To begin: A note about AI assistance

I have used ChatGPT, provided by OpenAI, to help organise my existing writing and to bring in spoken reflections that bridge the material together. I have spent a good deal of time considering whether to use AI and what that means for the integrity of the work. The Methodist Church’s consideration of AI at the 2026 Conference has been helpful here. Its guidance recognises that AI can assist preparation and organisation, while responsibility for the material remains with the person using it. It cannot replace personal judgement, theological reflection or relationships. I would add that there is no substitute for prayer or personal reading either (Methodist Church, 2026, section 7).

For me, using AI when I already have a voice and a body of writing is a different task from asking it to supply a voice at the beginning of a writing journey. This book draws on documents, research and insights that I already have. AI has helped me identify coherent themes across that material and produce a first draft of ordered thinking that I can work upon. I have then spoken further connections, questioned what was proposed, removed material and rewritten passages. At the end of each chapter I identify the original sources, alongside the later reflections that have shaped it. The experiences and the development of the argument can therefore be traced, even where the wording has changed.

I recognise concerns about the environmental cost of AI. I have weighed those concerns alongside the reality of a busy ministry: I do not think I could have brought this book together in this way without the additional support.

I anticipate that some readers may approach the work with scepticism. Which parts are my voice? Which connections did AI suggest? How far has the wording been shaped through that assistance? These are fair questions, and I feel I have nothing to lose by being honest. The process has involved interaction; I cannot separate every finished sentence into a wholly human part and a wholly machine-generated part. I can explain what I brought, how I used the assistance, and the responsibility I retain.

For some time I have felt the Lord laying on my heart the need to write. These reflections are offered after deep consideration. I do not want this to have been a glorious experiment in whether people will accept AI-assisted writing. AI has allowed me to draw from what I have written and speak connections between it. Sharing this chapter early is part of that intention. It would be misleading to suggest that there are no subsequent chapters: a considerable amount has already been developed. But I would value feedback now, particularly from those who know my voice and the unavoidable Langisms in my writing!

Thank you for looking at this revision. If you have a thought, a question or a challenge, please put it in the comments beneath the blog post or via the contact form (you will need to scroll beyond the references).

Introduction

This is the opening chapter of Love Your Anemone, a book intended to help churches navigate change, particularly as we seek to create space for mission. I write from a pioneering perspective, shaped by the responsibilities of oversight and a concern that inherited and emerging communities should flourish together. The remaining chapters will explore living with uncertainty; grief and loss; sustaining those who lead; differing gifts and priorities; listening and shared discernment; structures that enable mission; the cost of welcome; hospitality and belonging; what makes a community a church; recognising fruitfulness; and the Christian hope that enables us to let go and embrace new life

Chapter One

I write as a Methodist presbyter and superintendent minister. Sometimes, when I tell people that I am a minister, they give me a puzzled look. I try “priest” (which feels rather too formal and too holy for me, and a bit Roman Catholic, although I have no objection to that), then “vicar” (which does not quite work because I am not serving in the Church of England), and sometimes “pastor” (which, to my ears, sounds more informal and belongs more readily to newer churches). None quite captures what I do, but somewhere in the mix people usually get the idea.

I do not claim to be anyone special. I am a fellow disciple on the road, and I value the support of my superintendent colleagues and the people alongside whom I serve. I served as Superintendent of the Peterborough Circuit from 2013 to 2025 and began serving the Newark and Southwell Circuit in September 2025. For those unfamiliar with Methodist arrangements, a circuit is a group of churches intended to support one another and enable Methodist work across a particular area. My work involves helping its ministers, lay leaders and congregations attend to that shared calling. Oversight can be understood as everything we do to enable a group of people to fulfil the calling God has laid on their hearts. The Methodist Church’s report The Nature of Oversight (2005, paragraph 1.7) describes its purpose as ensuring that the Church remains true to its calling. Here oversight is placed within the shared life of the Church, exercised through councils and other bodies, and through people appointed to particular responsibilities. A superintendent has a part to play in that work, but the responsibility is shared.

My ministry includes worship, pastoral care, mission and the practical arrangements that make these possible. My starting description of evangelism is helping people put their faith in Jesus and follow him.

God awakens us through the momentous death and resurrection of Christ: the gospel message that, through believing in him, we can find peace, life in all its fullness and our eternal security. “Jesus is Lord” is one of the earliest Christian confessions (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3). When encouraging people to take up membership of the Methodist Church, those are the main markers I am looking for. Everything else, in my view, can be worked out as we journey on. There is more to unpack there, but it will do for now.

