Recovering the chaordic character of joining God in His work

The more I study the early Christian movement, the more I wonder whether our contemporary approaches to missions would have known what to do with it. We develop strategic plans, establish goals, identify measurable outcomes, and evaluate success according to whether those outcomes materialize. These practices can help us steward resources and clarify responsibilities. Yet they can also shape our understanding of missions so thoroughly that we begin to imagine God’s work as something we organize, produce, and measure.

The early Christian story begins with God speaking and acting. His people learn to recognize His initiative and participate faithfully. They made decisions, organized their lives, and accepted responsibilities. Their movement also unfolded through relationships, unexpected encounters, suffering, and divine interruptions. They acted purposefully while entering a future they could neither fully anticipate nor control. Their plans remained open because the mission belonged to God.

Paul had Plans—and God Redirected Them

Paul’s journey toward Macedonia offers a revealing example. Acts 16:6–10 describes a missionary team attempting to move in particular directions. They intended to proclaim the word in Asia, but the Holy Spirit prevented them. They attempted to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not permit it. Eventually, at Troas, Paul received the vision of a Macedonian man asking for help. Paul had intentions before he had the vision. These were purposeful people whose intentions remained subject to God’s direction.

Their response also involved communal discernment. After Paul’s vision, the group concluded that God had called them to proclaim the gospel in Macedonia. A personal experience became the occasion for a shared judgment about their next action. But, what might their journey have looked like if success had been defined as accomplishing their original itinerary? A closed door could have appeared to be failure. Changing direction could have suggested inadequate preparation. Yet Luke presents these interruptions as integral to the unfolding mission.

Elsewhere, Paul proposed returning to communities already visited, discussed future travel, and expressed his desire to take the gospel to Spain (Acts 15:36; 1 Corinthians 16:5–9; Romans 15:23–29). Planning belonged within his ministry. However, it did not give him control over its future.

The Chaordic Character of Mission

There is a word that helps describe this relationship between purposeful action and an unfolding future: chaordic. Bringing together chaos and order, it describes the interplay of recognizable patterns and circumstances that resist prediction or control.

In missions, order includes preparation, commitments, shared practices, and plans. Chaos names the unknown: unexpected encounters, disrupted itineraries, unfamiliar circumstances, and possibilities we could not have anticipated. Calling this unknown “chaos” acknowledges the limits of our understanding. It does not mean that God is confused or that every disruption expresses His will.

Paul’s journey toward Macedonia illustrates this chaordic character. His team had a purpose, previous experience, and intentions about where to go. They also encountered prohibitions they had to interpret and a vision whose significance they discerned together. And, their next action emerged through purposeful movement and responsiveness to God.

This helps explain what I mean by describing the early Christian movement as organic. Its life took shape through shared allegiance to Jesus, the Spirit’s presence, relationships, teaching, prayer, and communal practices. These provided coherence as believers entered circumstances for which they possessed no comprehensive script. They knew whom they followed without knowing everything that following Him would entail.

Jesus Gave Their Life Its Shape

This coherence was deeply Christological. Indeed, Jesus described His own work in relation to the Father’s activity: the Son does what He sees the Father doing (John 5:19). His ministry expressed communion with the Father through teaching, healing, hospitality, confrontation, compassion, and self-giving love. His followers imitated Him and were being formed into an attentive, obedient life shaped by Him.

Naturally, Paul could therefore invite believers to imitate him as he imitated Christ (1 Cor 11:1). His teaching, conduct, relationships, endurance, and love belonged together. Similarly, the Thessalonians became imitators of Paul and the Lord, then examples to others as the word spread beyond their community (1 Thess 1:6–8).

Imitation gave their witness a recognizable character across different places and circumstances. This was more comprehensive than reproducing a particular ministry arrangement. Disciples learned to embody Jesus’s character, keep His teaching, and participate in His work within their own relationships and communities. Their shared life in Christ supplied order without prescribing every detail of their future.

Discipling and the Limits of Production

In our forthcoming article on discipling, Tony Blair and I explore the difference between treating discipleship as an obligatory production task and understanding it as organic participation in the Spirit’s transforming work. The distinction matters because our expectations shape how we treat people.

When discipling becomes primarily a production task, people can gradually become the means through which a ministry demonstrates its effectiveness. Their progress validates a method. Their participation satisfies a goal. Their multiplication becomes evidence that the system works.

