Category Archives: Mixed ecology

Reframing Discipleship

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I’ve recently been asked to speak at a conference on discipleship and the way my brain works means when I’m into a subject I start seeing connections every where. So Im finding myself following two conversations happening in British Christianity right now that belong together but rarely meet.

The first is about how the church speaks into public life,how Christians engage politics, culture, and the fractured common good without either retreating into irrelevance or baptising the spirit of the age. Mark Clavier has written compellingly about this recently, arguing that what the church needs is not better arguments but a more credible common life: communities so genuinely shaped by the gospel that their public witness carries weight because of what they are, not merely what they say.

The second conversation has been quietly unravelling across the edges of the church for thirty years. It began in the alt.worship and Emerging Church movements, continued through Fresh Expressions and pioneer ministry, and asks a harder question: not just how the church speaks to the world, but how the church engages and forms people at all.

My contention is that these conversations have the same root, and until we learn to hold them together in dialogue we will make little real progress.

The Half-Finished Reformation

The Emerging Church movement did something genuinely important. It took culture seriously,not as a threat to be managed, but as the medium through which people actually live, encounter God, and become themselves. It recovered missio dei thinking: the idea that God is already present and active in the world before the church arrives, and that faithful mission begins not with proclamation but with attention. It rediscovered liturgical experimentation, contemplative practice, radical hospitality, and the prophetic edge of the tradition.

But there was a fault line running through it that we have not yet fully named.

In too many cases, culture was taken seriously as a technology for mission,as the means by which the church could become relevant enough to be heard,while the inherited content of discipleship remained largely untouched. The worship changed. The coffee improved. The lighting got darker and the music more atmospheric. But the underlying assumption,that the church holds the truth which it then pours into people,quietly persisted. Missional humility shaped the front door, but not the whole house.

The missio dei was applied to evangelism. It was not, for the most part, applied to formation.

And this matters, because what the missio dei requires is not just that we listen before we speak in the evangelistic encounter. It requires that we be genuinely changed by what we hear,that our theology, our practice, our understanding of God is reformed by what the Spirit is already doing in the lives of those who are not yet, or not yet fully, inside the tradition. The listening is not a tactic. It is an epistemological commitment. It is the belief that truth is not simply possessed by the church and dispensed to others, but that it emerges,partially, provisionally, always requiring further reformation,in the encounter between the tradition and the world.

This is not theological relativism. It is the recovery of a genuinely reforming gospel: semper reformanda, always being reformed.

The Inherited Church’s Own Wound

But this critique is not only for the emerging and fresh expressions stream. The inherited church has its own version of the same problem, and Clavier’s essay names it precisely, even if he stops short of tracing it to this particular root.

He writes that what is needed is not better techniques of political communication but the recovery of the church’s “common life”,its integrity, its distinctiveness, its capacity to form communities that embody something recognisably different from the surrounding culture. He is absolutely right. But the question he invites, and which presses further, is this: what kind of formation produces that kind of community?

If the answer is the existing curriculum,the same confirmation classes, the same Alpha courses, the same preaching-centred model of instruction,then we are asking formation to produce transformation it is structurally incapable of delivering. We are hoping the old pedagogy will produce the new community. It won’t.

Clavier observes that in the assisted dying debate, the bishops who spoke most compellingly did so because of their “long pastoral familiarity with death and dying,their proximity to suffering.” What formed them was not primarily the lecture theatre but the encounter. The living and dying of real people in their pastoral care reformed their theology, their instincts, their way of speaking. That is exactly the point. Presence and attentiveness shaped them.

But our discipleship systems rarely model this. They model transmission: the expert to the novice, the formed to the unformed, the front to the rest. Formation happens at people rather than withthem and from the edges of their experience.

What Luke 5 Teaches Us About Formation

The image I keep returning to is Luke 5. Jesus borrows Simon’s boat. The Son of God, at the beginning of his ministry, is dependent. He does not arrive with a programme. He improvises with what is to hand. When he sends Simon out into the deep, he does not override Simon’s resistance,he holds the tension, and waits for Simon to risk something from his own fragile agency.

The discipleship does not come from the assertion of authority. It comes from the creation of a space in which the other person takes the risk.

And it is worth remembering what immediately precedes this scene: Jesus has already been to his hometown synagogue, announced his manifesto from Isaiah, and nearly been thrown off a cliff for it. Solo expertise, the confident assertion of authorised knowledge, nearly got him killed. What we see at the lakeside is a pivot: slower, collaborative, beginning not with proclamation but with borrowing. The missional posture and the formational posture are, in the end, the same posture.

This is the posture our discipleship has largely lost. We have confused teaching with discipleship. We have mistaken the transmission of content for the formation of persons.

The 2.5 Problem

Here is a number that should trouble us more than it does.

Fresh Expressions research consistently shows that for every person from a church background in a fresh expression of church, approximately 2.5 come from outside the tradition,from the de-churched or the never-churched. These are people who are being formed in faith in communities where the majority of voices are not carrying inherited Christian frameworks. They are, in the fullest sense, disciples-in-formation who are bringing their own encounter with God into the community,an encounter that precedes and often exceeds what we might have expected.

If we take seriously that the Spirit is at work in those people before they arrive,and we must take this seriously if we believe anything about missio dei,then those 2.5 people are not raw material to be formed. They are teachers as well as learners. They carry knowledge about God that the person who has read the Bible a hundred times may not have. The question “what are you noticing?” turns out to be a more theologically charged question than any catechism.

Our discipleship structures are not designed to receive this. They are designed to transmit, not to be reformed by what arrives at the edge.

Orthodoxy as Journey, Not Fortress

This brings us to perhaps the most uncomfortable claim: that a genuinely reforming approach to discipleship means allowing our orthodoxy itself to be reformed,not abandoned, but continually unfolded,through the encounter with those who come from outside.

