Category Archives: Alchemy at the.edge

Start the year well

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Charity leaders often equate impact with action campaigns launched, budgets spent, problems solved. Yet research keeps showing that sustainable impact starts with REFLECTION  not reaction.

Studies from Harvard and Cass Business School reveal that leaders who schedule time to think, journaling, debriefing, or peer reflection, see stronger team cohesion, clearer strategy, and higher donor trust. Reflection, it turns out, is charity’s hidden performance engine.

In alchemical terms, active reflection is fire: it burns away the noise to reveal what’s essential. Leaders who cultivate this habit move from chasing activity to steering transformation. Reflection turns busyness into wisdom.

Four questions to reflect on so you start your year well

1. What in my leadership this year felt most alive and why?
2. What patterns of reaction or resistance kept showing up?
3. Where did I see real transformation in people, systems, or myself?
4. What truth is emerging that I must carry into the new year?

If you are interested in improving your leadership fluency and working in the faith sector check out our new Applied Alchemy Space launching now.

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Round and round we go

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I grew up in a little village not far from Exmoor and the coast. The air was different not close enough to smell the salt but with plenty of room to roam. I would wander the lanes with friends, kicking about with nothing in particular to do. Every now and then a car would pull up visitors or Grockals as they are known in Devon, the days before phones and sat nav they came with maps half-folded, asking the way to somewhere or other.

And we, being kids, thought we were hilarious. We’d send them on “the scenic route,” which was really a long circle of narrow lanes that led eventually back to where they’d started. Fifteen minutes later we’d be leaning against the gatepost, waving as they reappeared looking slightly more puzzled, slightly less polite. We didn’t mean harm, just mischief. Even as write it now I chuckle at the memory, I’m fascinated by the circularity of it, the traveller earnestly trying to get somewhere while being guided by someone who didn’t really know where they were heading in the bigger scheme of life either.It strikes me that this is how the church sometimes behaves. We’re asked for direction, to meaning, to community, to hope in a tangled world, but too often we send people down the same old lanes. We wave cheerfully, even triumphantly, when they come back round to where they started. All the while the scenery may shift a little, but the map the assumptions, the systems, the stories we cling to stays the same. Our other favourite thing to say to these earnest travellers is “well I wouldn’t start from here”.

In *Hospicing?Modernity*, Vanessa?Machado?de?Oliveira talks about tending to a dying way of knowing the world. She says we need to hospice not fix or glorify, what can no longer sustain life. Perhaps that’s what we’re called to now in the church: to stop waving from the gatepost, pretending we know the route. Recognise that realistically we shouldn’t be starting from here, not really understanding how modernity has bought us here anyway. Instead we need to attend, with love and honesty, to the dying illusions of control and certainty we’ve been peddling.

Maybe our task is not to keep the old roads open, but to walk with people into the woods, where the maps fall apart and new ways of seeing might take root. To recognise that transformation won’t come from clever shortcuts but from learning to grieve what’s ending, to compost our worn-out certainties, and to listen again to the land and to each other.

If we do that, if we dare to step off the loop, then perhaps the next time someone stops to ask for direction, we’ll point not down the lane but toward a horizon and travel there together.

 

if you’re interested in a Tricksters approach to systems and want to break out of the same old circles check out https://alchemyedge.co.uk/#what-we-offer-individuals

Going Live Today

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From today you can sign up to Applied Alchemy our new leadership and systems learning space. Depending on which level you subscribe to, you will either receive a free 500 word monthly snapshot, A fuller Applied Alchemy 1500 word piece blending leadership theory and our unique Applied Alchemy checklist approach, or a live termly webinar exploring Trickster for 2026. You can even sign up for the highest tier that includes all the above along with context based coaching sessions from Richard Passmore, ideal for pioneers working on the ground or in leadership spaces in institutions and navigating systems.