I concur with Martyn Atkins’s description of Methodism as “a discipleship movement shaped for mission” (Atkins, 2011). For an understanding of evangelism within that wider calling, I have been influenced by William Abraham’s The Logic of Evangelism (1989), with its account of initiation into God’s kingdom. I find the image of training astronauts helpful. In the version I have carried with me, evangelism prepares people on the ground and mission is what happens once we are in orbit. All this means asking what a particular congregation needs and how that relates to the responsibilities and possibilities of the wider circuit. It means helping people consider change fairly, whilst acknowledging that I may have convictions about the change being considered. Much of my ministry has been concerned with helping what is established and what is emerging hold together. That concern informed my doctoral research into the oversight of Methodist Fresh Expressions, submitted to Durham University in 2016. It also gave my blog its title: Love Your Anemone.

I have to admit that the blog has not been updated anything like as regularly as I would have liked. Like many ministers, I have been preoccupied with the work itself and the administration around it. A newsletter reflection gets written because a newsletter is due. A paper explaining my thinking gets prepared because a church needs to consider its next practical step. Then the next thing comes along. Returning to those pieces, developing them and drawing their connections together has received less attention. This book gathers material from the blog alongside other, unpublished writing. It gives me an opportunity to revisit what I have said, add what I have subsequently learned and ask where my thinking needs to change.

How the clownfish entered the conversation

The publication of Mission-shaped Church in 2004 gave rise to the Fresh Expressions initiative, drawing together developments that were already underway. It encouraged and supported people in developing new forms of church with those who were not already part of an existing congregation. Beginning in Britain and subsequently developing internationally, it drew together leaders, churches and organisations exploring how Christian community could take shape in different places and cultures. I trace that history more fully in my thesis (Mackrell-Hey, 2016, literature review, section 2.1.1). The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, helped establish the language of a “mixed economy of church”, having used it earlier in Wales. As I understand it, if the Church is to flourish, we need to value both what is inherited and what is emerging. The two live in mutual support and can learn from one another. I later heard Graham Horsley, formerly the Methodist Church’s Churchplanting Secretary and subsequently Fresh Expressions Missioner, speak about a “mixed ecology”. That language helped me think about what it means to live in a relationship in which each contributes to the other’s life.

Having been drawn into ministry from a scientific background (my first degree was in chemistry), it was natural for me to reflect on the mutually beneficial relationships that exist in nature. The clownfish and sea anemone offered a wonderful image: two different creatures living in a symbiotic relationship. The clownfish shelters among the anemone’s tentacles, where their stings help protect it from predators. The fish can help defend its host against animals that would eat it, and its presence supplies nutrients.

Interestingly, part of the benefit comes from what Nemo excretes! Nutrients in the fish’s waste support the algae living within the anemone’s tissues (Audet-Gilbert and colleagues, 2021).

Like most analogies, this one breaks down. On a more sensible note, the anemone and clownfish are different species. What is emerging within the Church and what is inherited should share the same spiritual DNA. They may dress differently, reside in different places and live differently, but that fits faithfully within the range of human expression. It might surprise you to note that anemones can move, although some do so slowly using the base by which they attach themselves. Nonetheless, the ecological image helps me think about church. Love Your Anemone became the title of my blog and this continuing conversation.

My argument is that inherited and emerging communities need to coexist and support one another if our shared life is to survive and flourish. The relationship requires attention from both. At the time of writing about it, and to this day, I have felt it important to recognise the inherited Church’s generosity and faithfulness in sacrificial giving towards something new. One hopes that we can also attend to what emerging communities can teach us, or remind us of. This cannot happen unless we maintain an honest, open and trusting dialogue: honest about the responsibilities we share, including the impetus to witness (as a church, we exist for those who are not yet members as well as those who are), and about the questions that challenge us. New communities, and the people new to our existing communities, should be able to contribute to conversations about the Church’s future. Through my involvement in work on New Places for New People, it has been a privilege to have a small part in conversations about fruitfulness markers and the research around them. What interests me here is how the wider Church responds to what we learn, particularly when insights into fruitfulness also inform decisions about further funding. Such decisions require scrutiny, but they also raise a question about parity of esteem. Do we ask comparable questions of inherited churches about their vision, spiritual growth, numerical growth and capacity? Or does what is new have to justify its existence, whilst what is inherited can continue without equivalent scrutiny until its future becomes unsustainable? In any setting, we need to be able to ask searching questions in a spirit of support, without leaving people feeling that they must defend their right to exist.

