Category Archives: Faithful Improv

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.

Today’s heresy, Tomorrow’s orthodoxy letting the Holy Spirit is ruin our comms plan!

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I’ve always been fascinated by the role language plays in meaning making and for several years my walk of faith has been helped by entering into dialogue with nature through of emerging church space Mountain Pilgrims. Thomas Berry suggests humanity has broken The Great Conversation, the deep, ongoing dialogue between humans, the more-than-human world, and the wider universe.  We talk a lot, but mostly to ourselves and church is no different to any other eco chamber. It has developed a sophisticated internal language but often struggles to hear, let alone respond to, the voices of culture, creation and those at the edges questioning what counts as “orthodox.”

Berry’s concern was not simply about ecology but about language. When only one way of speaking is recognised as valid, everything else gets pushed to the margins.  That resonates with our ecclesial habits. The church has learned to privilege certain kinds of words, authorised, platformed, “sound” and to distrust improvisation, lived experience, and wild metaphors that do not fit existing systems.  I know even writing this several people will comment on how I’ve lost the plot, gone mad and am talking to trees again. The result is a narrowing of conversation and, with it, a shrinking of imagination.

One thing thirty years of mission has taught me is that that like G-d, Language is not a museum piece; it is a living, mutating thing, constant in its movement even when the printed page pretends otherwise.  Berry’s work suggests that meaning arises in the between in relationships, exchanges, frictions rather than in frozen statements detached from place and encounter.  If that is true, then a church that tries to manage its language purely through control (doctrinal, institutional, reputational) ends up disconnecting its words from the world they were meant to serve.

A similar concern sits behind recent reflections on how church handles its public voice: the drift from conversation into messaging, from mutuality into management.  When our words exist mainly as outputs, strategies, statements, carefully curated content, we are no longer participating in language as a shared, risky, evolving practice. We have moved from speaking with to speaking at.

The irony is that the Christian tradition, at its best, already knows that meaning is relational. The gospel of John points to Logos not as a static “word” dropped from the sky, but as a dynamic, relational presence through whom all things come into being.

Orthodoxy should be a faithful emerging conversation but too often it is treated as a fixed package, a set of statements that must remain untouched in order to be “true.”  But if God is encountered in history, in bodies, in place, then faithfulness cannot be about freezing language; it has to be about staying in truthful conversation as the world changes. This does not mean anything goes but it does mean that orthodoxy cannot be maintained by shutting down dialogue with those who unsettle us. The temptation is always to label the troubling voices as “unorthodox” so we don’t have to listen. But perhaps the deeper danger is a church that can repeat the right phrases while refusing the great conversation where the Spirit might be speaking in unfamiliar accents.

If orthodoxy is reframed as fidelity-in-movement, then the test of soundness shifts. The questions being asked are more about if this way of speaking or being deepens love of God, neighbour, and creation, or does it protect systems at their expense?  This is a very different conversation from a lot of what I hear and ff the church is to re-enter the great conversation, who or what are are the conversation partners we need need. None of these named below are new, but each reveals how thin our language becomes when separated from encounter.

1. With the more-than-human world

Creation is often reduced to backdrop or resource in church practice, something we “use” or “care for,” but rarely someone we listen to.  Emerging eco-liturgies, “wild church” practices and place-based spirituality are tentative attempts to let rivers, soil, seasons and species become conversation partners rather than illustrations.  What happens to orthodoxy when the groans of creation are treated not as background noise but as part of the community’s discernment?

2. With decolonising and marginal voices

Mission history has trained Western churches to imagine themselves as speakers and others as listeners.  Decolonising work insists that the roles must be reversed, or at least shared: theologies forged in colonised, racialised, and economically marginalised contexts need not only to be “included” but allowed to interrogate and reshape what the centre calls orthodox.

3. With shifting identities and bodies

Conversations around gender, sexuality, neurodiversity and family structures are often handled through statements rather than stories.  People are turned into “issues,” and language is deployed to control rather than to understand. Yet if the body of Christ is genuinely diverse, then these lives and experiences are not detachable from theology; they are part of the place where theology happens.  Staying in conversation here may mean discovering that some of our long-held assumptions were more cultural than Christlike.

4. With digital and symbolic worlds

Digital culture is not simply another channel for church messaging; it is a habitat where new forms of presence, authority and belonging are emerging.  Online communities, memes, gaming, AI, are all forming people’s imaginations long before they meet a sermon. A church that only uses these spaces to broadcast pre-formed content refuses the opportunity to learn a new dialect of human longing and connection.  Conversation here would mean showing up not as brand but as neighbour.