Paying it Forward – We recognise times are tough and so for every five people signing up at each level we will offer a free space at that level for those unable to pay, so do reach out if you need a free space.

However we are offering a great introductory offer with limited time savings. To sign up visit our subscription page HERE or keep reading for more information.

This is a fresh approach to the leadership space that collapses the gaps between mentoring, coaching, and accountability. There is a free level called ‘DRIP‘ with taster content dripped out via subscription and via our substack but the real gold is available on a subscription basis. The aim is to grow fluent leaders who naturally have the right tools at their disposal and who reach for the right tool at the right time without having to think about it. Subscribe for free from our subscription page here.
DIP right in with our level 2 offer that sends a monthly Leadership and Systems Change Content direct to your inbox that you can Dip into at a time that works for you. We mix leadership and systems theory, reflection and action, with our unique Applied Alchemy Prompts, Postures and Checklist to grow your leadership fluency.

Catch our launch offer at just £5 a month (usual price will be £8 a month). Download a free DIP sample here. Then subscribe here.

Join our ‘SWIM’ level if you like to wrestle with ideas. SWIM members automatically get Drip level but also access a termly webinar exploring how to put the ideas into practice in their own context. For our launch offer you can sign up for £8 a month saving over £50 on the webinars.

Select your subscription level here.

Our SWIM webinars for 2026 will be on the theme of Trickster.

If you want to meet regularly we have a limited number of FLOW  spaces offering 3 one to one Applied Alchemy flow sessions a year and access to all Swim and Dip material.

Each FLOW session is up to 90 minutes and is a bespoke context based approach, where you set the agenda based on the challenges you are facing in developing practice in your situation and where needed we weave in what you are learning through through the Applied Alchemy material.

To secure a Flow place there is a £50 non returnable registration fee, and then £30 a month. This is a saving of over £125 on our usual context based coaching and Applied Alchemy fees so spaces are very limited and will be on a first come first served basis. We will contact you to arrange dates at a mutual convenience throughout the year.

Or feel free to contact Richard@alchemyedge.co.uk to discuss if you are wondering if Flow is right for you.

Trickster 2026 Webinars Only

If you want to just sign up for the webinars (last Wednesday in Feb, June and October 19.30 GMT) or can use the link HERE

Parasitism: Knowing When to Draw the Line

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Hopefully the series isn’t turning dark but maybe we need to be honest. In nature, parasitism is always a delicate matter. It’s where one organism benefits at the expense of another, ticks on deer or fungus creeping over plants. It’s messy and often damaging if left unchecked. In our churches, parasitism shows up when one community siphons off energy, resources, or leadership from another, without giving anything back.
It’s a quiet, often hidden relationship and at first glance, it may seem mutually beneficial, but over time, the imbalance saps the life from the system. When a fresh expression relies heavily on inherited church resources, be it finances, leadership, or space without sharing or investing in its own growth, it may drift into parasitism and kill the host. At the same time we need to remember that story of Christ is one of death and resurrection so some things need to die well, so there is a gospel tension here.

Leadership must be attentive to boundaries. That’s not about walls, it’s about creating rhythms of renewal where all parts are healthy. Systems thinking teaches us that feedback loops are vital; if one part expends more energy than it reinvests, the entire system risks collapse. Leaders on all sides need to ask: ‘Are we enabling life-giving relationships, or are some parts draining others?’
Shifting from parasitism to health involves honest conversations and clear boundaries around resource sharing and leadership roles. It also involves a culture of accountability, where both old and new expressions pay what they can, contribute their strengths, and recognise their limits.

“Good governance doesn’t focus only on what to do — it emphasizes what not to do. Boundaries protect the system’s integrity and promote resilience.” — Adapted from Heifetz & Linsky, Leadership on the Line.
In practical terms church plant that uses a traditional church’s building for free, but then drains the church’s hospitality team, without sharing in planning or resourcing, risks exhaustion. Leaders must gently reframe this, encouraging mutual investment rather than drain. Healthy mixed ecology churches grow in trust and respect, not dependence or exhaustion.
In the end, parasitism teaches us that boundaries are not barriers but safeguards, protecting life, ensuring that each expression of church can flourish without becoming overly dependent or destructive.