The Reformation instinct was never simply back to the sources as a conservative retrieval. It was ever being reformed as a permanent posture of the church before the living Word. The tragedy is that most of what passes for formation in inherited church, and much of what was practiced in the emerging church too, treats orthodoxy as a deposit to be transmitted rather than a living tradition to be inhabited and extended.

When orthodoxy becomes a fortress to be defended rather than a journey to be shared, it produces disciples who are anxious rather than rooted, brittle rather than resilient. They can articulate the propositions but they cannot bear the weight of genuine encounter with difference, with doubt, with the person who says I’m not sure I believe, but something is happening in me.

What if that person is not a problem to be solved but a gift to be received?

What if the person whose spirituality has been shaped entirely outside our tradition,who has practised the silence, the justice, the solidarity of Jesus before they could name it,is actually offering us a fuller picture of God than we currently hold?

This is not a call to theological vagueness. It is a call to theological confidence of a different kind: the kind that does not need to control the encounter because it trusts that God is present in it.

The Double Dividend

If this account is right, then the recovery of a genuinely missional, listening-first approach to discipleship does not just address the Fresh Expressions challenge of evangelism and belonging. It addresses exactly the challenge Clavier identifies for the church’s credibility in public life.

The communities Clavier hopes for,communities of genuine trust, mutual obligation, and practiced virtue; communities that embody something recognisably different from the hyper-individualism of consumer culture,are not produced by better theological education alone. They are produced by communities that have learned to be genuinely changed by one another. That have learned to receive the knowledge and experience of the newest, least-formed member as a gift. That practice the epistemological humility which is finally just another name for love.

A church that has learned to listen first in its formation will also listen first in its engagement with the world. The humility is not a tactic. It is a character. And character is formed, or it is not formed at all.

The church’s crisis of public credibility and the church’s crisis of formational imagination are the same crisis. We have protected our position,in culture, in doctrine, in the pedagogical arrangement of the room,rather than trusting the reforming power of the gospel to do its work through genuine encounter.

What Would This Look Like?

A few possibilities, across both streams.

But first, a prior commitment that shapes all of them. The Emerging Church was right to take culture seriously. Its error was treating culture primarily as a technology,a delivery mechanism for mission, a way of lowering the threshold so that the real content could get through. What it did not fully follow through was the more radical claim: that culture is sacred. Not because everything in it is good, but because it is the medium in which image-bearers of God are already living, already seeking, already partially receiving what God is giving. Every person who comes into a process of discipleship arrives bearing the imago dei,already marked by God, already in some way responsive to the divine, already shaped by the Spirit’s work in the life, relationships, and culture that formed them long before the church arrived. If we believe this, then culture is not the obstacle to be overcome before formation can begin. It is the place where formation has already begun. Our task is not to replace it but to receive it,to ask what God has already been doing in this person, in this community, in this cultural moment,and to let that question reform us as much as it opens them.

With that commitment in place, some practical directions:

In inherited church: preaching and teaching that genuinely positions itself as invitation rather than instruction,that makes space for congregational encounter with the text, that asks “what are you noticing?” rather than “here is what this means.” This isn’t a lowering of theological ambition; it is the recognition that the imago dei in the person in the pew means they are already a bearer of insight, not merely a recipient of it. Not the abandonment of theological depth, but its recovery in relational and participatory form.

In fresh expressions and pioneer communities: an explicit commitment that the people who arrive from outside the tradition are not just the object of mission but agents of ongoing revelation. Their culture,however unfamiliar to us,carries the sacred weight of lives in which God has been present. Formation structures that are built to receive and be reformed by their insight do not simply make the newcomer feel welcome; they honour the imago dei they carry and take seriously the Spirit who got there before us. The 50-year fresh expressions that have lasted have done so precisely because they kept learning from those at the edge.

In theological education and ordination training: a pedagogy that models what it teaches. If we want leaders who can hold genuine encounter with the other, we need formation processes that do not merely transmit the tradition but demonstrate what it looks like to be changed by it. This means training that takes cultural context not as background noise but as theological data,that asks what God is already doing in the culture of those being served, and expects that question to shape the minister, not just the ministry.

In public engagement: a recognition that the church’s witness in the political sphere will only be as credible as the quality of formation that produces it. The bishops who speak with authority are those who have been formed by pastoral presence and genuine encounter,with suffering, with difference, with the sacred weight of other people’s lives in cultures not their own. That formation cannot be manufactured after the fact. It has to be built into the ordinary life of the community, from the beginning, by communities that have learned to see the imago dei in those they are most tempted to speak past.

Conclusion: The Empty Hand

Jesus in the wilderness refuses three shortcuts: to provide, to perform, to possess. He chooses the empty hand.

The church’s temptation,in its public witness, in its engagement with culture, in its approach to formation,is the same three shortcuts. To have all the answers. To perform expertise. To possess the truth.

The recovery we need is not a new programme. It is a posture. The posture of the one who borrows a boat before they preach. Who waits for the other to risk something. Who is genuinely surprised by what emerges from the deep.

The newest, most uncertain voice in the room might be the one who knows which way the Spirit is moving.

We have built our discipleship to transmit what we know. We need to rebuild it to receive what we do not yet know,confident, finally, that the God who is already in the world ahead of us is more than capable of meeting us there.

Semper reformanda. Always being reformed.

That is not a concession to the spirit of the age. It is the oldest claim of the gospel.

Comments and responses welcome. This piece draws on conversations in the Fresh Expressions and Emerging Church traditions, and engages with recent writing by Mark Clavier (Well-Tempered) HERE and Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi). HERE

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.

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.