NOTES for Mar 6:7-13
The mission of the disciples was connected first of all not with preaching as such, but with those manifestations of the power of the Kingdom that everyone could understand without words. In antiquity both pagans and Yahwists paid far more attention to real manifestations of power than to words and explanations, not to mention abstract theories. Of course, there were exceptions: intellectuals existed if not in every age, then in almost every age, and they always trusted an elegant concept and a vivid theory more than practice.
So it was among pagans and among Jews, and Plato's Academy in this sense was no different from the Jewish academies where learned rabbis and interpreters of the Torah taught. Jesus, however, sent His disciples not to theological academies, but to ordinary people who, as in old times, trusted manifestations of power more than fine words.
Of course, such faith was not always a guarantee that the experience was spiritually sound: power in itself is ambivalent, and it can be connected both with God's action and with the action of those created powers that are not only disobedient to God but directly oppose Him. And yet the Kingdom was first of all precisely a manifestation of power, and only then a manifestation of love. From within the Kingdom, of course, everything looks the other way around: first come the relationships of love that bind the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another and to God, and only then, as something derived from those relationships, comes the power that changes the universe.
From outside the Kingdom, from the fallen world, however, power appears to be the main characteristic of the Kingdom. The fallen world knows love only very little and in part, but it knows power very well. Besides, this world respects power, while it treats love at best with condescension and at worst with contempt. That is why the reality of the Kingdom, which, according to the Savior's word, "has come near," was best demonstrated at the beginning precisely through manifestations of power. This was, of course, only a first step, followed by others, but it was an absolutely necessary step.