Category Archives: Fresh expressions

Beyond the “Cool” Church: Pioneering as Theological Reflection (2 of 3)

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In the 1990s, the UK church scene felt like it was holding its breath. The old structures were fraying, and a new movement began to stir. “Alternative Worship” and the “Emerging Church.” To the outsider, it looked like a desperate attempt to be relevant: DJs in the sanctuary and beanbags in the aisles.

But for those of us involved, it felt like a pioneering mission into a new epistemological frontier. We weren’t just changing the music; we were trying to figure out how to be “truth-tellers” in a postmodern culture that had given up on the very idea of Truth.

In the Church of England, speaks of pioneers, as people who “connect with those outside the Church, working alongside them to create fresh expressions of Church in those places. Pioneers are also leaders of innovation, with a gift for seeing what God is doing and responding creatively to it”. I dont think adequacy reflects the Pioneer Charism as it is to focused on practice. For me the contained within the Pioneer Charism is something about not just pushing into new areas of practice but also new ways of thinking and being christian. My own journey into this space was fraught with the same “evangelical-liberal” tension Howatch describes so vividly. I wanted to be faithful to the Gospel (the evangelical impulse) but I couldn’t ignore the complexity of the modern world (the liberal impulse). It wasn’t until I embraced the wider nature of the pioneer charism that I could start to integrate the two and truly start to livie in the fullness of who I was created to be.

It was during this season of “deconstruction” that the need for a spiritual director became undeniable. In Howatch’s Mystical Paths, Nicholas Darrow is a brilliant, charismatic young man who thinks he can handle the spiritual “edges” on his own. He nearly destroys himself in the process. It is only through the guidance of older, wiser “Abbot” figures that he learns to discern the difference between his own ego and the movement of the Spirit.

This mirrored my own experience. To be a “pioneer” is to walk into the fog. Without a director, someone to hold the tension of balance for me, I would have likely drifted into a shallow relativism or retreated into a defensive fundamentalism.

The Emerging Church was an attempt to move from Truth as a proposition to Truth as a language. Drawing on the “cultural-linguistic” model of theology, we began to see that “knowing” the Truth was less like passing a math test and more like learning to speak a mother tongue.

Howatch’s novels capture this perfectly. Her characters don’t find “Truth” by reading a manual; they find it by stumbling through the messy, “Anglican way of being”—participating in the sacraments, engaging in honest (and often painful) confession, and slowly learning the “grammar” of God’s grace.

The overly simplistic critique of the 90s movement was that it became “post-theological”, all style and no substance. This is the danger when pioneering isn’t rooted in theological reflection and connected to the wider charism. However for those of involved it was and still is deeply theological.

If we only innovate in practice (lighting, music, seating) without innovating in our understanding of Truth, we are merely rearranging the deck chairs. The true task of the pioneer and the task of the spiritual director is to look at the specific context (a housing estate, a digital community, a modern office) and ask: “What does the Truth of Christ look like here?”

What the 90s and 00s taught me is that Truth is often more visible from the margins. When you are at the centre of an institution, “Truth” feels like maintenance. But on the edge, you realise that Truth is not something you possess, but something that possesses you.

This brings us back to the Darrow family in Howatch’s saga. They are constantly drawn to the “edges” of psychic experience and social norms. They show us that the way isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about having a structure, (in Anglican terms a liturgy, a director, a community) that allows you to ask the hardest questions, go to new places, the edges of the map without falling off.

In our final post, I will try to synthesize these threads and propose that the resolution to the absolute-relative divide is found not in a “what,” but in a “Who”, the Person of Christ, who is the Truth that moves.

The Prayer of the In-Betweeners

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Way back in the 1990s I wrote a liturgy based on the idea that we were an in-between people. More recently I have discovered more about Bridget of Kildare or St Bridget and I loved how some people see her as someone who inhabited the inbetween spaces. This resonated a lot because of how I have been thinking about the Fresh Expressions strategy and inhabiting the living middle/the ecotone.

So as part of our Leadership Community gathering last week I wrote this reflection/prayer which I called the Prayer of the Inbetween.