Berry writes of the need for a “new language” that can draw humans back into a mutually enhancing relationship with the rest of the community of life.  That newness is less about inventing clever phrases and more about recovering humility and recognising that our words must once again be accountable to the earth, to history, to those who suffer under our systems.

Perhaps this is where pioneers and locally rooted parishes have role: to keep pointing to the gaps between our official language and the real conversations happening at the edges.  To remind the church that the Spirit has always been ahead of us, out in the wild, teaching new words to those willing to listen.

Re-entering the great conversation will mean losing some of the safety that comes from tightly managed speech. It will also mean discovering that orthodoxy is not a fragile artefact to be defended, but a living stream kept fresh precisely because it flows through new landscapes, picks up new sediments, and keeps finding its way back to the sea and the source.

Pioneer Breath Prayers

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I really like Cole Arthur Riley’s writing and in particular the Inhale and Exhale breath prayers.  This one stuck me for this current time. I think her work is great but understand it’s an approach to prayer that has been around a long time. In the fx advent series we used the breath prayer approach but it also made me wonder what pioneer breath prayers might look like as I particularly like the balance so played with these as some possibilities.

inhale – possibility is within you

exhale – another world is possible

inhale – the kindom is now

exhale – the kindom is not yet

inhale – we journey to the edge spaces

exhale – we find kinship along the way

inhale – from dust we came

exhale – we call the walls to dust

 

 

 

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 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.) 

Be more Pete

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Whilst on holiday I watched Timothee Chamalat’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in A complete unknown. My favourite scenes were around the Newport folk festival and contrast between when Dylan played the song “The Times They Are a-Changin” and the crowd loved it because the style was acceptable and then a couple years later the crowd rejected his new electric music even though in few years the album would be widely acclaimed.  Change is the one constant, a reality captured through the film and so powerfully in the lyrics of: “The times they are a-changin’. In that song Dylan calls all the elders, from leaders to mothers and fathers to recognize the shifting landscape, to refuse to block the halls or stand in the doorways of renewal, because “the wheel’s still in spin” and there’s “no tellin’ who that it’s namin’.” Those who hesitate, he warns, “will sink like a stone” in waters that have already risen around us.

The current rising waters are echoing this, calling us to move from gatekeeping beliefs to cultivating new ways of being, that those who have eyes, see this new water springing up like wells all around. This rising tide is nurturing abundant, adaptive life, and to be rooted in Christ is to bear witness to the fruit that whispers of a Kingdom not yet fully seen. Our true telos is not in relentless self-preservation, but in flowing, loving participation in the waters of change.

Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” laments the slow recognition of what’s right (“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?”) and poses the questions. While “The Times They Are A-Changin’” suggests the answers lie in adapting and warns a failure to so will result in being “drenched to the bone” by the coming tide of change thats happening now, and everyone must decide whether to move with it or be left behind.

Perhaps the key to not being left behind lies in Pete Seeger’s portrayal, even though at one stage he wanted to stop Dylan’s electric music, he relented and made space. I love the hope that Pete holds throughout the film and how the folk scene led to the love revolution. The final scene sees Pete’s hope in action through his servant leadership which shows him putting away the chairs after the festival. Hope as I’ve said before isn’t fragile or passive. It’s a muscle, “sinew and tendon that flexes beneath the skin with every reimagined dream of a better world.” And practically we build hope every time we give space to others to sing and dream, where as elders we refuse to block the halls or stand in the doorways and instead we serve others, put a chair away and wash the dishes.

Why Bums on seats might really matter

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I keep asking myself: is the spiritual weather shifting out there or is it just me noticing new clouds? Years of following Jesus have taught me that what seems solid, settled, and “done” often isn’t. The tangled roots of faith are always wriggling, refusing the simplicity of census boxes.

We are pretty familiar with the idea of the Spiritual but not religious people but I have been following the Nones Project research from America that Toby Jones is involved in. If you squint sideways at it, there’s something of our own messy British spiritual landscape there. Especially when we dig into the Dones, those completely finished, and then the NiNos, the “Nones in Name Only” who are still whispering secret prayers, holding onto invisible strings, or turning up at a candlelit church despite claiming no religion at all.

But what does this really mean for us in the UK, trying to read the culture and context and wondering if the so-called “quiet revival” is just one more weather front that will drift off by Thursday?

The Dones sound like people I’ve met around the campfire, feet up, story shared. They’re not staging a protest; they’re just done. The chapter closes quietly. But if you ask where their roots go on a hard night, there’s often a thread leading somewhere, a family ritual, memory, old hopes still warm somewhere inside.
The NiNos I meet everywhere, The “I’m not religious but…” crowd. The ones who  can’t stand the boxes but show up for something real, a blessing in my garden, a  chat on a sofa in a high street, the kind activist or volunteer engaged but not sure why, often looking to belong. Linda Woodhead’s research says our own British “nones” are full of patchwork belief, doubt, ritual, history all looping round like strands of bramble and honeysuckle. Got to love an ecological metaphor!

