Category Archives: Fresh expressions

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.

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.