I’m taking a bit of a posting break to think through some of the Theological ideas behind many of my recent posts and do a bit more work on process v radical theology and contextual mission so will be back in September
On a break
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Monthly Archives: July 2026
The path is a gritty teacher
The way is calling me to take of my shoes,
not to humble me,
but to keep me honest
about the distance between what i believe
and what I am willing to feel.
So I walk barefoot,
and the dust rises to meet me,
small circles lifting with every step,
hanging a moment in the light
before they fall,
dancing not because they mean to,
but because motion is the only way
dust knows how to pray.
The sole learns before the soul does.
A stone presses its hard truth
into the part of me that touches earth,
and I embrace the grit because some things are only understood from underneath.
I am not walking toward enlightenment.
I am wearing it into the arches of my feet,
the outer path and the inner ache
rubbing against each other
until they become one.
Remember you are dust, someone once said,
and so I seek oneness with this least regarded thing.
Dust whispers catch the light and turn,
we trace a shape across the road
slowly settles together we become part of the path.
The path does not reward the ones who grip it hardest.
so let your hands go loose,
stop carrying the map like a cross
and feel the weight carrying nothing.
There is grace in this dust, this path and in each step,
Let each step rise and settle
Let the path rise and fall
Let the dust dance and rest
until it is a single liturgy and the sole and soul become one.
Speed v depth
I came across a video of Richard Osmond talking about speed of thought v depth of thought, and how he as a public figure could give opinions on things and be listened to because society rewards sped of thought. However he was honest that he has friends who went into academia who offer better options but won’t get heard because in our sound bite society we don’t hang around for those coming at things with depth of thought.
The person who speaks first, projects certainty, and fills silence with fluent answers tends to rise in politics, in business, in pulpits, in boardrooms. We read their confidence as competence. We mistake their speed for intelligence. And research seems to show that in doing so, we consistently hand influence to the wrong people.
Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, spent decades demonstrating that the human brain operates in two modes: fast, intuitive thinking that produces instant, emotionally compelling answers; and slow, deliberate thinking that is harder, messier, and far more likely to get things right. I wonder if Keir Starmer has fallen in part because of this. The tragedy of modern life is that we have constructed nearly every significant institution, democratic debate, media commentary, church leadership, corporate decision-making, around the first mode, while systematically excluding people who operate in the second.
The fast thinker performs well. They give TED talks. They win debates. They preach sermons that fill seats. But research consistently shows that their confidence outstrips their accuracy. Medical experts who were completely certain about diagnoses were wrong forty percent of the time. CFO surveys showed that the most confident financial forecasters had predictions that correlated with actual outcomes at almost zero. High confidence, it turns out, is a feeling, not evidence that the story is true.
Deep thinkers meanwhile tend to hesitate, qualify, and acknowledge complexity. These are intellectual virtues, but they read as weakness in a performance culture. So the deep thinker is passed over. The room moves on. The fast thinker’s answer becomes the decision.
In faith communities this dynamic becomes particularly dangerous. Spiritual authority can be weaponised to insulate fast-thinking leaders from the accountability that might correct them. Charisma gets mistaken for anointing. The very traditions that most commend humility, silence, and patient discernment often still promote the rhetorically gifted.
The answer is not to silence fast thinkers. Speed and intuition have genuine value. The answer is to design better spaces, that slow the room down, and draw out the quieter voice, and that require confident facilitation and well designed process.
Three Ways to Create Spaces Where All Voices Matter
1. Introduce the pause before the vote. Build in period of written reflection before any discussion moves to decision. Asking people to write their response before speaking levels the field dramatically, it gives the deep thinker time to surface their best thinking, and it prevents the fast thinker’s first answer from dictating everyone else’s.
2. Name the dynamic openly. Most groups do not realise they are systematically amplifying certain voices. Facilitators and chairs can change this simply by naming it “we’ve heard from several people quickly; let’s deliberately invite those who haven’t spoken”. Treat silence not as absence of thought but as thought in progress. Cultures that normalise saying “I need more time on this” produce better outcomes than those that treat hesitation as weakness.
3. Separate generation from evaluation. One of the most effective tools in collaborative decision-making is to split the process: first gather all ideas without comment or critique, then evaluate them. This prevents the fast thinker’s loudly stated position from shutting down contributions before they are even made. In faith settings specifically, this means ensuring that discernment processes are not dominated by whoever speaks most authoritatively, but space is structured so that every voice, including the tentative, the marginal, and the slow reaches the table before the group reaches a conclusion.
The wisest person in the room is often the quietest. The question is whether we have built rooms where they can be heard
You don’t want a bike. You want to belong.
There’s a TikTok doing the rounds about the rise and fall of Peloton. It’s framed as a business story. But it’s really about something much older and more interesting than that.
Peloton didn’t sell exercise bikes. At its peak it sold the feeling of belonging to something. The instructors built real relationships through social content. Riders became fans. Fans became a community. And that community started to feel like something people didn’t want to miss. They set their alarms early not to burn calories but to be with people they felt they knew.
When the pandemic hit and the world contracted, Peloton exploded. Not because people needed fitness. Because they were starving to be somewhere that felt like theirs.
When it fell apart, people didn’t grieve the product. They grieved each other.
We’re living through a belonging crisis. Loneliness is now a public health emergency. Streets where people don’t know each other’s names. Online spaces that simulate connection while quietly making it worse. People are more reachable than ever and more alone than ever.
And into that, something is possible. Not a programme. Not a platform. Just genuine human presence. The kind of thing that forms around a shared table or a regular walk or a conversation that goes somewhere real. Belonging that costs something because it’s actual.
The missional question Peloton accidentally poses is this: if a company selling fitness equipment can create that depth of community, what does it say about the rest of us who claim to be in the business of human flourishing?
Because here’s the uncomfortable bit. Most churches are not actually offering belonging. They’re offering belonging with an asterisk. Come as you are, yes. But come to our thing, on our terms, at our times, with our language, towards our agenda. The community is real but it is also a means to an end. And people can feel that. They can feel when they are being welcomed and when they are being recruited.
Peloton at its best didn’t feel like that. The instructors weren’t trying to convert anyone. They were just genuinely present, and people came back because of it. When the company started optimising for growth over connection, the spell broke. Users noticed before the share price did.
The challenge for anyone serious about community beyond their own walls is to ask honestly whether the belonging they offer is truly unconditional. Not belonging that leads somewhere else. Not belonging as a pipeline. Just belonging. Full stop. The kind that doesn’t need you to become something other than what you already are in order to stay.
That is much harder than it sounds. And most of us, if we’re honest, haven’t got there yet.