Commensalism – Quiet Hospitality in the Shared Space

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Continuing the series, one of the gentler relationships in nature is commensalism, the barnacle clinging to the whale’s back, the harmless epiphyte perched high in the trees. The host doesn’t lose; the guest gains a foothold. It’s subtle, unobtrusive, and rarely draws attention.

In the mixed ecology church, commensalism invites us to think about hospitality as a spacious, patient practice. Sometimes new worshipping communities, fresh expressions, or mission experiments find their home quietly alongside inherited churches, sharing the same space, maybe even the same pews. They get to try things out without demanding change or disruption. The traditional church hosts; the newcomer explores.
This is the art of supporting difference without crisis or competition. Systems thinking offers a helpful lens here: this relationship is a form of facilitative hosting that allows new life to enter the system with minimal disruption, it’s low-risk experimentation. It’s a testbed for innovation, a holding pattern for growth.

Leadership here isn’t about control but generosity. It’s creating receptive spaces that respond to emerging needs in the community. As Margaret Wheatley reminds us, “Leadership is not about control but about creating an environment where new possibilities can emerge.”

Practical examples are peppered through the history of church life. Take the laundry ministry in St. Cloud, Minnesota, part of a traditional parish but reaching neighbours unlikely to walk through the church door. They borrow a local laundromat, offer food and prayer, gradually building trust and belonging. The church hosts this venture without co-opting or reshaping it. It is hospitality without strings, a living metaphor for commensalism.
Yet, commensalism requires care not to slip into parasitism; hosts must offer space without fatigue, and guests must be mindful of their footprint. Systemic health depends on this delicate balance.
Hospitality in mixed ecology is, then, an invitation to host without ownership, to support without smothering, to share space and life with kindness and openness.

Five Ecological Lessons for a Mixed Ecology Church

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Church life often longs for order and predictability. Yet the garden outside my window or better still the fells a short drive away are wild and tangled, and reveal another truth. Life flourishes in relationships that are messy, uneven, and interconnected. In reality the mixed ecology church, a community where inherited forms of church exist alongside new, experimental expressions will be similarly messy. But how do these different expressions relate without stifling one another? What patterns might help them grow together, not apart?

Nature offers us five such relational patterns that guide growth and resilience: mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, competition, and cooperation. Each reveals different ways life flourishes through connection, sometimes in surprising and challenging ways. Over the next few weeks, I’ll explore each relationship, drawing from ecology, not just for metaphor’s sake, but as a living guide. Along the way, I’ll try to offer some leadership insights and systems thinking, because growing a mixed ecology church inevitably is also about patterns and structures as well as people.

The five patterns explored will begin with mutualism, where both partners give and receive, flourishing together through reciprocity. Next, commensalism invites us to practice quiet hospitality a kind of support without burden. Parasitism teaches the necessity of boundaries that protect the life of the whole. Competition, uncomfortable as it feels, can spur creativity and clarity. And finally, cooperation invites us into pragmatic alliances that bind us around shared purpose.

What if the church took these relationships seriously and rather than simply sitting with the metaphor of the mixed ecology we started to embody it and see what we can learn from our non human counterparts.

The strength of the metaphor could be in its weakness

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JFK said “a rising tide lifts all boats” when speaking about the economy, but when you apply the quote to change, development and organisational culture there’s a couple of prerequisites. Making sure people aren’t stuck in the mud in the first place, or that the organisation isn’t anchored down on too short a rope so it can adapt as the tide rises.

i love how playful metaphors are but yet too often we don’t approach them with the playfulness needed to get to the real learning potential contained. We have all been in the room when someone says ‘but the metaphor is limited’ or ‘the metaphor breaks down when’ or the classic “you’re pushing the metaphor too far”. But if instead of thinking like that we could just kept playing it for a while, exploring its weaknesses as much as its strengths, letting the ideas run, and perhaps it ties into next weeks post on the third stage of ideation. There’s loads more we could do with on the JFK quote, like holes in the boat, stuck in the mud etc to help systems learn and change it’s too easy to say we need to move on and stop playing when there may still be gold in them there hills if we dig deep enough.