The questions raised by a mixed ecology also apply inside an established church as it welcomes new people. Over the past year I have explored this through an exercise in Listening and Sharing in one of my churches. We have been able to hear the perspective of newer people and have been pleasantly surprised. Sometimes they are less hung up by things than we are; sometimes they see what could inhibit them when we have stopped noticing it. In my view, the contribution of people new to the Church should be received as potentially prophetic. I would rather begin by listening for the prophetic, whilst remaining willing to test our interpretation, than require someone who has only recently arrived to establish their right to speak.

The voice of those on our fringes is sacred. It should not be taken lightly.

Ultimately, the question raised by this wonderful symbiotic relationship is personal. Whether you are Nemo or the anemone, do you have the capacity to live with people who are different from you?

When the language of mission changes

Through the Methodist Church’s God for All strategy, New Places for New People has become a more explicit focus of our missionary work. I understand this as a progression from our involvement in Fresh Expressions, with a determined emphasis on forming Christian communities with people who are not already part of an existing church. Fresh Expressions, in my view, gave confidence and recognition to faithful people who were keen to embrace different ways of learning (embodied in different forms of worship), allied with a passion to reach new people. Methodism’s Hidden Harvest? offers important evidence of that contribution (Leese and Horsley, 2019). It helped people see that Christian community could develop in places and patterns they might previously have overlooked. Fresh Expressions remains a wider movement; newer Methodist language does not mean that it has ceased to exist. The question that remains is how that work develops into a church in its Methodist sense, if that is indeed the Lord’s will. A fruitful gathering and a formally constituted Methodist Local Church are not necessarily the same thing. This is where the Methodist Church’s evangelical quicksand lies. I will return later in this book to the relationship between the life emerging among people and the structures through which Methodism recognises it.

Who feels left behind?

In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus describes a shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to seek the one that is lost (Luke 15:1-7). One wonders how the ninety-nine felt about that. The parable does not tell us, of course. But the question comes readily to mind when we consider how attention and resources are shared in the Church. How do we nurture new Christian communities whilst helping inherited congregations remain confident that they matter? People can feel second class, overlooked or quietly written off. I have never heard a minister declare that a congregation is too old to deserve care. However, I have heard congregations question whether a preacher travelling to lead, perhaps, an evening service for a small number of people is making the best use of their time. My response has been that I have yet to meet a preacher who has put that question to me as a reason for not going. All life is sacred.

Conversely, when we struggle to assign preachers to local churches, particularly where a congregation is reluctant to move from a 10.30 morning service to make provision possible, we can inadvertently communicate that some people matter less. That raises a whole host of questions. Those responsible for creating the preaching plan will know that the larger congregations are not necessarily those needing the closest support. It is not that simple. Nevertheless, the way we distribute attention can communicate something we would never consciously say.

The parable of the prodigal son brings another dimension to this (Luke 15:11-32). We tend to apply “prodigal” to the younger son, who demands his inheritance, squanders it and eventually wonders whether he can return home. But the word can also help us think about the father’s extravagant generosity: the extent to which he is prepared to continue loving and welcoming his son. We have the reunion, the celebration and what looks like a happy ending. Then we notice the older son. He has remained faithful. He has worked. Yet he feels overlooked and cannot bring himself to join the celebration. Crucially, the father goes out to him too. The story ends with the father’s appeal; we are not told whether the older son enters the feast.

These two parables bring us close to the concern running through this book. How can inherited communities welcome new learning without expecting everything emerging to reproduce their familiar pattern? How can emerging communities have confidence in a wider Church that faces decline, whilst recognising genuine places of growth? Sometimes it resembles children inheriting a mansion that has fallen into disrepair. There is history here, affection and much that has been invested. There is also the burden of keeping everything going. If they had a choice, would they organise their lives around the same building? Might they say, “If we were starting this now, we wouldn’t do it in this way, or in this place”? And what would those who cherish the mansion want them to understand about it?

