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.

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.

The death of ideas

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Walking the dog a while back I was taken with the amazing seed heads around and make me think about the scripture “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24). It caught me not just as a verse of hope, but as a pattern that runs deep in how ideas grow.
Since Wallas, described a four-stage model of creativity in his 1926 book The Art of Thought, when we talk about ideas, there are stages that repeat. I particularly like Shannon Hopkins idea of “junk the brain” get all the ideas out fast and furiously to make space for some real out of the box thinking.

One pattern could read along the lines of First is the spark, that flash when the idea is born. Second comes the shaping, when we test and sketch, throw things out to see what sticks, gathering others to work it up. But I think the third stage is stranger, harder and looks suspiciously like death, either in terms of Shannon’s junking all the other ideas or as the third stage of ideation, when the idea no longer belongs to you. When you stop clutching it tightly as your possession and allow it to be buried, entrusted to soil that something new grows. The grain of wheat image is not about efficiency or productivity, it’s about release. It suggests that if we refuse to let go either of the initial ideas or if we insulate and protect our bright spark from change, criticism, or collaboration, it remains alone in its own sterility.

But when we release it, even bury it, something else happens. It may disintegrate in its original form, but in that decomposition potential multiplies. Fruit emerges. The community reshapes it, God breathes on it, and what was once “mine” becomes “ours.” What was a single thought or series dies and seeds a space where movements emerge that belongs to something bigger than we imagined.
In organisational innovation, this feels risky. It is tempting to hold to control structures, to keep ownership, to patent and protect. But ideation as faith practice teaches a different rhythm: hold lightly and let the seed fall. Trust the soil of community and Spirit. The third stage is less about control more about surrender.

I wonder if this is why so many pioneering ideas falter, they never move beyond the hand of the founder. We tend to want the harvest without the letting-go. Yet John’s image is uncompromising: the fruit only comes after the seed dies to its own form.
So perhaps the invitation today is simple but costly. What idea are you still clutching in your hand, afraid to plant? What seed needs releasing into the ground of community, risking loss in order to multiply life? Ideation is not complete until we dare to embrace the third stage, trusting death as the doorway to a new future.

Applied Alchemy

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There’s a contrast between a conversation that helps us see differently and one that helps us do differently. Mentoring and coaching both matter deeply in leadership, but they pull on different threads of the learning tapestry. Traditionally mentoring listens for the larger story, the forming of vocation over time, while coaching sharpens focus toward a defined horizon, an outcome, or a stretch goal. One is relational, developmental, and long-range; the other is structured, performance-centred, and time-bound. However more recent research shows that the two are more linked and building on this we are launching Applied Alchemy.
Eg see “Two sides of the same coin”? Coaching and mentoring and the agentic role of context. Stokes, Fatien Diochon, and Otter  Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA)

Mentoring: The Long Arc of Formation

Historically mentoring tends to unfold slowly, rooted in shared experience. A mentor doesn’t so much “fix” a problem as accompany someone through it, offering wisdom from lived practice. This kind of learning isn’t evaluative, and it resists short-term measurement. It’s formation more than feedback. For church leaders and changemakers, mentoring often nurtures a deeper sense of vocation and alignment: learning to live the questions rather than reach for premature answers.

Coaching: The Mirror of Practice

Coaching, by contrast, often begins with a question like “What needs to change?” and ends with a measurable outcome. The method is deliberate: structured reflection, focused feedback, and immediate application into behaviour. It’s for those moments when leadership feels like standing at the edge of action when clarity and accountability can make the difference between good intentions and tangible progress. Organisations that integrate coaching report gains not just in performance, but in the confidence of those they support.

Applied Alchemy: Content, Application and Accountability

Whist it is often said a good coach can does not need to know the sector someone’s working in to help, the research is clear: learning only changes culture when it’s transferred, when new thinking embeds in practice, so like in most situations context is key. Studies in leadership development show that those who hold themselves accountable for applying new learning are significantly more likely to sustain behavioural change. A 2025 goal-oriented leadership study found that leaders who engaged in reflective, app-based follow-up after training improved in self-reported leadership skills and learning transfer, especially when they tracked and shared how they applied lessons in real work contexts. Güntner, A. V., Heimann, A. L., Kleinmann, M., & Ingold, P. V. (2024). The combined effect of a goal-oriented leadership app and leaders’ mindset in optimising training transfer. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 34(2), 175–187. So if an app helped how much more might a real person? 