Back when I working for the diocese I was at meeting and one of the issues raised was the “mixed ecology” is an oxymoron because an ecology is either mixed or not an ecology. However I still think it’s a helpful phrase and the truth of statement actually offers more resources for a playfulness because often play includes the need to suspend belief for a while, to imagine and laugh at absurdity of a boat so stuck in the mud that it doesn’t rise with tide but slowly becomes swamped whilst Laurel and Hardy do their best to bail it out, remove their shoes and socks until at last they have to swim for it and I’m sure there’s some great learning to be explored by asking questions like what are they using for bailing,  how often are we addressing symptoms rather than cause and amyriad of others.

The death of ideas

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Walking the dog a while back I was taken with the amazing seed heads around and make me think about the scripture “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24). It caught me not just as a verse of hope, but as a pattern that runs deep in how ideas grow.
Since Wallas, described a four-stage model of creativity in his 1926 book The Art of Thought, when we talk about ideas, there are stages that repeat. I particularly like Shannon Hopkins idea of “junk the brain” get all the ideas out fast and furiously to make space for some real out of the box thinking.

One pattern could read along the lines of First is the spark, that flash when the idea is born. Second comes the shaping, when we test and sketch, throw things out to see what sticks, gathering others to work it up. But I think the third stage is stranger, harder and looks suspiciously like death, either in terms of Shannon’s junking all the other ideas or as the third stage of ideation, when the idea no longer belongs to you. When you stop clutching it tightly as your possession and allow it to be buried, entrusted to soil that something new grows. The grain of wheat image is not about efficiency or productivity, it’s about release. It suggests that if we refuse to let go either of the initial ideas or if we insulate and protect our bright spark from change, criticism, or collaboration, it remains alone in its own sterility.

But when we release it, even bury it, something else happens. It may disintegrate in its original form, but in that decomposition potential multiplies. Fruit emerges. The community reshapes it, God breathes on it, and what was once “mine” becomes “ours.” What was a single thought or series dies and seeds a space where movements emerge that belongs to something bigger than we imagined.
In organisational innovation, this feels risky. It is tempting to hold to control structures, to keep ownership, to patent and protect. But ideation as faith practice teaches a different rhythm: hold lightly and let the seed fall. Trust the soil of community and Spirit. The third stage is less about control more about surrender.

I wonder if this is why so many pioneering ideas falter, they never move beyond the hand of the founder. We tend to want the harvest without the letting-go. Yet John’s image is uncompromising: the fruit only comes after the seed dies to its own form.
So perhaps the invitation today is simple but costly. What idea are you still clutching in your hand, afraid to plant? What seed needs releasing into the ground of community, risking loss in order to multiply life? Ideation is not complete until we dare to embrace the third stage, trusting death as the doorway to a new future.

Applied Alchemy

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There’s a contrast between a conversation that helps us see differently and one that helps us do differently. Mentoring and coaching both matter deeply in leadership, but they pull on different threads of the learning tapestry. Traditionally mentoring listens for the larger story, the forming of vocation over time, while coaching sharpens focus toward a defined horizon, an outcome, or a stretch goal. One is relational, developmental, and long-range; the other is structured, performance-centred, and time-bound. However more recent research shows that the two are more linked and building on this we are launching Applied Alchemy.
Eg see “Two sides of the same coin”? Coaching and mentoring and the agentic role of context. Stokes, Fatien Diochon, and Otter  Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA)

Mentoring: The Long Arc of Formation

Historically mentoring tends to unfold slowly, rooted in shared experience. A mentor doesn’t so much “fix” a problem as accompany someone through it, offering wisdom from lived practice. This kind of learning isn’t evaluative, and it resists short-term measurement. It’s formation more than feedback. For church leaders and changemakers, mentoring often nurtures a deeper sense of vocation and alignment: learning to live the questions rather than reach for premature answers.