What I now understand differently

Looking back at what I wrote in 2017, I can see that I underestimated some of the demands of oversight. I could already see shortfalls in our Methodist practices and processes. Arrangements intended to enable mission were not always gaining traction. What I had not fully understood was how challenging this would become. If anything, the need to love one’s anemone has increased. This model continues to impress itself upon me because the relationships it describes have become more important under pressure. I realise that the title may sound like an appeal to those embedded in something new to recognise the faithfulness of those who have gone before. In fact, I am calling for mutual support. Perhaps “Love your clownfish” would be more faithful to our present predicament. However, it lacks the word-play which evokes the kinds of tensions that surface between populations who may see themselves as competing against each other for their very survival.

Despite its decline, the inherited Church still holds much of the institutional power: the knowledge of how our polity functions, influence over decisions that enable emerging work, and the finance that might be released to support it. Some of that money is being kept for a rainy day.

I do not know whether anyone has noticed, but it is pouring at the moment.

Since my initial research, the question of whether the circuit, intended as a model of mission, has become a model of maintenance has pressed more sharply upon me. As the tensions increase, the temptation to focus inwardly increases. With decline, even the basic things can become difficult. Sometimes we maintain what exists; sometimes we go round bailing out the water; sometimes we enable new life. All three can occupy the same week. It seems a sheer miracle, looking around among my colleagues, that despite the pressures and the difficult decisions we face, exciting missional opportunities and life-giving ways of working continue to emerge. We can sustain churches because ministry is organised across a group of congregations, rather than requiring each church to provide everything for itself. That is a real strength. Sometimes, though, I think we have been a little over-proud of our capacity to keep things open, without asking enough about the life we are enabling within them. Care for an existing congregation matters. The question is whether our arrangements leave us with the capacity to respond to what God may be inviting us to do next.

I find myself frustrated by glossy accounts of success when I cannot discover the difficult process people went through. What happened in the gap between “we had a vacant building” and “the circuit decided to start a project”? I suspect that in some of those journeys there is a mountain of pain linked to grief.

I feel even more strongly that the minister is not always the person who puts the argument. Sometimes the task is to chair the conversation in which an argument can be heard and tested. Part of my work is to help inspire what happens and to notice the vision already within people.  That bears repeating. There are people who want to do exciting things, and part of oversight is teasing that out: helping them recognise what they have to offer, finding others who can share the work and making a next step possible.

I am more conscious of how difficult it can be to acknowledge the need for change and the cost of ministry. I include myself in that. One concern that has become sharper is the impact of finance on vision, where the balance sheet risks dictating what we can imagine. Thankfully, I serve churches that remain careful with their finances whilst still declaring that God will give us what we need. Financial questions are real, and ignoring them will not make us faithful. But we need room to ask what faith requires of us, as well as what our present arrangements appear to permit.

It has sometimes been said that the Church is a hospital for sick people. My experience is that people rarely set out deliberately to upset someone or cause harm. That does not make the harm unreal, or remove the need to address it. The conflict transformation training I received through Bridge Builders has become embedded in my practice. One of the most challenging tasks is to journey with a church and help people recognise what is happening within themselves: to name grief as grief when a congregation faces closure, or to help a community that has experienced conflict find ways to speak without judgement and understand that healing takes time.

Some people will see more problems than they offer solutions. Nonetheless, that can be valuable: they may notice a difficulty that enthusiasm has concealed. We need to hear their concerns, weigh them properly and still make room for those ready to contribute to the work. We also need to ask whether people can access the training, support and relationships that would allow their gifts to develop.

Oversight involves difficult responsibilities, and in my experience more of the practical burden has fallen upon superintendents as churches have struggled to manage compliance. This is not to underplay the pressures that other leaders may feel. It arises as a consequence of our ecclesiology. Added to this, a fresh insight from the years since my research is how risk-averse the Church can be, and how that can inhibit an honest conversation about the balance of risk. We would much rather be able to say that everything is compliant at every moment than acknowledge where we are struggling. Yet leaders often have to make decisions without the certainty everyone would prefer. Working with people who have held senior responsibilities in safeguarding outside the Church has helped me think about this. Their seriousness about procedures has gone alongside a practical understanding that risk must be identified, assessed and managed. The question is how to be honest about our capacity, make responsibilities clear, seek advice, and put appropriate safeguards and review in place. That cannot mean concealing non-compliance or setting aside requirements that must be met. If our culture makes it impossible to admit what we cannot presently do, however, we risk encouraging people to hide the difficulty and hope that nothing goes wrong.