God of doorways and crossroads,
of fading embers and kindled flame,
you meet us in the in between spaces,
between the known and the new,
between the gathered church
and the searching world.

We remember Brigid of Kildare,
born on the threshold of a door,
who wove a cross from rushes
and made the ordinary a shelter of grace.

They say that where she walked
through the cold fields of winter,
white snowdrops rose in her footsteps, small lanterns of hope
breaking through frozen ground.

Teach us to walk the in-between places,
between tradition and tomorrow,
between doubt and faith,
between the church doors
and the open road.

let hope rise quietly behind us,
like snowdrops in late winter,
Help us weave signs that point to new life
and notice everyday grace.

Make our hands generous,
our tables wide,
our communities warm as a hearth-fire.

And where we go
in streets, cafés, homes, and thresholds
may your Spirit leave small flowers of grace
growing in the wake of love.

Through Christ,
who walks every road with us.

Amen.

 

A posture for change

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The Church talks a great deal about change. We have strategies for it, consultations about it, anxiety around it, and occasionally conferences dedicated to it. And tbh I’m a great fan of developing a theory of change for organisations. What we rarely develop, however, is a posture for it.

Posture matters in leadership and culture change science, there is a growing recognition that organisations do not primarily change because they adopt new ideas. They change when their underlying habits, reflexes, and shared assumptions shift. It isn’t the new programme that makes the difference; it’s the new way of seeing.

Theologically, that shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus did not begin with a strategy but with a call. When God speaks to Abram in Book of Genesis 12, there is no five-year plan. There is only movement: “Go.” The people of God are formed not as managers of stability but as those attentive enough to move when called and learn on The Way.

The question for the contemporary Church is not simply, What should we do next?
It is, Who are we becoming so we are ready when we see the missio die and we can join in, either because of opportunities or because of a sense seeing?

In my experience, opportunities for renewal seldom arrive neatly labelled and in most cases they are rarley polite.

They appear as disruption. As complaint, a funding crisis, a new housing development on the edge of town, a lay leader with an inconvenient idea.

From a culture change perspective, these moments function as what systems thinkers call “adaptive challenges.” They cannot be solved by technical adjustment alone. They require new learning a level of power relinquishment and often a shift in identity.

And that is precisely where the Church often hesitates. We are guardians of memory we do do hold story, sacrament, and tradition. But when memory becomes preservation it becomes rooted I  fear.

The early church, as described in Acts of the Apostles, was not preserved by its structures rather fuelled by attentiveness. The Spirit disrupts them more often than comforts them. Philip finds himself on a desert road, the whole Peter’s theological framework and worldview is dismantled on a rooftop. Paul’s missionary journeys are redirected mid-course several times

So maybe Change is not primarily structural but spiritual. In organisational language, we speak about “readiness for change.” This is not about capacity alone. It is about trust.

Do people trust one another enough to experiment?
Do they trust leadership enough to risk?
Do they trust God enough to release control?

With trust, even loss can become generative because people don’t fear change they fear loss  The risen Christ still bears scars. Change, in the Christian imagination, is rarely clean. It is redemptive precisely because it carries continuity within transformation.

If we want to be ready for the opportunities that will arise then we must cultivate certain postures long before the moment arrives.

1. Curiosity over defensiveness

Cultures that thrive in change ask better questions. Instead of “How do we stop this?” they ask, “What might God be doing here?” Curiosity disarms anxiety. It slows reactivity. It allows discernment.

2. Distributed ownership

Change science consistently demonstrates that transformation sticks when ownership is shared. If readiness depends on a single heroic leader, it is fragile. If it is embedded in the culture of who we are as church and people it is resilient.

3. Experimentation without panic

Healthy systems run small experiments. They prototype. They learn. They iterate. The Church, at her best, has always done this. Monastic movements, Methodist class meetings, fresh expressions of worship, none began as dominant models. They began as responses. But experimentation requires permission to fail. And failure requires a theology spacious enough to absorb it.

4. Interior grounding

No amount of strategic clarity compensates for unexamined fear and even though people have named that much of the current strategy is rooted in institutional anxiety I’m sill not sure the impact has been fully examined.