Paul offers a humbler account of human agency. He planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:5–9). Planting and watering required labor, judgment, patience, and care. Paul nevertheless distinguished that labor from the divine action that made growth possible. We proclaim Christ, baptize, teach, encourage, correct, and accompany one another. We bear responsibility for how faithfully we undertake that work. The Spirit transforms people into the likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

A person who needs years of patient companionship has not become a disappointing result. A community whose growth unfolds slowly has not thereby demonstrated spiritual failure. Organic formation can involve considerable intention. Its development nevertheless exceeds our ability to manufacture outcomes.

When Order Hardens into Control

A chaordic understanding helps identify the danger in mechanistic missions. Planning can help us act wisely. But when a plan becomes the controlling account of what God must accomplish, the unknown becomes a threat to eliminate. Unexpected developments become distractions. Changing direction appears to signal failure. People whose lives unfold slowly become obstacles to achieving a target. We can become so committed to fulfilling the plan that we lose the freedom to discern.

There is another danger, however. Invoking spontaneity or divine leading can excuse poor preparation, neglected responsibilities, or resistance to accountability. The early churches appointed leaders, organized assistance, addressed disputes, and maintained relationships across considerable distances (Acts 6:1–6; 14:23; 15:1–35; 2 Corinthians 8–9). Their organic life required sustained care.

Chaordic mission holds purposeful order together with openness to an unfolding future. Shared prayer, trustworthy relationships, careful study, honest reporting, and responsible stewardship can create conditions for discernment. Our structures reveal their value partly through what happens when the unexpected arrives. Can people question an assumption? Can local believers challenge an imported method? Can a team change direction without being accused of abandoning the mission?

What Our Numbers Can Tell Us

The New Testament records numbers. Luke reports people being added to the community and describes numerical growth alongside the spread of the word (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7). Counting can help us notice what is happening and respond responsibly. The difficulty arises when numbers acquire authority beyond what they can explain.

Attendance and conversion tell us how many people gathered or responded to a message. They tell us much less about whether they are learning to love their enemies and become more like Jesus. A baptism count records something significant, but it cannot by itself describe the depth of a community’s life in Christ. The number of new groups says little about how those groups handle power, care for vulnerable people, or resolve conflict. All to say that a ministry can meet its numerical goals while neglecting important dimensions of faithfulness. It can also miss those goals while cultivating enduring relationships and bearing costly witness to Jesus.

We need room to ask what a number means, how it was obtained, and what it leaves unseen. Otherwise, our measurements begin to direct our attention. We prioritize activities that generate reportable results. We grow impatient with lives that resist our timelines. Eventually, the plan we intended to serve the mission begins to define it.

A Spirituality for Navigating the Unknown

At Ephesiology Master Classes, I describe a spirituality shaped by curiosity, discovery, reflection, wonder, and participation. This rhythm begins with the conviction that God speaks and acts. We enter communities where He has preceded us, and we approach people whose lives we do not yet understand.

Curiosity teaches us to ask questions before prescribing answers. Discovery requires patient observation and conversation. Reflection brings what we encounter into dialogue with Scripture and with others. Wonder awakens as we recognize God’s goodness and activity. Participation follows as we discern how to respond. Participation then gives rise to fresh questions. We continue listening because our first interpretation may be incomplete. This rhythm provides a way to inhabit the chaordic character of mission. It gives purposeful shape to our engagement while keeping our conclusions open to refinement.

Such discernment is demanding. It requires biblical formation, cultural attentiveness, prayer, and humility. Claims about God’s activity must be tested in community and in relation to the character and teaching of Jesus. Calling an opportunity “God’s leading” does not make our interpretation reliable. Discernment carries accountability.

Holding Our Plans Open

The surviving accounts of early Christianity do not explain every decision or provide a complete account of its expansion. They do repeatedly show purposeful action unfolding through circumstances the participants had not arranged. Scattered believers spoke about Jesus. Households became places of encounter. Existing relationships carried the gospel into new settings (Acts 8:4; 11:19–26; 16:14–15, 25–34). Communities formed, discerned, struggled, and learned together. Their example invites us to develop plans that express our present understanding while remaining open to correction.

We can budget honestly, identify responsibilities, establish practical goals, and evaluate our work. Alongside these practices, we need questions that keep us attentive to God and to people. Are we becoming more like Jesus? What are local believers discerning that we have overlooked? Whose experience is missing from our reports? Have our goals made us reluctant to change direction? What would faithfulness require if growth remained slow?

Paul’s journey to Macedonia reminds us that a changed plan can be an expression of obedience. We need enough order to act together and enough openness to follow God beyond what we have planned. We follow Jesus into a world He already loves. We undertake the work entrusted to us with care, courage, and humility. And we keep listening.