How Crowds Work Leaders, How Leaders Work Crowds

In March of 2020 I began a preaching series through the Gospel according to Mark. As if coordinated, crowds gathered on the pages of Scripture and on America’s streets. In fact, it took the tumult of that summer to help me see that crowds were a main character in Mark’s account. The Word of God is living and active, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12). And, as we discovered, that extends to the thoughts and intentions of the crowd.^[1]

1. This article is an adaptation of an article titled, “How Not to Lose Yourself (and Your Soul) In A Crowd,” which was a follow-up to a sermon on Mark 15:1–15 entitled, “Crucify Him.”

This new sensitivity to crowds was on time. Several insightful books sought to wrestle with the nature of their influence: The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity, by Douglas Murray is one example. Even more close to this month’s theme at Christ Over All, in his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Mattias Desmet explores what he calls mass formation, “a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically.”^[2] Understanding crowds is crucial for saving civilization. But that’s not the first reason why I wrote about crowds for my church.

2. See Brad Green’s, “Science and its Shortcomings: A Book Review of Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism”.

Following Jesus in a Crowd

Crowds are mentioned by Mark thirty-three times. They exert tremendous influence on the shape of events. As Greg Morse writes, crowds “[possess] the power to make the timid brave, the good better, or the bad devastating . . . When passions are shared, they swell, exciting actions to the status of legend or infamy. The power of assembly can build a better society or destroy it.” Ironically, the crowd that shouted at Jesus’s trial before Pilate did both. Their only two words? “Crucify him” (Mark 15:14).

It is easy to lose our minds and our souls in a crowd. From the first century to the twenty first, many have. So, let’s reflect on crowds together that we might hear and heed the words Jesus said to a more docile crowd:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. . . . For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? . . . For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:34–38)

Crowds are not the problem. Neither is shame. I see two crowds in Jesus’ warning: an adulterous and sinful generation and Jesus with his holy angels. Shame is the currency for both. In order that we might not lose ourselves or our souls in the crowd of this age, let’s consider how crowds work.

How Crowds Work Leaders

Apart from the influence of a crowd on a Roman governor, Jesus would not have been delivered to death. How did that happen and what can we learn?

This Jewish crowd was gathered between two opposing characters: Pilate and the chief priests. The Jews were an occupied people, and Pilate—the fifth Roman governor over Judea—was charged with keeping order in his region. When the chief priests delivered Jesus to Pilate with calls for his death, Pilate was perceptive enough to know what was behind their call. They envied Jesus’s popularity (Mark 15:10). What the chief priests unwittingly failed to realize is that Pilate did not like being used, especially by Jewish leaders. He despised them, and they despised him. Once Pilate marched a legion of soldiers into the temple with blasphemous banners.^[3] He killed priests as they conducted their sacrifices. He built the Jews an aqueduct twenty-three miles long, which was nice of him, but then charged the temple for the cost. He was a cruel governor and a weasel. He also perceived their envious motives and took Jesus to be innocent (Mark 15:14). For that reason, he belabored the trial. He asked Jesus several questions and worked angles to both keep peace and to keep from sending Jesus to his death (Mark 15:2, 4, 9, 12). As they say, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Pilate didn’t want to kill Jesus.

3. For a summary of Pilate’s actions towards the Jews, see B. M. Rapske, “Roman Governors of Palestine,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, ed. Craig A. Evans, Stanley E. Porter, and Ginny Evans (Downer Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

So, why did Pilate send Jesus to his death? Here’s one way to answer that question: because of the crowd. How it happened teaches us something about how crowds get worked by leaders and how crowds in turn work leaders.

On the day of Jesus’s trial, a crowd gathered to demand that Pilate “release for them one prisoner for whom they asked” (Mark 15:6). This was customary and expected. For Pilate, though, this was an opportunity to leverage the crowd’s energy against the will of the chief priests. So, he asked, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” (Mark 15:9). Knowing the chief priests delivered Jesus over from envy, he perceived that the crowd may have their own mind about Jesus (Mark 15:10). Perhaps he thought the crowd would choose against the priest’s demand.

How Leaders Work Crowds

Crowds are easily stirred. They are vulnerable to manipulation. And we are personally more vulnerable to manipulation when we’re in one. But that is not where it ends. Crowds are also vehicles of manipulation.

Understanding the political incentives involved, the chief priests worked the crowd. “The chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead” (Mark 15:11). Barabbas was an insurrectionist and a murderer. He was the kind of person they were falsely accusing Jesus of being. How did they bring the crowd to demand the release of this prisoner? Maybe they made threats. Maybe they made promises. Perhaps they spread rumors. However they did it, this imagery of “stirring up” tells us that they were able to exert control over the crowd and to consolidate the crowd’s energy. When this happens, a crowd is more than the sum of its parts. Together with one voice they shouted, “Crucify him” (Mark 15:13, 14)!