Coaching: The Mirror of Practice

Coaching, by contrast, often begins with a question like “What needs to change?” and ends with a measurable outcome. The method is deliberate: structured reflection, focused feedback, and immediate application into behaviour. It’s for those moments when leadership feels like standing at the edge of action when clarity and accountability can make the difference between good intentions and tangible progress. Organisations that integrate coaching report gains not just in performance, but in the confidence of those they support.

Applied Alchemy: Content, Application and Accountability

Whist it is often said a good coach can does not need to know the sector someone’s working in to help, the research is clear: learning only changes culture when it’s transferred, when new thinking embeds in practice, so like in most situations context is key. Studies in leadership development show that those who hold themselves accountable for applying new learning are significantly more likely to sustain behavioural change. A 2025 goal-oriented leadership study found that leaders who engaged in reflective, app-based follow-up after training improved in self-reported leadership skills and learning transfer, especially when they tracked and shared how they applied lessons in real work contexts. Güntner, A. V., Heimann, A. L., Kleinmann, M., & Ingold, P. V. (2024). The combined effect of a goal-oriented leadership app and leaders’ mindset in optimising training transfer. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 34(2), 175–187. So if an app helped how much more might a real person? 

Similarly, work on organisational transfer shows that accountability partners and deliberate action planning radically increase the translation of learning into results. Without such follow-up, training dissipates into aspiration rather than action, and real change becomes unachievable. Leadership transformation becomes real when it is woven with everyday practice, when leaders are seen not just as learners, but as stewards of learning in motion. See https://culturepartners.com/insights/leadership-development-building-tomorrows-leaders-for-organizational-success/

So Applied Alchemy seeks to close the gap between Context, Content, Application and Accountably as a specialist service for leaders in the faith. So much has changed in the last decade or so, both organisationally, culturally, and missiologically and it is the leaders who are applied it their learning in their toolkit that making the most headway. We will draw on this content and develop deliberate avenues for application and accountability. In a theological sense being accountable for the learning of the last few decades and beyond is to keep covenant with our own becoming, to recognise and act as if what G-d has revealed and others have discovered matters. It’s a form of stewardship: nurturing the insights entrusted to us until they take root in practice, community, and system.

For leaders today, real change isn’t born in the seminar room; it’s in the moment when learning is owned, enacted, and held in view by others and the communities we are walking alongside. Mentoring helps us remember who we are becoming. Coaching helps us practice who we intend to be.

Applied Alchemy weaves together content, context, mentoring and coaching converting insight into embodiment. Check out https://alchemyedge.substack.com/about for more information on the free and subscription levels.

You can join Applied Alchemy in the way that work for you. The free posts will still land here and in substack but I think people will really like the DIP – A monthly Applied Alchemy Leadership, Systems and Change programme that examines the free content with relevant theory with practical application leadership ideas. It also includes Applied Alchemy Questions prompts, Postures and Practices to adopt, and an Accountability Checklist for you to embed in your situation and at your own pace.

First ones will go live in November and you can subscribe for free here or  via https://alchemyedge.substack.com/subscribe?params=%5Bobject%20Object%5D

 

 

The changing face of trickster in systems change

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Sunday Papers turned 21 last month and so I thought I would look back through some of the themes that have emerged over the years and the 950 or so blogposts. The figure of the trickster has been a restless but pretty constant companion, sometimes provocateur, sometimes guide, sometimes the shadow in the corner when certainty threatens to harden. Journeying back through the archive, I notice how my use of “trickster” has itself been tricky: adapting, morphing, much as the trickster does, to the movements and moods of the times and the evolving questions of church, systems, and cultural renewal. Gathering these together we can see her different guises and learn a few lessons along the way. 