If leaders are internally anxious, the system absorbs it. If leaders are grounded, in prayer, in community, in a secure sense of belovedness, the system can use uncertainty well even as an asset. Perhaps solitude and attentiveness need to become not luxuries but infrastructure. The leader who knows they are held does not grasp for control.

Despite my activist nature we do not need to chase every opportunity, readiness is not restlessness. To develop a posture for change is not to become reactive or trend-driven rather it is to become attentive. So when the Spirit disturbs our settled patterns our posture sees the opportunity.

Even before opportunity arises formation will shapes the future and the future of the Church is being formed long before it is revealed. In quiet PCC meetings we build trust, we form leaders who choose prayer over panic and congregations who practise curiosity rather than complaint. Let’s grow communities willing to bless what is emerging without clinging to what is fading. Change readiness is not achieved through urgency but cultivated through formation. The question, then, is not whether change will come but whether we will have become the kind of people who can recognise it as gift rather than threat.

To places we have never been before

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Paul Bradbury’s recent reflection on moving beyond empire reminds us how deeply Western mission has been entangled with universalising instincts, the drive to export methods, models, or mindsets far beyond where they first belonged. His question, “How might we save the world without conquering it?” pushes us toward a more humble, localised, and participatory understanding of mission. It’s a call that echoes strongly with what I argued in my previous post what works, works because it is contextual.

If empire seeks control of space, then contextual mission seeks communion IN space. In other words, mission faithful to the gospel begins not with scale but with soil. It roots itself in place but years of contextual mission,following the missio dei and the incarnation has taught us place needs to be understood broadly. Contextually shaped mission is about both “communities of place” and “communities of interest”, and in both these, space matters or perhaps more precisely the space between matters.

Space as the Ground of Context

For communities of place, context is pretty straight forward it’s bounded by postcodes, pavements, local histories, and particular faces. Here, “listening to context” means walking the streets, dwelling among, noticing the patterns of belonging and exclusion, paying attention to how the Spirit stirs through daily life. The missional question is spatial: How is God already at work here?

But the same is true for communities of interest those gathered by vocation, affinity, digital connection, or shared passion. These are not disembodied spaces; they are differently embodied. They occupy networked space, an online forum, a workplace, a music scene, a shared narrative world. These spaces, too, have boundaries, cultures, and ecologies of meaning that also require listening, care, and presence.

To be contextual here means learning the topography of these less tangible places the rituals that shape belonging, the language that signals trust, the injustices and hopes that animate people. This too is place work. Contextual mission is not about being “place-based” versus “network-based”; it is about recognising that space and particularly the space in between is the texture of all context.

The Space Between: From Ownership to Participation

Empire’s imagination is to fill space to occupy, to own, to organise territory. Contextual imagination leaves space, space for others to speak, for grace to emerge, for co-creation. This is not the space of empire, this is the space of incarnation: God dwelling, not dominating; participating, not possessing. 

In our current moment, where both geography and culture feel unsettled, perhaps the task is not to create new models of church or even parish, but to nurture new ecologies of space, perhaps even Brave Spaces of Community and Conversation, porous enough to hold the complexity of both rooted neighbourhoods and fluid networks of meaning.

Context is not an afterthought, It isthe space where the gospel takes shape. So maybe the better question isn’t simply “What works?” but “Where does mission dwell?” Because where mission dwells, (whether a community of place or interest)  determines how God’s story is spoken and heard, and when we listen and join in we go to a new place we have been before. 

Why What Works, Works: Contextual Mission and the Shape of Faithful Innovation

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We know, at least intuitively, that some things work in mission and some don’t. We can point to Bubble Church, Messy Church, particular church plants, fresh expressions that have taken root and borne fruit. The temptation is to move too quickly from that observation to replication: this works, therefore let’s do more of it. But that instinct, while understandable, misses the deeper truth. What works, works because at its heart is contextual mission.