Similarly, work on organisational transfer shows that accountability partners and deliberate action planning radically increase the translation of learning into results. Without such follow-up, training dissipates into aspiration rather than action, and real change becomes unachievable. Leadership transformation becomes real when it is woven with everyday practice, when leaders are seen not just as learners, but as stewards of learning in motion. See https://culturepartners.com/insights/leadership-development-building-tomorrows-leaders-for-organizational-success/

So Applied Alchemy seeks to close the gap between Context, Content, Application and Accountably as a specialist service for leaders in the faith. So much has changed in the last decade or so, both organisationally, culturally, and missiologically and it is the leaders who are applied it their learning in their toolkit that making the most headway. We will draw on this content and develop deliberate avenues for application and accountability. In a theological sense being accountable for the learning of the last few decades and beyond is to keep covenant with our own becoming, to recognise and act as if what G-d has revealed and others have discovered matters. It’s a form of stewardship: nurturing the insights entrusted to us until they take root in practice, community, and system.

For leaders today, real change isn’t born in the seminar room; it’s in the moment when learning is owned, enacted, and held in view by others and the communities we are walking alongside. Mentoring helps us remember who we are becoming. Coaching helps us practice who we intend to be.

Applied Alchemy weaves together content, context, mentoring and coaching converting insight into embodiment. Check out https://alchemyedge.substack.com/about for more information on the free and subscription levels.

You can join Applied Alchemy in the way that work for you. The free posts will still land here and in substack but I think people will really like the DIP – A monthly Applied Alchemy Leadership, Systems and Change programme that examines the free content with relevant theory with practical application leadership ideas. It also includes Applied Alchemy Questions prompts, Postures and Practices to adopt, and an Accountability Checklist for you to embed in your situation and at your own pace.

First ones will go live in November and you can subscribe for free here or  via https://alchemyedge.substack.com/subscribe?params=%5Bobject%20Object%5D

 

 

The changing face of trickster in systems change

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Sunday Papers turned 21 last month and so I thought I would look back through some of the themes that have emerged over the years and the 950 or so blogposts. The figure of the trickster has been a restless but pretty constant companion, sometimes provocateur, sometimes guide, sometimes the shadow in the corner when certainty threatens to harden. Journeying back through the archive, I notice how my use of “trickster” has itself been tricky: adapting, morphing, much as the trickster does, to the movements and moods of the times and the evolving questions of church, systems, and cultural renewal. Gathering these together we can see her different guises and learn a few lessons along the way. 

Trickster as Disruption: Stirring the Comfortable

In the early days, trickster arrived in my writing as disturbance. Rooted in the stories of Hyde and the many mythic mischief makers, trickster embodied the kind of holy mischief needed to unsettle our ecclesial complacency. I wrote about the discomfort, border-walking, question-posing, edge-dwelling that trickster brings to stagnant communities. Trickster was the strange guest, misunderstood and sometimes unwelcome, who moved the conversation from comfort to confrontation (which probably also reflects my life stage at the time).

There is a necessary place for this sort of energy in organisations and systems facing calcification, when the status quo is defended with greater force than the call of the gospel or the pulse of life. In this stage, trickster is a mirror to stuckness and a living question mark for institutional “wisdom.” Trickster’s value here is not so much in having answers, but in disrupting, and simply tearing open space for something unexpected to begin.

Trickster as Emergence: The Playful Edge of Creativity

As time went on, my engagement with emergence deepened. Trickster moved from being merely an irritant to something generative, a figure not only to challenge boundaries, but to create new ones, or dissolve them long enough for new forms to emerge. The conversations about “emergent church” and “grace spaces” that led to Here Be Dragons revealed the need to dwell not just at the border, but also in the middle, where the boundaries blur and creation teems.

Here, trickster’s play becomes vital. The themes shifted: less about simply sabotaging structure, more about risking improvisation, learning from ambiguity, and allowing the uncomfortable laughter that comes when certainty recedes. Surprisingly, trickster’s lessons in play, parody, and improvisation offered a source of hope and resilience, essential for organisations learning to let go of the need for control and to make space for emergence.

Trickster as Companion: Deep Listening and Systemic Renewal

In more recent years, a subtler, deeper trickster has come to the fore. No longer relegated only to the borders or eruptions of crisis, this trickster appears as a companion in the slow, ongoing renewals of system and spirit. I found myself drawing on trickster stories not just for their disruptive potential, but as a wisdom tradition for co-creative leadership, deep listening, and navigating unpredictable terrain.