Here polity meets personal decisions about whom we trust and how we trust them. How do we support people who have to exercise judgement where every available course carries a risk? How do we share responsibility rather than leave a leader hoping that nobody asks about a difficulty they have been unable to resolve? I can imagine a further research project on how churches understand this and enable leaders to feel supported. As a superintendent, I have sometimes felt particularly exposed to the expectations of the wider Church. It can feel as though much rests with us, even where responsibility is shared. However, to reassure anyone considering superintendency within the church, at the moment I would not choose anything else. Why? Because despite the challenges it is a key position from which I can do some good.

Becoming a process person

I have spent a good deal of my ministry alongside people hungry to do new things. I share that hunger. I am visionary and passionate, and I want to get on with doing things. But I have become increasingly interested in what happens between having an idea and discovering whether a community can make something of it.

I have become a process person. Administration does not come naturally to me. Even so, I recognise that without it we can lack the structure needed to move forward. Process is key.

I listen with interest when people in independent churches celebrate their freedom from institutional red tape. I find myself reminding them that Methodist discipline developed within a missionary movement. Much of what we inherited was forged in the white-hot heat of mission: people trying to organise a shared life, nurture faith and enable work to continue. What we call red tape can protect and safeguard the growth we hope to see. The question is how we use and apply it, and whether particular arrangements remain fit for purpose. When someone questions why written notice of a meeting is needed, I ask how we guard against important decisions being made, in effect, in the car park, by those who happen to be there. Advance notice gives people an opportunity to prepare and participate. When someone questions membership, I ask about the link between belonging and living responsibly together. How do we establish agreement about safeguarding and finance, or about working in a way that prevents harm? Often that invites a different reflection upon what first looked like an unnecessary procedure.

There are difficult tensions between local governance and wider oversight. Methodism speaks of its connexion, with that distinctive “x”, and of being connexional. We are connected to one another. A local church’s life belongs within a wider life, with opportunities and responsibilities we share.

So I find myself asking: what needs to happen? When does it need to happen? Who needs to be involved? Who has not yet spoken? What would help people understand the proposal, and what might I have failed to notice?

What we hear when someone suggests change

I remember attending a meeting where someone with a research background presented a carefully considered proposal. I was surprised at the response. It did not seem to be taken as implicit that the thinking behind the proposal had already been tested. Of course, we all need to explain our working and remain open to challenge.

I also wonder how far receptivity depends upon preparing properly for a meeting. I remember a shock to my own system when I worked with church leaders who brought professional expertise from their roles outside the Church to form a charity supporting shared youth work across denominations. Sitting in a board meeting, I realised that if you had not read the minutes and were not up to speed, you would look stupid very quickly. Alongside that was an expectation that, if we said we would do something, we would do it, and feed back on it before the next meeting. I felt a sharp difference from the more relaxed approach I had sometimes encountered in local church settings. The worst-case scenario is that we arrive without having read the minutes, and when we do we are reminded of what we agreed to do last time but never got round to. Forgive my pessimism. That is certainly not the practice I want to encourage, but sometimes one gets that impression.

I have also experienced the opposite problem: over-preparing for a meeting. In trying to give people everything they might need, I have given them too much. The detail becomes difficult to absorb, and the preparation disrupts the creative process it was intended to support.

Another issue is plainly communication. Our established pathways depend upon representatives in one body reporting to another, whether between Conference and District, District and Circuit, or Circuit and local church. I am not always convinced that this feedback is as successful as it should be. My experience may be particular, and I do not want to generalise from it. Nevertheless, I no longer feel able to rely upon a message travelling intact through a sequence of meetings. We need to remind people of their responsibilities to communicate, and also find other ways of sharing updates, expecting some information to be lost along the way. I think of this as a more mosaic approach to communication. The representative route remains important, but people also encounter information through different conversations, written summaries, websites and other channels. Conference provides an obvious example: delegates report, but their reports need supporting materials. This is not an entirely new problem. Ian Neil Cockling’s research into Methodist superintendency (2015, pp. 150-152) found uneven attention to Conference decisions; in his study, eight of twenty-two superintendents gave them little or no attention in discussion with colleagues and stewards.

“I didn’t know about that.” “Nobody ever told me.”

When working through questions of finance and staffing, I have on occasion been frustrated to discover that information shared through our established structures was still new to people. Those phrases can be tiring to hear after considerable effort has gone into explaining something. “I never received the email” at least gives us a particular route to investigate, although sending an email is not the same as knowing its contents have been received and understood. I explored this tension in a sermon about the Transfiguration and the difficulties waiting further down the mountain. Those involved in shaping a vision may be ready to move; others are only beginning to understand what has happened. We can be in the same room and at quite different points in the conversation. We need to allow people time to catch up in their thinking and remain open to practical questions. Can we afford it? Who will do the work? What if it does not go as planned? Those questions need not be received as threats.