The truth is to be effective it has to be about contextual mission. A basic understanding of systems evens backs this up for Worship First church planting models.  This is something I have reflected on before using the Cynefin framework. In the bottom right-hand corner of Cynefin, the simple domain, we are dealing with contexts where cause and effect can readily understood, so worship first large scale plants can work, because you know the soil (context) they need to be planted in. Ie Resource Churches is areas with high student numbers, where the employees suit the context.  You cannot impose a solution from elsewhere and expect predictable results in the Complicated Zone, here you need contextual adaption eg worship first church plants in a market town may need a families worker instead of a student worker.  Then in the Complex and Chaotic Zones context comes even more to the fore, you probe, sense, and respond. You listen. You pay attention. You act humbly and experimentally and so Listening or Community Church planting, at its best, lives precisely here. 

This all works not because any of it follows a universal template, but because it all begins with a level contextual awareness. The plant knows where it is, who it is among, and what the Spirit might already be doing there. That attentiveness to context is not incidental; it is the very reason fruitfulness becomes possible.

At the heart of the things that work in mission is not a model but a posture: listening to the Missio Dei and the context. 

Take Bubble Church as an example. One could argue quite clearly that Bubble Church works because it is contextual mission. It is not magic, nor is it universally transferable. It works because local vicars and clergy have listened carefully to their context, often noticing young families on the fringes of church life, parents seeking connection, children needing space to be themselves, and have identified Bubble Church as a resource that fits. The model is then brought in not as a franchise, but as a contextual response. The same can be said of Messy Church. Its effectiveness lies not in crayons and craft tables per se, but in the way it emerged from listening: to families, to patterns of time poverty, to the desire for intergenerational belonging that does not rely on cultural fluency with inherited church. Messy Church is context-first mission that happened to crystallise into a recognisable form.

Even in church planting circles that talk about being “worship first,” the same dynamic is at play, whether or not it is always acknowledged. Worship-first plants do not appear randomly (or if they do they tend to fail). They are often planted into areas with high student populations, or significant numbers of young adults, or cultures where music and gathering carry particular social weight. The decision to centre worship is might itself be more the result of contextual listening than many assume. 

This is why fresh expressions remain so important. Fresh expressions are not primarily about novelty, nor about ecclesial experimentation for its own sake. They are about starting with context. They are about taking seriously the conviction that there is no such thing as a generic mission field, and therefore no such thing as a one-size-fits-all church.

I have argued that mission takes place within complex, adaptive systems, that culture is semiotic. Therefore, Churches, neighbourhoods, cultures, and networks are not machines to be engineered but living systems to be engaged. Within that framing, More recently I have suggested that faithful mission involves thinking carefully about how we scale: not just out, but deep and up as well.

Scaling out: replicating a model in new places, can be fruitful, but only when accompanied by contextual discernment. Scaling deep is about embedding practices, values, and theological depth within a particular place, allowing mission to become part of the local ecology rather than an imported programme. Scaling up involves influencing wider systems, structures, and cultures, enabling learning and resources to flow without flattening difference.

The common thread running through all of this is about taking context seriously. The danger comes when we adopt a consumerist logic: identifying a successful model and attempting to roll it out indiscriminately. Scaling Bubble Church simply because Bubble Church “works” risks misunderstanding why it worked in the first place. Without the right context, without listening, without local ownership, the model becomes hollow. It may look right, but it will lack life and longevity. 

At the heart of all good mission is context. Not context as a box to be ticked in a planning document, but context as a theological commitment: the belief that God has taken the particular (be that place or interest) seriously enough to become incarnate, and therefore we must do the same. Contextual mission is not a strategy; it is a way of seeing.

If we want to be faithful rather than fashionable, fruitful rather than frantic, then the task before us is not to find the next thing that works and copy it. It is to cultivate communities that know how to listen to God, to place, to people and have the courage to respond in ways that may look very different from one context to another. That, ultimately, is why what works, works.

Cooperation: The Power of Simple Alliances

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The final part of the series recognises that sometimes, the most power-packed relationships are the simplest or most beautiful, birds that clean ticks off a buffalo, humans sharing tools across fences. Cooperation in a mixed ecology church is much the same: it’s about formulating pragmatic, focused alliances without losing identity. Simple and beautiful but not always easy.

