Give Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Interruptions and Order Cultivate Missional Imagination

“While it [Christianity] had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Church leaders often find themselves caught between two competing impulses. On one hand, we crave order. We create strategic plans, establish routines, build systems, and develop structures that help organizations function effectively. On the other hand, we know that many of the most significant moments of ministry arrive unexpectedly. A chance conversation, an unforeseen crisis, a surprising partnership, or an encounter with someone outside our normal circles suddenly opens a door to new possibilities.

Which is more important for mission: order or interruption?

Chesterton's famous observation offers a profound answer. The purpose of order is not control. The purpose of order is to create the conditions under which good things can run wild.

This insight has important implications for cultivating missional imagination.

The Problem with Too Much Order

Most organizations naturally drift toward predictability. We develop habits, routines, and established ways of doing things because they help us accomplish tasks efficiently. Over time, however, efficiency can become the enemy of imagination.

When everything proceeds according to plan, we tend to operate from familiar assumptions and established mental models. We solve problems using categories that have worked in the past. We become increasingly skilled at doing what we have always done.

Yet missional imagination requires something more. It requires the ability to perceive possibilities that are not yet visible. It asks us to imagine how God might be at work beyond our current expectations.

The danger of excessive order is not merely rigidity. The deeper danger is that we stop noticing. We become so focused on executing our plans that we fail to recognize new opportunities emerging around us.

A church can become highly organized and yet spiritually stagnant. A leader can become highly productive and yet unimaginative.

Order alone cannot generate new vision.

The Gift of Interruption

This is where interruptions become valuable.

Interruptions break the momentum of our assumptions. They expose the limits of our current understanding and force us to reconsider what we think we know.

An interruption might be a question we cannot answer. It might be a failed ministry initiative. It might be an unexpected relationship with someone outside our social or theological comfort zone. It might be a community challenge that reveals needs we had previously overlooked.

In each case, the interruption creates a gap between expectation and reality.

That gap becomes fertile ground for imagination.

When Moses encountered the burning bush, he was not searching for a new mission. He was tending sheep. When Samuel heard God's voice in the night, he was not anticipating a prophetic calling. When Peter received his vision and then heard a knock at the door, his assumptions about God's mission were challenged in ways he never expected.

Again and again in Scripture, interruptions become the birthplace of new imagination.

The interruption is not merely a disruption of the mission. It becomes the means by which a larger mission is revealed.

Why Interruptions Matter for Missional Imagination

Missional imagination often emerges when our assumptions about where God is working are challenged.

A congregation discovers that the people they viewed as recipients of ministry become partners in ministry.

A neighborhood problem reveals an opportunity for collaboration.

A conversation with someone from another culture exposes blind spots in our understanding of community.

A crisis forces a church to reconsider its purpose and practices.

Interruptions create the possibility of seeing differently because they introduce perspectives, questions, and realities that our existing framework cannot fully explain.

As one might say, imagination is often born in the space between expectation and interruption.

When the familiar is disrupted, possibilities hidden in plain sight suddenly become visible.

The Other Danger: Too Many Interruptions

Yet Chesterton is not celebrating chaos.

His statement begins with an important phrase: Christianity established “a rule and order.”

The order comes first.

This is where many conversations about innovation and imagination go wrong. We sometimes assume that creativity flourishes best in constant disruption. In reality, too many interruptions can be just as damaging as too much order.

Without stability, ideas never have time to mature.

Deep thought requires protected space. Reading, prayer, discernment, reflection, and learning all depend on rhythms of attention. Every interruption resets our focus. When interruptions become constant, we lose the capacity to integrate what we are experiencing.

The result is not imagination but reaction.

Organizations trapped in perpetual disruption often become highly active but increasingly shallow. They chase every new opportunity without developing the wisdom necessary to evaluate which opportunities truly matter.

Just as too much order produces stagnation, too much interruption produces fragmentation.

Neither creates missional imagination.

The Creative Tension

The most fertile environment for imagination exists between order and interruption.

Consider a healthy forest. A forest with no disturbance eventually becomes dense and less diverse. New growth struggles to emerge. Yet a forest experiencing constant disturbance never matures. Trees never establish deep roots.

Healthy ecosystems require both stability and disruption.

The same is true spiritually and organizationally.

Order gives imagination roots.

Interruption gives imagination wings.

Order provides the practices, rhythms, and disciplines that sustain reflection. Interruptions provide the surprises that challenge assumptions and expand vision.

Together they create the conditions in which imagination can flourish.

Cultivating Missional Communities

This insight may be particularly important for churches today.

Many congregations err in one of two directions. Some become so structured that nothing unexpected can happen. Others become so reactive to changing circumstances that they never develop sustained practices of formation and discernment.

Neither extreme nurtures missional imagination.

The most imaginative communities create rhythms that are stable enough for discernment and porous enough for surprise.

They cultivate habits of prayer, reflection, learning, and community. At the same time, they remain attentive to unexpected encounters, emerging needs, and surprising movements of God's Spirit.

They do not eliminate interruptions.

They learn to recognize which interruptions might be invitations.

This may be one of the deepest implications of Chesterton's observation. The goal of leadership is not to maximize control. Nor is it to embrace chaos.

The goal is to create enough order that good things can run wild.

When leaders establish healthy structures, they create space for creativity, collaboration, compassion, and mission to flourish. When they remain open to interruption, they create opportunities for God to expand their imagination beyond what they could have planned for themselves.

Missional imagination thrives where order and interruption meet. It emerges when rooted communities remain open to surprise, when disciplined practices make room for unexpected possibilities, and when leaders recognize that some of God's most transformative work arrives disguised as an interruption.

Perhaps the task of missional leadership is not simply to manage organizations or respond to disruptions. Perhaps it is to cultivate environments where the Spirit has room to surprise us.

After all, the purpose of order is not merely to maintain what exists. The purpose of order is to give room for good things to run wild.