Monthly Archives: November 2025

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.

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.