Now, trickster is invoked to remind leaders and communities that true transformation happens in liminal space, between the old and not-yet, in stories shared, questions asked, and boundaries re-imagined. The work is less about subversion for its own sake and more about fostering an adaptive, generative ecology where fresh forms of church and meaning can be discovered. Trickster joins the circle as both risk and companion: an invitation to stay open, responsive, and alive to the wild grace of emergence.

Using Trickster in Organisational Change: Practical Insights

Looking back, I see that the trickster’s role shifts with the system’s need:

• When a community is stuck or stagnant, trickster shakes the ground, challenging, exposing, disrupting.

• In seasons of uncertainty or growth, trickster invites play, risk, and improvisational imagination needed for the new to emerge.

• As change matures and practice deepens, trickster becomes a reminder to listen to what emerges with humility, to hold structures lightly, and to let stories and edges lead the way toward renewal.

In organisational and systemic change, then, trickster is not a one-off tool but a shape-shifter morphing between clown, sage, and the voice that asks the question no one else dares name. The journey through these stages is itself trickster-like a reminder that creative transformation is rarely linear, often surprising, and always a bit mischievous. So I think we let trickster take us further, rooting practice in tricksteresque space where the grace of emergence calls leaders and communities not just to survive disruption, but to welcome it as the soil in which new worlds may be planted. And in this, perhaps, the trickster makes our world anew, again and again.

 

As part of Alchemy At The Edge I’m thinking of developing three webinars based on these three trickster stages. If you are interested in this please leave me a comment or email me richard@alchemyedge.co.uk 

(The image was my leaving present from the wonderful Emma Richardson.) 

Momentum You Can See and Feel

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In the second episode of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams The Ultimate Test, down in Newton Heath, Manchester, there’s a key moment. The rebuilding of the clubhouse has slowed; they had lost the lease document and Freddie talks about how nothing had changed since the last visit. Despite this they still get a bunch of young people to show up and start playing. (I’m yet to see if the slow clubhouse progress impacts the wider project). On the Bottle estate, the young people a to move quickly, They want to play proper games with the hard ball, not just knockabouts. They crave the test, the experience of doing the real thing.
It’s a reminder that change often hangs on two surprisingly simple tools: visibility and momentum.

John Kotter, one of the most over quoted figures in change theory, makes much of “short term wins”. His point isn’t just about morale boosting milestones; it’s about the need for evidence. Communities, like individuals, need to see difference made real. A patched fence, a working clubhouse, or that first hard?ball match. Sightlines anchor belief. Without them, the best written vision documents drift into abstraction.
Although I’m yet to watch the rest of the series I suspect in Newton Heath, the clubhouse will be more than bricks and mortar it’s will be a symbol. The slow progress at that site will test patience, while the practice showed possibility but how will the quick and slow play out? (UPDATE just watched the next episode and they had to move to a new venue which I guess kind of proves my point)

At the Northern Mission Centre, we found a parallel when we designed our Speed Incubator. We built it on the principle that pressing the accelerator early helps overcome inertia. Speed matters. Think of it like cycling: harder to push off from standstill, easier once you’re rolling.
In community development, momentum is not about racing ahead irresponsibly. It’s about creating experiences of movement, moments where participants feel the breeze of progress. People learn with their bodies as well as their minds. That first product launched, that story told at a community meal, that visible experiment tried in public, these generate a sense of speed you can feel.
Visible + Experiential = Trust. Bring visibility and speed together, and you start to rebuild trust in the possibility of change. That’s what Freddie Flintoff stumbled into on the Bottle estate. The young people didn’t simply hear him talk about cricket or watch a clubhouse crawl towards completion. They stepped into a match where the sound and sting of the hard ball told them: this is real.
Likewise, our Speed Incubator showed that the feel of “something happening” matters as much as strategy. Prototypes and pilots, no matter how rough, are worth more than perfect plans delayed. The eye sees, the body feels, and the imagination follows.
Lessons for Local Change
For those working in churches, charities and neighbourhood initiatives, the lessons are clear:
• Create visible wins that people can point to. Paint it, patch it, play it, even if it’s not perfect.
• Design for speed experiences that shift momentum. Small risks, real experiments, fast follow?through.
• Remember that change is not only told in documents or meetings, it is embodied in what people see and feel together.
That’s where belief grows. Change is contagious when it shows itself in sights and in motion.