Against this backdrop we have The Quiet Revival, where church attendance is quietly up. Are these young people supposedly filling our pews the NiNos nosing around the edge, curious and awkward, or are we witnessing a quiet boomerang, a returning of people who never truly left in spirit?

I wonder if we’ve got the whole thing upside down. Maybe the “revival” was always growing beneath our feet, wild, resistant, unplanned, like those pop-up spaces and listening benches I’ve found so beautiful in the mixed ecology. Maybe the really radical thing is learning to notice the gentle stuff instead of chasing the fireworks.

When I look back, I see it again and again: community is rarely tidy; the best spiritual wisdom comes from the edges, the in-between places, the unpolished questions. Perhaps we’re “human becomings,” as Pip Wilson said, meant to unfold in all our messy, glorious, uncontainable uniqueness. The language of faith is always more experiment than doctrine, more bless and release than possess and control, so we need great care for those now turning up.

Maybe we are not living through a spiritual comeback but people are opening their eyes to the quiet revival that’s been running, barefoot, in our midst all along, and only noticing it now there is some bums on seats. So maybe bums on matter if helps the church wake up to what’s been happening all along, and attune itself the gift these people are bringing. 

Beyond Blueprints: How Systems Thinking Can Transform Mission

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We are intertwined systems, they shape us and  we, in turn, shape them. In the years I been blogging here I have  long explored the tangled roots of mission, church, and community, resisting the urge to slip into tidy dualisms or easy binaries. Instead, I’ve tried to inhabit that compost-rich space where culture and nature, activism and contemplation, all intermingle. As I look to the next chapter I want to reflect on that  learning particularly from the “Crafting Mission in Systems” journey and see how they are resonating with the work of Alchemy At The Edge. Skip to the bottom of the post if you want to see 3 services that people are finding particularly helpful at the moment.

From Compost to Craft: Mission as Alchemy

Mission is not a static program to be rolled out, an ABC or a rock-solid truth to be defended. It’s a living, breathing system, a field of relationships, stories, and experiments. We are not outside the system, tinkering with its gears; we are the system. As Bayo Akomolafe says, “we are not stuck in traffic, we are the traffic”.

Alchemy At The Edge, in its very name, hopes to evoke the ancient art of transformation. Alchemy was always more than a quest to turn lead into gold; it was a way of seeing, a practice of attending to the hidden processes that bring about change, both in matter and in the soul. The alchemist’s work was slow, patient, and deeply attentive to the interplay of elements. In the same way, I hope my services are about facilitating transformation within organisations, teams, and individuals, not by imposing a blueprint, but by cultivating the conditions for emergence and growth.

Letting Go of Control: Embracing the Unknown

One of the persistent themes in Sunday Papers is the tension between epistemology (knowing, controlling, securing) and ontology (being, becoming, risking). In the “Crafting Mission in Systems” post, we are reminded that real change rarely comes from clinging to certainty. Instead, it emerges when we risk stepping into the unknown, when we allow “grace spaces” to disrupt our routines and invite us into new patterns of relationship.

Alchemy At The Edge’s approach will mirror this and are be not about delivering off-the-shelf solutions or quick fixes. Recently I worked with a diocese and the planning and preparation sessions with the leadership team were so key in making sure what was delivered was not just properly contextual but also spoke to the deeper issues being faced. I want to work alongside people and systems to co-create processes that honour the complexity and uniqueness of every context. To help organisations raise their head beyond the pulpit and step into new possibilities, trusting that something richer and more generative can emerge.

Systems, Stories, and Soul Work

At the heart of both the Sunday Papers ethos and Alchemy At The Edge’s practice is a commitment to deep listening and story. Systems are not just structures; they are made up of people, histories, and hopes. Transformation happens when we pay attention to the stories we tell, the rituals we practice, and the ways we show up for one another.

Alchemy At The Edge will facilitate this kind of soul work within organisations not just individuals. Creating spaces where teams can surface hidden assumptions, name what matters most, and imagine new ways of working together. Like the alchemist, they know that true change is both an art and a science,  that it unfolds in stages, often requiring us to sit with uncertainty and paradox.

The Edge of Becoming

To craft mission in systems is to embrace the messy, generative work of transformation. All models are wrong but some are helpful. As I have started having conversations and work with dioceses and other clients a few key assets/models/processes have emerged that people are finding helpful and I can build sessions around. These include

1. Scale – Scaling Out is pretty straight forward as good ideas spread but Scaling Up or Deep is more challenging. I have been working on processes that help identify what and blocks and opportunities for Scaling Up and Deep which  will embed and accelerate change.

