The Necessity of Unreasonable Men
Those who disrupt our lives to help us achieve an extraordinary lifework
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw
I recently listened in on a conversation with two key leaders of a significant church network based in the Midwestern United States, who were giving a report to their church network about some recent ministry trips. (No, I wasn’t wire tapping for an investigative journalism series. I was invited to listen.) One of those leaders is a regular guy, with a regular job, in a regular town, but he has an irregularly strong commitment to helping others in their churches become mature and understand their role in fulfilling Christ’s plan. He doesn’t go on ministry trips to far away places, but he is just as invested in that work as the leaders who do. I’ll refer to him as a shepherding leader.
The other leader, although he engages in significant seasonal, paid work of his own, spends the majority of his time and energy, and nearly all of his focus, on equipping a global network of similar leaders, most of whom have influence across dozens or hundreds of other local church networks in regions of Europe, Asia, North America, and the Global South. I’ll refer to him an apostolic-type leader.
Together these leaders are helping the churches in their local Midwest network to grasp the stewardship they all share, which is rooting the way of Christ and His apostles1 across this global network of churches and leaders so that Jesus’s prayer in John 17 can become a reality “…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (It is no secret that the global church from 325 AD until today is not fulfilling this prayer. This isn’t meant to be an end goal, it is supposed to be the constant task of Jesus’s global family.)
This apostolic leader’s role is a sometimes infuriating, sometimes depressing, often exciting, always overwhelming lifework that has come to be shared by hundreds of other similar leaders around the world (including me) who see our calling and stewardship as either directly or indirectly related to the work that was initiated by these leaders in the Midwestern church 50-60 years ago, but even more substantially tied to the traditioning process that Paul, led by Jesus’s Spirit, initiated in the first-century, which we believe is Christ’s perpetual plan for His church. Over those 50-or-so-years our churches and networks have all begun to share in this stewardship as well, as they all work hard at reorienting their lives to see this accomplished and to pass on that vision to the next generation, helping equip them for the work that will remain until Christ returns.
An important thing to note about this network is that there is no centralized organization. No institutional government. No authoritarian hierarchy. None of us are on the payroll of any central organization. However, when one of those key leaders says something with authority or speaks into our lives and situation, we all take it seriously and spend significant time processing their input, likely resulting in some adjustment to our strategy and work. If this team of leaders in the Midwest indicate that another part of that global family movement needs our help, we mobilize to provide leaders, teaching or other resources to help strengthen one another and remain a unified family. We are all working together toward the same purpose, but in extremely varied situations and cultures.
Why do we engage so meaningfully with one another? If there is no institutional hierarchy, no monetary payoff, then what would make the rest of us (particularly those of us in global cities such as Paris and NYC) engage so deeply and take seriously the provocations of a bunch of folksy, tailgating cornhuskers? (I say that with love.) It’s because they have stuck with a very difficult work for decades now. A work that has required tremendous sacrifice on the part of their entire church community. This demands our attention and has resulted in our respect, so that when they behave in ways that are unreasonable, we cannot ignore them. We are forced to reconcile their unreasonableness with their sound thinking and well-formed representations of Christ’s strategy and how that is worked out in large scale church networks; and with the fact that they have successfully implemented those concepts in their own situation and helped hundreds of other network leaders around the world do the same.
Now, getting back to the conversation I listened in on, this apostolic-type leader had just returned from a trip across Asia and met up with one of his colleagues in France, for a visit with a key leader there who had recently received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. As they reflected on the decades of ministry together, this aging leader, who has been part of this movement for more than forty years, said to these two leaders, “You are unreasonable men. You have been unreasonable with me over these forty years… and I am grateful.” What this leader meant is tied to the George Bernard Shaw quote I started with. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This French leader was saying to them that they had pushed him, challenged him, and sometimes even been unreasonable with him and by doing so, they had helped him find the focus, clarity and commitment to accomplish abundantly more than he ever would have or could have, if he had been left on his own. His situation has given him clarity as he reflects back on his life and he is now able to express this to them with honesty and gratitude.
Obviously I am not talking about being difficult simply because it’s convenient. Or being unreasonable in an attempt to manipulate others. (Our culture already has plenty of examples of that type of behavior.) I am talking about the willingness, the drive, the inability on the part of gifted leaders to cease challenging those around them to step up and make the commitment necessary to move from a life of good things and nice gestures, to a life of overwhelming difficulty (conflicts without and fears within) which results in the transformation of others. It’s a “gifted leaders can’t stop” type situation. There is a drive within them to equip and establish others to create mature, stable communities and networks. It is Romans 12:1-2, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” It is 2 Corinthians, where Paul makes it clear that the role of apostolic leaders is one of constant, lifelong sacrifice on behalf of the churches.. a full-life commitment, a clear sense of their work, a discerning approach, and ability to defend their role, and powerful arguments (not rhetorical one-liners that end a debate, but arguments that are comprehensive, robust, and driven by the priorities of the New Testament writers themselves) all of which lead to exponential results in the lives of the churches.
The church needs these sort of leaders. Even the unreasonable ones. Especially the unreasonable ones.
Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of leaders who are establishing churches as families… patterned after Acts.
In Acts, Luke writes so that we can understand the plan of Christ and how it unfolded, making it clear that by the end of the first century a framework and traditioning process had emerged which contained the patterns and principles that Jesus expects all churches to perpetually follow in order for His family to continue maturing together, spontaneously expanding and multiplying. At the heart of this movement are the kerygmatic communities who are organized as clusters within networks and participate with apostolic teams across networks, who are all part of this global family movement.
[Kerygmatic communities are church communities who live their lives as extended family networks for the benefit of their neighborhoods and cities, a concept which has all sorts of implications for how we should gather today, what we should be doing with our resources, and what our life priorities and habits should be.]
This framework is further clarified in Paul’s early, middle, and later letters, and in the methods and strategies he employed to build an empire-wide network of such communities. In turn, Peter and John’s collections of writings use Paul’s collections and methods to shape the specific networks of church communities they are working with, all for the purpose of keeping them stable and committed, and maintaining one-minded solidarity across the movement, while allowing flexibility to address each unique situation. Peter: strengthening diaspora churches to remain tied to Paul’s teaching (2 Peter 3:16) by developing complex states of mind so that they don’t return to old traditions, or give up in the face of immense cultural pressure. John: exhorting a small, but strategic network of churches to fully lay hold of the abundant life (New Covenant life) Jesus has provided, embracing their role to strengthen the global network of churches as a one-minded movement, as they prepare to face the coming global battles.