Recognising, Reframing and Networking

I love this time of year.

Every year about this time I go to officeworks and buy two things: a new journal and a new 12 month planner.

I love starting a process around now of looking back on the past 12 months and trying to understand what God is saying to me, and then looking forward to the next 12 months and setting goals.

As part of the process I love to read a few good books, spend more time with my family and watch a bit of cricket.

I also tend to read the bible from a perspective of trying to understand what God is saying to me either about this year or next.

Obviously this year I am thinking more than usual about leadership and building a movement.

In the past I have focussed on Paul and what he did to build a movement.

At the moment I have seen a few things about Jesus’s approach that has helped me realise just how strategic he actually was.

I have been in the book of Matthew for a bit and in particular the early parts of Jesus’ ministry.

I have noticed that there were three particular threads to his approach:

1) He built on what God was already doing: Rather than writing off those that had come before him, Jesus made a point of quoting the Old Testament and submitting to the ministry of John the Baptist. God had already been working in the world before Jesus turned up in History, and Jesus made a point of harmonizing with that action rather than ignoring it. It can be tempting to think that the church or organisation you are in is the absolute pinnacle of God’s action, and its good to see that the one person who could actually make that claim chose to recognise the context he was coming into.

2) He re-framed peoples expectations: Jesus gives two major speeches, one to the crowd in the ‘sermon on the mount’ (ch5-7) and one to his disciples about what their job is to be about (ch 10). Both speeches re-framed peoples expectations.  Former boss of General Electric, Jack Welch said:

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

In both the sermon on the Mount and in chapter 10, Jesus gives his listeners a vision of reality that is quite different to any normal expectations. Whether it is Martin Luther-King, Gandhi or the Son of God, a movement is created when someone paints a picture that is not normal but expresses peoples deepest hopes and aspirations.

Another common feature of the founders of movements is that they are up-front with people that the change they are working towards will not be easy, but it is worth it. In the sermon on the mount and particularly in Matthew chapter 10,  Jesus points out the cost to living in the Kingdom.

Matthew chapter 10 has been important to me personally over the last couple of years, and I wrote a series of posts about it that you can read by clicking here or in my upcoming book.

3) He intentionally created and used a network to communicate his message:

In my quiet time this morning I was struck by a very simple sentence in Mathew 11:1:

When Jesus finished placing this charge before his twelve disciples, he went on to teach and preach in their villages.

I had never noticed that after spending time preparing the 12 disciples, the first place he takes them is back to their home towns. He intentionally uses their existing networks to begin the process of getting the word out.

He doesn’t go to the big public places, he goes to the homes of his friends.

Network theory has grown rapidly as an academic discipline in the last 10 years, but 2000 years earlier, Jesus applies the understandings of this discipline to create a network that would go on to change the world.

He didn’t run programs, he connected with people and helped them connect with each other.

The remarkable consequence of his intentional action is that in the book of Mark chapter 3 verse 8, we are told that pretty much the whole holy land (look these places up on a map) had heard of him:

……a huge crowd from Galilee trailed after them—also from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, across the Jordan, and around Tyre and Sidon—swarms of people who had heard the reports and had come to see for themselves.

Jesus intentionally built a network.

So, what do I gain from this thinking?

If I want to be part of a network that changes the world there are three things I need to keep in mind:

What is God already doing?

What is the vision that will call people out despite the challenges?

How do I create a network?