Are the masses really the masses? I've learned a ton about this group of people in our movement at Chico this year.
By masses I mean the group of students neither in leadership nor newly involved. Out of convenience I like to think of them as one group. However, there are clearly defined groups within the large group. Here are a few of the subgroups:
- Emerging Leaders: those who either due to year in school or maturity are not leaders, but will be one within a year.
- Laborers: students committed to our movement but do not qualify for leadership due to personal preference, time commitment issues.
- Fake Fruit/Seat-takers: Those who attend out of immaturity and lack a perspective. Like fake fruit, they only look like they belong, but in reality are not part of the whole.
- Detractors: Those who attend primarily to detract and cause division amongst the movement.
These distinctions have a redemptive focus as it refines the way we think, plan, and lead. Especially when planning events that can have multiple outcomes. For example, an evangelism training time--which group are we planning in light of? If it's emerging leaders then the content can push and challenge students more than if it was for the seat-takers, who need high encouragement and vision in order to get the most out of a training time.
This helped me tremendously as a leader of the whole because it gave me a new sense of freedom to design events and experiences that are more specific and focused on the specific area of change I'm trusting the Lord to see. This year, our leaders and emerging leaders are healthy and aligned to the vision for evangelism and have the skills to match their vision, so we have focused most on the laborers.
As a result, we broke our training time into two groups, one that targeted our emerging leaders and one that targeted our laborers. Both groups had more freedom to go after the things specific to their group, and concerened themselves less about making it general and appealing to a variety of groups.
Oi Polloi means 'the many' in Greek. It could also mean a few subgroups of the whole.
Photo courtesy of artcphoto.