2.Mixed Ecology Trellis – lots of dioceses have found the Trellis helpful to describe and value the whole Mixed Ecology of church, but don’t realise that it can be operationalised as a diagnostic tool both for leadership development and to Scale Out at local and regional levels.

3 Theory of change development – if you aim at nothing you hit it. Recent sessions helping people explore the why behind what they do have been helpful in designing better processes. This not only ensures that what they value is front and centre but that these values inform and drive real change. Too often organisations talk about being values driven without a real understanding or process to ensure they translate in action and lasting change.

In the end, perhaps the greatest gift we can offer is to hold space and to trust that in the compost something beautiful and unexpected can take root.

“We are all in the system. The truth is at hand and it’s held with an open palm… the kin-dom is so much more than we can imagine.”

For a conversation on what I can offer your organisation or diocese please GET IN TOUCH

 

Re-enchantment

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This post has been sparked by a post from Andrew Jones (TSK) asking a question about the place and space enchantment may have now there are 3.5 billion online gamers, inhabiting mystical worlds. Yet when I questioned some younger people about the possible impact their response was they could see little connection as they inhabit many of these spaces and still compartmentalise life. But perhaps they underestimate the pervasive nature of culture because a quick glance around their rooms will often reveal that the icons of the virtual space make it into the physical one.

Many psychologists and philosophers argue that modern life is increasingly defined by fragmentation and compartmentalisation. Our days are still split into work, leisure, family, and digital selves, each with its own codes, expectations, and emotional boundaries but this is somewhat weakening with the rise of side hustles, and a rejection of unfulfilling work. Division allows us to manage stress or trauma by separating conflicting experiences and identities, but the same process can lead to a sense of internal discord, draining energy and making it difficult to pursue a coherent sense of self or purpose. Alasdair MacIntyre argues that this compartmentalised existence is not just a personal phenomenon but a cultural one, where society struggles to articulate a unified vision of the good life. Instead, we float between roles and obligations, rarely integrating them into a meaningful whole.

Against this backdrop, a hunger for re-enchantment has emerged. As our lives become more mediated by screens and routines, many seek a renewed sense of wonder and belonging through nature, which accelerated through the pandemic, and saw a surge in people rediscovering wild spaces, gardening, and outdoor rituals. This movement is not just about environmentalism; it’s about reconnecting with something larger than ourselves, finding awe in the living world, and feeling rooted in a cosmos that is alive and mysterious. But whilst it offers a counterpoint to fragmentation and invites us to experience wholeness, presence, and meaning will compartmentalised routines still be the norm.?

As mentioned by TSK nature is not the only realm where re-enchantment is unfolding. Online games, especially role-playing and massively multiplayer worlds, have become fertile ground for the growth of alternative mystic narratives. These digital spaces often blend myth, prophecy, and magical systems, creating modern mythologies that echo ancient spiritual quests. Games like Skyrim and Mass Effect draw on the hero’s journey, offering players a sense of agency, transformation, and connection to the transcendent. Perhaps such games are acting as the unconscious wells of religion that Mircea Eliade alludes to in The Sacred and the Profane.

Perhaps the dual movement towards nature and towards digital myth reflects a deeper shift in how people approach spirituality and here’s a few things worth noting if we are seeking to understand how this may shape our missiology:

  1. it’s a spirituality that often is increasingly individualised, shaped by personal quests for meaning rather than institutional doctrines.
  2. nature-based practices and online mystic narratives offer opportunities to integrate fragmented parts of the self, whether through mindful presence or immersive storytelling but only often temporarily or still in a compartmentalised way
  3. maybe community can form in digital and real-world communities form around nature practices
  4. providing belonging and shared purpose outside traditional religious structures remains important to people despite rumours of the quiet revival (3.5 billion is a big number!)
  5. The search for spiritual practices, whether rooted in nature or narrative, can offer a sense of coherence and say a lot about the chaos so many face.

The bible speaks pretty directly to the tension between fragmentation and wholeness. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 calls for wholehearted love, echoed by Jesus as the greatest commandment, urging integration, and reiterated by Paul reiterates this vision in Colossians 1. Where fragmentation divides, the biblical narrative points to a God who unites.

So whilst we will only be able to read the impact of these culture shifts retrospectively the juxtaposition of fragmentation and re-enchantment is shaping a new spiritual landscape. Where compartmentalisation divides, re-enchantment, through nature or mythic play, offers the promise of wholeness. In seeking out the enchanted, whether under open skies or in digital realms, people are crafting new ways to be spiritual: ways that are imaginative, inclusive, and deeply attuned to both the wounds and wonders of modern life. And If this is the work of the spirit how do we join in?