Pilate’s motives were not as famously or flagrantly bad as other parties involved in Jesus’s death. Judas handed him over because of greed. The chief priests handed him over because of envy. Nevertheless, Pilate is the one whose name is embedded in the ancient Nicene creed: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” What was his motive exactly? Pilate, “wishing to satisfy the crowd,” released Barabbas and delivered Jesus to his death (Mark 15:15).

Once stirred, crowds are not easily satisfied.

In the mix of incentives present among the crowd and various leaders, we find a warning concerning the craftiness of the serpent and the entanglement of sin.

How Not to Lose Yourself (and Your Soul) In A Crowd: Ask Three Questions

To Pilate, Jesus was interesting and innocent (Mark 15:5, 14). But at the end of the day, Jesus was inconvenient. Pilate valued his reputation for keeping the peace and his career as a Roman governor over and above giving justice to this innocent man. He didn’t want to kill Jesus, but he did want to spare his life enough to defy the crowd. That says something to us about Jesus—that there is no neutrality with him. It also says something to us about ourselves—that we are vulnerable to changing our thinking and making decisions in order to satisfy a crowd.

When we read the Bible, we aren’t just looking through a window into the events of the first century. We are looking into a mirror. Crowds are still a thing, and so are leaders with more or less hidden motives who both play them and get played by them. Today, we too find ourselves in crowds and before crowds. So, having looked in the mirror of Mark 15—and because three makes a crowd—ask yourself three questions.

First, what crowds are you running in?

Know your crowds. Jesus did and so did the early Christians. Acts 19 tells the story of the famous riot at Ephesus. As the gospel grew in that region, the growing number of disciples meant a depressed market for silver shrines to the local goddess. What ensued is as insightful as it is insane. That was the crowd that the Ephesian Christians had to deal with.

Crowds are unavoidable unless we remove ourselves from life in the world (1Cor. 5:9–10). So, what crowds are you in or around? A crowd of middle school classmates, a high school locker room, the management team at your place of work, a text thread with a certain mood and collective opinion, or the current academic trends in your field of work? Don’t forget your Instagram and Facebook feeds. Yes, even your family is a kind of crowd. Any of these crowds can strengthen you in the right paths or else lead you to deliver Jesus over to be crucified. The answer is not a monastic life away from the crowds, though you may need to get some new friends. Rather, this first question is about girding ourselves up in the loins of our mind, a fortifying self-awareness.

Second, how are you tempted to please the crowd?

Every crowd has a certain way of seeing the world. A crowd’s subtle and not-so-subtle indications about what is good and beautiful and true will shape your own way of seeing things. The tangible and invisible incentives for speaking and acting a certain way have more persuasive power over us than we might realize. Once you’ve considered what crowds you’re running in, ask yourself, what would you give up to satisfy the crowd? How are you willing to obscure or hide your union with Jesus in order to satisfy a crowd? How are you vulnerable to changing your thinking in order to satisfy a crowd?

We should not be surprised that the recent ex-evangelical trend is populated with former pastors and others that simultaneously distance themselves from their former faith and then reveal their new enlightened understandings of gender, marriage, and sexuality. This is the effect of the crowd. One hundred years ago, the crowd tempted us to deny the Bible’s supernatural miracles. Today, we’re tempted to deny the Bible’s sexual ethic. No one in 1924 was leaving Christianity for a transgender-affirming pseudo-religion. Know your crowds. Know yourself.

Third, when is it time to stand out in the crowd?

There’s a time for staying quiet. Jesus did not always aggravate his opponents. There’s a time to move on from the crowd. When the crowds dispersed, Jesus let them go. But there’s also a time to stand out in a crowd by standing up to those attempting to lead the crowd. When we do this, we just might find out how many others hoped that someone would. Jesus trolling the religious establishment in his day points the way. When men and women came from all over to be with Jesus, so did the Pharisees, an act to intimidate not only Jesus but his followers. With perfect command of the situation and at great risk to himself, Jesus exposed the lies of Israel’s leaders and established himself as one work following at any cost. (Mark 12:12–34) Sometimes we will need to do the same.^[4] In fact, speaking truth in a crowd is the only barrier between us and tyranny in the West.^[5]

Running With the Right Crowd

We should be wary of crowds, but we should not write off the influence of crowds wholesale. In fact, we dare not.

The church is a crowd. The word “church” means literally “assembly.” Like crowds anywhere, the church is more than the sum of its parts. When we’re with the right crowd—that is, a healthy church centered in the gospel and gathered under the righteous rule of Christ through his Word—there is no safer place on earth to be. The power of this crowd is not coercive but compelling, not polluting but protecting. We speak the truth in love to stabilize one another against the winds of doctrine blowing all around (Eph. 4:14–15). Church discipline guards us against unrepentance and the leavening effect of sin in our midst (1 Cor. 5:1–13). Our regular exhortations guard us against the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:12–15). We even run the race of faith with endurance as those “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” the saints down the ages who have endured before us (Heb. 12:1).

Brothers and sisters, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24–25, emphasis mine).

Look to Jesus, expect to be shamed, refuse to be ashamed, and remember that you are never alone in a crowd.