Leadership and systems theory show us that cooperation builds bridges, often short-term, purpose-driven, yet vital for system health. Leaders who foster these alliances resist the temptation to control everything. Instead, they create space for shared missions, joint projects around community needs, shared resources, or simple support networks. Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems reminds us “The strength of a system lies in its ability to form loose, strategic connections, without the burden of full integration.”
As resources become depleted cooperation is popping up all over the place. Churches agreeing to run a marketplace for refugee families, each bringing what they have without merging their core identities. These bridges allow each expression to flourish in its own way, gaining new insights, reinforcing trust, and expanding capacity.

Leadership involves recognising the right moments for collaboration, being clear about shared goals, and celebrating joint achievement. It’s also about listening deeply to what each part offers and needs, cultivating a culture of trust and mutual encouragement.
For the church as a whole, cooperation is an ongoing practice. It reminds us that living in community isn’t about uniformity, but about respecting each other’s strengths and sharing the load for the common good.

Competition, Can Rivalries Spark Renewal

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The fourth in the series recognises that Competition is a difficult word for the church. In the wild, animals compete for food and territory, and this tension drives adaptation. But in the church, competition often feels like a zero-sum game, who’s in charge, who gets the most members, who has the best worship, more often fuelled by anxiety than faith. That anxiety can choke creativity, turning vibrant missions into mini turf wars.
Most leadership and systems theory tell us that a little healthy tension can actually sharpen identity and purpose. When churches see competition as a sign they’re uniquely called to a specific community rather than a threat, it becomes a motivator for innovation. Differentiation becomes a deliberate act of mission, each expression carving out its niche while still remaining connected to the larger body.

“Healthy organizations are understood not by their sameness but by their capacity to differentiate and adapt.”—Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline.
A good example is church communities that focus on specific demographics, one for families, another for artists, another for students, each pursuing its calling without envy or encroachment. Leaders who nurture this healthy diversity, rather than fear it, foster resilience and growth. It’s about creating a culture where competition spurs mutual encouragement, not jealousy or conflict.

The challenge lies in maintaining clarity amidst tension. Leaders must set clear boundaries of mission, respect differences, and celebrate each community’s unique contribution. And they must do it with humility, acknowledging that competition is a signal to sharpen the focus, not a reason to divide. In the end, competition when set alongside the other ecological discussed in the previous post, can be a crucible for innovation, clarity and sustainability. It reminds us that the church’s strength isn’t uniformity but a diversity of callings that, when held well, strengthen the whole.

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.

Mutualism the role of receptivity.

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Mutuality is probably the most familiar ecological relationship, The bee and the blossom have danced their mutual dance for millennia. One takes nectar, the other spreads pollen, and both grow stronger for the exchange. Mutualism in ecology is a relationship where both parties benefit, a natural rhythm of give and take. For the mixed ecology church, this offers a clear picture of how inherited churches and fresh expressions can thrive not in competition but in caring exchange.

Leadership scholars remind us that healthy reciprocal relationships are foundational to resilience and growth. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory highlights how positive two-way interactions create feedback loops that reinforce systems stability and adaptability. It’s not about one part sacrificing for the other; it’s about flourishing together.
This means mentoring relationships where experienced leaders offer wisdom while learning from innovative newcomers. It means sharing spaces so each can try new things, praying with and for one another, and commissioning each other’s gifts. This is a leadership lived in collaboration, vulnerability, and mutual respect.

But reciprocity is nuanced. It demands attentiveness and humility, otherwise, mutuality slips into one-sided giving or a transactional exchanges that drain rather than renew. It s why pioneers need the relationship with the system even though it maybe tough going and let’s be honest it’s probably tough for everyone whether in a time honoured or emerging context. Adaptive leadership, as described by Heifetz, urges leaders to hold these tensions and promote a culture of feedback and shared learning, recognising that both parties must gain to sustain the whole.
In practice, this could look like regular forums where diverse church expressions share stories, resources, and listen deeply to one another’s needs and hopes. It’s a posture of mutual nurture, a feedback loop that can be fragile but life-giving.

If you imagine a garden, mutualism is the intertwined roots beneath the soil, often unseen, but vital to the flourishing of every shoot and leaf above.