Recently I was leading a Learning Community in Minnesota with Jo Saxton and one of the topics that came up was what to do with the “radicals” that every church seems to have.

You know the type.

On any given day they can feel like you’re greatest gift and your greatest curse.

Burning within them is a passionate desire to see the Kingdom advance; but usually, this passion can be perceived as abnormal, strange, overbearing. Think John the Baptist or our favorite OT prophet who roasted his food over his own feces. Yeah. Those kinds of people.

But they don’t have to be prophets. In fact, I think we see the radicals in all places of the 5-fold ministries from Ephesians 4: Evangelists, Prophets, Teachers, Apostles and Pastors. Each of these has radicalized versions that seem to scare the mess out of the more “normal” people around them. Clearly, “normal” is a subjective word, isn’t?

Generally speaking we probably see these people as Evangelists and Prophets. Always pushing buttons and boundaries. Never conforming. Always looking out. But I’d suggest we have people who are Apostles, Pastors and Teachers that are just as radicalized and we don’t quite know what to do with them either.

This issue, of course, is that most people have no clue how these people function within the seemingly complex Family of God. What usually happens, unfortunately, is that they are jettisoned from the family. Or they lurk on the fringes, hanging on by a very thin thread.

The question came up in this Learning Community about how these people “fit” within the community and what their role can be. I gave some response there, but as I’ve been thinking about it more, want to give more thought to it in the digital space of this blog.

In this first post, I want to look at a caution in using these “radicals”, but one that will lead to the second post which I believe is the revealing of what many of them are created for and how they play a beautiful role in the Church. Also, before we dive in, know that I’m not using the term “radicals” in a negative way. Rather, in more of a positive way as it refers to a sociological term.

Here’s what I mean.

This is a bell curve that represents that way ideas and paradigms shifts are adopted into a culture, with the number of people in each group on one axis and the stage of acceptance on the other. As you can see, “Radicals” are the very front edge of that acceptance axis.

You’ll also notice there are very few of them.

My guess is less than 1%. (Though, pictorially, this image doesn’t exactly show this.)

Watch how this plays out. As best as I can remember, something like 10% of people are Evangelists when it comes to the 5-fold. Of that 10%, 1% of the 10% are “radicals.” Better put, for every 1000 people in your church, you might only have ONE radical evangelist.

1:1000.

Here’s the funny thing about this bell curve: From a communication perspective, each Stage of Acceptance can communicate only one stage to its’ right (and probably one stage to the left…at best two stages). In other words, Radicals can really only communicate well to Early Adopters. That’s it.

Early Adopters can communicate well to the Early Majority (one stage to the right) and one stage to the left (the Radicals). The Early Majority can communicate well with the Late Majority, Early Adopters and will probably struggle with the Radicals.

You see how it works.

This leaves a conundrum for us to wrestle through as leaders. We recognize that “We celebrate what we value, and value what we celebrate.” So let’s think about the stories/testimonies that we might share at our worship gatherings that we hope will lift up the incarnation of our values. Clearly we want to celebrate the Kingdom breakthrough these radicals are seeing. They are often the tip of the metaphorical sword. The breakthrough they see is what we want EVERYONE to experience, right?

Yet this sociological phenomenon tells us that if we have Radicals telling most of our stories, a very few number of people will be able to connect with them. We might be hoping their stories provide the texture for the paradigm shift we are looking for in going from Consumers to Producers…but in actuality it’s going over everyone’s heads and scare the bejeezus out of almost everyone listening.

Most leaders I know intuitively get this. And so they rarely let these people have the stage.

On the other hand, less skilled and naive leaders, excited by the breakthroughs, freely give them the mic and let them scare everyone to death, decreasing the chances of these people seeing transformation and movement in this direction. Rather than understanding how spiritual formation and the diffusion of ideas works, they go for the homerun/purist/all-or-nothing approach.

“If you’re not a Navy SEAL radical like this person on stage, with their amazing story, this place ain’t for you. Go big or go home.”

Neither really works, does it?

Clearly what we need are mechanisms and vehicles where we can let the breakthroughs of the Radicals become the tip of the sword breakthrough for the rest of the Church.

The question is, “How do we do that?”

And that brings us to our Part 2 post, which will be coming soon.

But what about you? Have you seen this? Felt this? What’s been your experience?