Later in the book I will return to Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method (1985), a useful way of helping people responsible for decisions have a structured conversation. As a taster, everyone is invited to consider why an idea might not work and is expected to contribute. This is counterbalanced by everyone considering why it might. People take different approaches to the same question rather than defending a position throughout. I have likened this to preventing the proverbial fight in a Western saloon. “This town isn’t big enough for the both of us” becomes a stand-off, followed by a brawl, because conversation has broken down and the protagonists can only imagine securing their position by winning the fight.

Additionally, these questions around what must change are being asked within a largely voluntary community. People feel at home and understandably want to retain a sense of security. They have given time, money and affection over many years. Returning to the lost sheep, they may wonder whether the future still has room for them. Those concerns, together with grief in their personal lives, the need for change and the painful recognition that things cannot remain as they are, run as undercurrents through a discussion. They influence what we hear when someone suggests change.

The voices we have yet to hear

One piece of writing that has profoundly influenced my ministry is Jane Leach’s Pastoral Theology as Attention (2007), discussed in my doctoral work. Her approach draws attention to the voices present in a situation, including those absent or silenced. It has helped me recognise that listening requires more than attending to whoever speaks most readily. In any gathering, some voices will be loud. Others will be quiet. There may be people who feel silenced. Their silence does not tell us that they have nothing to contribute. We need accessible ways for people to share what they think. Sometimes that means inviting people to write before discussing, allowing conversation in smaller groups, or deliberately asking those who speak most readily to contribute later. It extends to preparing people for a discussion and to arranging the room. A circle or semicircle of chairs can emphasise collegiality and the need to work together. Rows facing a desk, with the chair and secretary sitting behind it, can leave us feeling rather like target practice. The layout often affects the dynamic. Inviting those who have not spoken to contribute is helpful, but it does not remove every inhibition.

It is rumoured that I have shares in companies producing Post-it notes. This is untrue. But I might consider it.

Inviting people to write down a thought, rather than requiring an immediate yes or no, can help us hear individual voices. It gives someone a way to contribute without having to claim the floor, and it allows more than one thought to be present at once. Not everyone is confident in handwriting, or able to write comfortably. There are ways around that, including inviting someone to share a thought with a trusted person beside them who can record it on their behalf.

The dynamics may also begin before anyone enters the room. People may know what someone influential thinks, making it difficult to offer a different view even when that person has said nothing during the meeting. A substantial majority does not remove the importance of hearing and weighing minority opinions. We need particular care in interpreting silence. The classic mistake is to say, “Nobody objected,” and treat that as sufficient evidence of agreement. To be frank, if I justified something I had done on the basis that my wife had not objected aloud, I would be on very dangerous ground. Silence may mean that people have considered the matter and have no objection. It may mean uncertainty, a need for reflection, or “I am not prepared to speak out.” What we can establish from it is limited. It can help to give people who need time a further opportunity to respond after a meeting.

The broader task remains: draw out the different voices, give people confidence to contribute and remain willing to hear something that changes our understanding.

Disagreeing and continuing together

Within the Church, those of us with strong opinions need to recognise that we belong to a community with shared structures for making decisions. In Methodism, that includes democratic processes. We can contribute fully, have our argument considered and still find ourselves, to put it directly, on the losing side. Our Christianity needs to function at that point too. Can we disagree well, accept that a decision has been reached and continue journeying with the whole? We may retain our disagreement whilst allowing the community to proceed. Sometimes an issue is so significant that someone feels unable to remain within a particular congregation. That is difficult. I would not question a person’s integrity simply because they cannot live with a decision. Part of the generosity of the wider Church is that belonging can take different forms. Our responsibility is to help people recognise that they still have tremendous gifts to offer, whether they remain with us or find another community in which to share them.

There is biblical warrant for the lone prophetic voice: the person who speaks when others will not, or questions what everyone else appears to accept. We should make room for that possibility. Applying that understanding to ourselves requires humility. It does not follow that our conviction makes us right. We are trying to discern Jesus’ will, individually and corporately. We are not Jesus pronouncing our view upon others. Sometimes we have to admit that our argument was mistaken, or that we were not quite as prophetic as we thought. There can still be value in what we brought. A question may have exposed an assumption, prompted better preparation or helped another person speak.

