{"id":541,"date":"2026-04-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/?p=541"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:20:16","slug":"send-in-the-crowds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":"Send in the Crowds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever been part of a big crowd?<\/p>\n<p>To\u00a0your right, you greet local people who\u00a0traveled across town. To your left, you meet people who traveled across country.\u00a0Radio, tv, billboards, Web sites, and word-of-mouth are ways\u00a0the crowd heard about the event.<\/p>\n<p>Big crowds don&#8217;t just happen. They are part of a larger social context and communication network.<\/p>\n<p>In Jesus&#8217; story, we read about three big crowds. On one occasion over 5,000 joined Jesus (Mk 6:44). Later 4,000 gathered to hear him teach (Mk 8:9). A third account mentions a crowd of many thousands around Jesus (Lk 12:1).<\/p>\n<p>Drawing a crowd of thousands today requires a lot of time and effort including marketing plans, venue negotiations, sound system setup, security, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Minus the technology, similar crowd-factors would apply in Jesus&#8217; day such as&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Since crowds take time to gather, Jesus must have stayed put for a time rather than always being\u00a0on the move.<\/li>\n<li>Some marketing-like communication must have let people know where Jesus was.<\/li>\n<li>A location with great acoustics and low background noise was critical since there was no amplified sound.<\/li>\n<li>Regional population density and seasonal work demands impacted who could gather and when.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s fun to think about the energy of a big crowd around Jesus. It&#8217;s important to realize that for that crowd to gather to Jesus, like a crowd gathering today, the factors had to be just right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever been part of a big crowd? To\u00a0your right, you greet local people who\u00a0traveled across town. To your left, you meet people who traveled across country.\u00a0Radio, tv, billboards, Web sites, and word-of-mouth are ways\u00a0the crowd heard about the event. Big crowds don&#8217;t just happen. They are part of a larger social context and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telling-the-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}