives, help us be better at what we do, at who we are. It isn't the thing that's supposed to define us it, it isn't supposed to add more work and responsibility to our full plates and add burdens to us.

[00:04:12] We look to Heaven as the place where we can finally get some rest and. Christian theology over many hundreds of years has tried to separate the ideas of work and faith. The fear is that emphasizing our work, our effort, would cause us to begin to think that we are responsible for earning our salvations, that our actions, our choices, our work, brought us closer to the kingdom or took us further from it.

[00:04:42] So to avoid that confusion, we're taught what you do doesn't matter. You can't earn your place in God's house. And this begins to lead to a misunderstandings that brought about the people of faith that then don't know how to be a community or how to be laborers [00:05:00] for the harvest of the Lord. If he started in chapter nine, but a few verses before this, Jesus is working, he's healing the blind.

[00:05:10] He's doing other healing deeds. In fact, that's the context of this. And then shortly before that, as his fame is spreading, the Pharisees step forward and say that he must be consorting with demons. And then the rest of this chapter seems to be his answer to that accusation. He doesn't argue the logic or he doesn't argue with them or ask them questions.

[00:05:34] Instead, he says, let's go out there and spread the message and talk to others and do the harvest that the Lord is asking for us to do. These laborers come out of a motivation as a follower of God, and we are asked to have our work come out of a motivation as a follower of God and Jesus. [00:06:00] Jesus worked because Jesus saw.

[00:06:02] Jesus saw the crowds, he saw the burdens. He saw the problems that were going on, and he cared about it. He had compassion. So with the seeing of this loss and this emptiness, he sends the disciples out to help people figure it out. He has compassion for the people we often in the church. Mistake, motivation.

[00:06:26] For things like church growth or helping our church survive, and we look at those things and we say, this is what we're supposed to do. I use the quote, we go from being fishers of men to keepers of the aquarium. And in this passage when Jesus saw the crowd, he had compassion and he didn't focus on building the church.

[00:06:45] He instead turned the disciples and said, go out and help the community. There's a crowd. And he turned. To the disciples as the community and said, go help them. There's a difference between a crowd and a [00:07:00] community. A crowd is a group of people all focused on their own individual needs, their individual mindsets.

[00:07:10] This is the crowd mindset where we begin to think together, but the reason we're thinking together is because we're focused. As individuals who have common hungers and needs, we're angry about something or we're frustrated with something and we're reacting to it. We're all there to satisfy our individual needs.

[00:07:31] But a community is something different. A community exists for one another. It's also open to those who haven't yet found their way into it. It isn't about meeting needs or satisfying hungers. The community is about building relationships. It's about belonging and serving. The secret that each member of the community knows is that the individual hungers are more than satisfied when we turn and [00:08:00] serve others.

[00:08:00] When we become other focused, when we focus on relationship and helping each other, when we begin to look at the world in a different way. Ho hospitality that puts others before self. Setting aside personal preferences in an attempt to see the world through the other's eyes, the members of the community don't starve themselves.

[00:08:22] They don't deny themselves. Instead, they begin to focus on others, not because they're giving up what they need or what they want, but because by serving the needs of others, they also are served. The crowd needed workers among them so that they can begin to become a community, and it took sending workers there from a community, you have to know a community to be able to give a community.

[00:08:55] Then he sends them out together two by two. [00:09:00] It's not an individual thing. He sends them out together to labor together because. We're called to labor together. We're called to serve together whether we agree with each other, whether we don't agree with each other, whether we love each other, or don't love each other at that particular moment in time.

[00:09:19] We're still called to love each other and love on each other and serve together. That's the difference between a crowd and a community. Thanks for listening.

[00:09:37] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to [00:10:00] facebook.com/inspired.

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[00:10:05] Scott Maderer: and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures.

[00:10:25] Develop your influence and impact the world.