Loving our anemone means making room for different voices and for people to reconsider, including ourselves. We are not about winning an argument. We are journeying towards a better life together, towards a fuller expression of the life in all its fullness that God has for us (John 10:10).

Learning to value different gifts

Some years ago I wrote about a framework that helped me understand the different values people bring to church life: Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework (2011). It helped me think about a healthy organisation whose people have a common aim but approach its fulfilment with differing priorities and a range of gifts. Some attend particularly to relationships and the wellbeing of the community. Some bring the order that makes work dependable. Others are drawn towards new possibilities or learning from what happens beyond the organisation. To put it bluntly, the framework helped me understand why God created the person who seems to be my polar opposite: the person who appears to share nothing with me in priorities, skills or even personality, apart from the stated aim that we are in this together. Returning to the clownfish and anemone, their needs are different. The fish seeks food and protection from predators; its host has its own needs for nourishment and protection. Put them together and they make a winning combination.

The framework has limits. People are more complex than a diagram. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most helpful pathways I have found for understanding difference and what happens when one approach dominates. Consider the pastoral and administrative desire to protect a community alongside the pioneering, entrepreneurial impulse that we know we need. A community may believe it honours God whilst becoming so focused on maintaining comfort and caring for its immediate circle that it overlooks those outside. Through unconscious bias, it can organise itself so that a new idea has nowhere to be heard, let alone grow. Equally, an emerging community needs pastoral care, dependable administration and the capacity to work through an idea. Fifteen possibilities before breakfast will not, by themselves, sustain its life.

Looking over one another in love

The Apostle Paul’s picture of the Church as a body helps me here (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). The different members belong to one another. Their difference is required for the body to function. It exposes the crazy thinking that one member can regard another as dispensable, or say it has no need of the other. That can be an uncomfortable passage when we are convinced that our difficulty would disappear if everyone else would see things our way. We need to remain interested and invested in one another if we are to fulfil the calling God has placed upon us.

Loving people does not require us to give harmful conduct free rein. Sometimes leaders have to call behaviour out. My first inclination is to address a concern one-to-one, where appropriate, but the response needs to take account of its public exposure. If someone makes an unfair generalisation or questions another person’s motives without good reason during a meeting, the chair has a responsibility to challenge it there and then. This is admittedly a difficult judgement. Much depends upon how the challenge is brought, which depends in turn upon how well we know people. I have been blessed with a sense of humour and can sometimes say something with a smile, conveying that we are carrying one another. But that is not always the right response, and humour must not deepen someone’s embarrassment. Earlier I stressed the uncertainty of interpreting silence. Nevertheless, people may equally read our failure to respond to harmful conduct, or a lack of clarity about how it has been addressed – our silence – as complicity. “That’s just so-and-so; it’s the way they are” can become a means of allowing injustice to continue. We have to consider both what a response may provoke and what leaving something unaddressed communicates to the person diminished by it. A public statement that devalues someone needs addressing in that gathering somehow.

There is also a danger in how Scripture, or a broad Christian value, is applied. The call to love or an overemphasis on unity can silence a legitimate concern or burden an injured person with responsibility for restoring everybody else’s comfort. Those words can become weapons and, in some circumstances, contribute to spiritual abuse. Where people have been hurt, care may require boundaries and a change in how responsibility is exercised. This is one reason why the minister’s role as chair, so often built into our arrangements, matters. One principle I encountered early in ministry was a HOT culture: Honest, Open and Trusting. That has stayed with me.

Making room for the clownfish

I remember two young people who were siblings. One had been keen on football for years. Then the other decided football would become their next passion. The first was genuinely upset: “But that’s my thing.” That was a clash of personal identity. Congregations can feel something similar. We may be nervous about resembling the church down the road, or feel pushed towards finding something distinctive, as though our ministry needs a unique feature before it has any warrant. Our identity, and the reasons for our vision, are more complex than that.

When considering how a local church might develop, I approached a Baptist colleague. I wanted to be supportive and knew that our proposed work might resemble hers. The issue was hospitality: churches offering drop-ins, a cup of tea or coffee, company and an invitation into worship. I did not want to undermine similar ministry already established, leave someone feeling undervalued, or create a sense that we needed to compete. Her response surprised me. She said plainly that God was calling us all to this form of ministry. The question was how we might coordinate our work and support one another. Another church’s hospitality did not remove the reason for ours. The work arose from a shared calling, and the relationship between us could help it grow. In other words, two people can be passionate about football, play for different teams, and that is okay. Someone discovering something they enjoy and wishing to invest in it does not devalue another person who shares that passion.