Trickster as Disruption: Stirring the Comfortable

In the early days, trickster arrived in my writing as disturbance. Rooted in the stories of Hyde and the many mythic mischief makers, trickster embodied the kind of holy mischief needed to unsettle our ecclesial complacency. I wrote about the discomfort, border-walking, question-posing, edge-dwelling that trickster brings to stagnant communities. Trickster was the strange guest, misunderstood and sometimes unwelcome, who moved the conversation from comfort to confrontation (which probably also reflects my life stage at the time).

There is a necessary place for this sort of energy in organisations and systems facing calcification, when the status quo is defended with greater force than the call of the gospel or the pulse of life. In this stage, trickster is a mirror to stuckness and a living question mark for institutional “wisdom.” Trickster’s value here is not so much in having answers, but in disrupting, and simply tearing open space for something unexpected to begin.

Trickster as Emergence: The Playful Edge of Creativity

As time went on, my engagement with emergence deepened. Trickster moved from being merely an irritant to something generative, a figure not only to challenge boundaries, but to create new ones, or dissolve them long enough for new forms to emerge. The conversations about “emergent church” and “grace spaces” that led to Here Be Dragons revealed the need to dwell not just at the border, but also in the middle, where the boundaries blur and creation teems.

Here, trickster’s play becomes vital. The themes shifted: less about simply sabotaging structure, more about risking improvisation, learning from ambiguity, and allowing the uncomfortable laughter that comes when certainty recedes. Surprisingly, trickster’s lessons in play, parody, and improvisation offered a source of hope and resilience, essential for organisations learning to let go of the need for control and to make space for emergence.

Trickster as Companion: Deep Listening and Systemic Renewal

In more recent years, a subtler, deeper trickster has come to the fore. No longer relegated only to the borders or eruptions of crisis, this trickster appears as a companion in the slow, ongoing renewals of system and spirit. I found myself drawing on trickster stories not just for their disruptive potential, but as a wisdom tradition for co-creative leadership, deep listening, and navigating unpredictable terrain.

Now, trickster is invoked to remind leaders and communities that true transformation happens in liminal space, between the old and not-yet, in stories shared, questions asked, and boundaries re-imagined. The work is less about subversion for its own sake and more about fostering an adaptive, generative ecology where fresh forms of church and meaning can be discovered. Trickster joins the circle as both risk and companion: an invitation to stay open, responsive, and alive to the wild grace of emergence.

Using Trickster in Organisational Change: Practical Insights

Looking back, I see that the trickster’s role shifts with the system’s need:

• When a community is stuck or stagnant, trickster shakes the ground, challenging, exposing, disrupting.

• In seasons of uncertainty or growth, trickster invites play, risk, and improvisational imagination needed for the new to emerge.

• As change matures and practice deepens, trickster becomes a reminder to listen to what emerges with humility, to hold structures lightly, and to let stories and edges lead the way toward renewal.

In organisational and systemic change, then, trickster is not a one-off tool but a shape-shifter morphing between clown, sage, and the voice that asks the question no one else dares name. The journey through these stages is itself trickster-like a reminder that creative transformation is rarely linear, often surprising, and always a bit mischievous. So I think we let trickster take us further, rooting practice in tricksteresque space where the grace of emergence calls leaders and communities not just to survive disruption, but to welcome it as the soil in which new worlds may be planted. And in this, perhaps, the trickster makes our world anew, again and again.

 

As part of Alchemy At The Edge I’m thinking of developing three webinars based on these three trickster stages. If you are interested in this please leave me a comment or email me richard@alchemyedge.co.uk 

(The image was my leaving present from the wonderful Emma Richardson.)