Extending the reflection, human beings can look broadly similar, yet we cherish the differences in their histories, personalities, gifts and relationships. We would hardly suggest finding the best version of a person and cloning it. Nor do congregations become interchangeable because both offer coffee, conversation and prayer. There is an ethos, a set of values and a shared history beneath the surface. We need to be less insecure about doing something similar to a neighbouring church. In this particular picture, we need not assume that only one anemone can sit on a rock.

There is a tension to hold. We need to welcome diversity and help people contribute in ways that make sense to them. We also need to avoid becoming so preoccupied with difference that we lose sight of a shared calling. Relationships grow as we serve together. God uses people from outside our existing congregation to minister to us. Shared worship, where it happens, can express a friendship already developing. We can value our own tradition and still find delight in what another community brings. The crucial work is growing supportive relationships with other churches and with people from those churches.

Reading a community through Steinbeck

One of my recent pieces of reading has been John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). As with much of my reading, themes resonating with ministry become apparent to me as I follow the story. Principally, it illustrates how insecurity can lead us to view people less privileged than ourselves with suspicion, missing the potential they bring to enrich all our lives. The novel follows the Joads, tenant farmers from Oklahoma who travel to California in search of work, against the background of the Great Depression, the 1930s Dust Bowl and changes in farming and land ownership, including mechanisation.

My own unconscious bias initially had me picturing this dispossessed family as Black. The Joads are in fact white and are depicted as such in John Ford’s 1940 film. So my first warning to myself and others is to watch out for how your own unconscious bias shapes your thinking, and how your assumptions can limit your understanding.

It is tempting to ask why Steinbeck centres this story upon white America when Black tenant farmers of that same era faced economic injustice compounded by histories of slavery, racism and institutional exclusion. That question extends beyond this chapter, but I do not want to lose it. Whilst I carry that discomfort, I find myself wondering whether the focus is a limitation or a particularly powerful way of exposing where and how bias can exist. Steinbeck makes us confront white Americans’ capacity to dehumanise other white Americans. People who do not face the migrants’ predicament treat them as an unwelcome category before receiving them as people. Mollie Godfrey (2013) offers a helpful scholarly connection: she argues that Steinbeck’s appeal to a white, middle-class readership can be understood as a deliberate attempt to unsettle its existing sympathies with racist and bourgeois ideologies. I read this as a warning against thinking that we have dealt with our prejudice because we have challenged its most obvious expression. Supporting Black civil rights gives us no grounds for complacency about how we treat others. We may recognise the injustice of racial discrimination and still despise people whose poverty, background or circumstances make us uncomfortable, even when they share our own skin colour. That is an uncomfortable thought. The capacity to dehumanise another person may remain within us long after we have learned to condemn it elsewhere. That reading helps me, even if it does not settle my discomfort.

The migrants bring skills, experience and gifts. They bring the possibility of contributing to the communities they encounter. Yet the opportunity for mutual growth is lost because they are regarded chiefly as a problem. That is my fear for the Church: that we fail to recognise the potential in new voices, or fail to hear them at all. We may see what a person needs without receiving what they offer. We may see an emerging community as something to accommodate without recognising how it could enrich our common life. Meanwhile, people in Steinbeck’s story who face tremendous poverty, hardship and grief offer one another care that I recognise as Christlike, sometimes more readily than those whose position is secure.

The novel’s title draws from Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic (1862): “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” The hymn, written in the context of the American Civil War and the abolitionist cause, uses biblical imagery of divine judgement. Behind it lie the winepress images of Isaiah 63 and Revelation 14:19-20. It looks towards God’s action against evil. Were the novel simply following that pattern, we might expect the wrath to come through an unmistakable intervention by God. Steinbeck is telling a story, however, drawing upon Christian imagery and making powerful allusions without retelling the Christian gospel in full. Jim Casy, the former preacher, is a morally compromised figure. His account of sexual encounters with women drawn to his preaching makes uncomfortable reading. Yet he becomes Christlike in the way he gives himself, and Tom Joad carries forward what he has learned from him. Holiness moves beyond an individual’s religious standing towards solidarity and the grace of sharing: someone has what another person needs and gives it in love. In this I recognise a secularising movement within the story.

A warning before going further: what follows reveals the novel’s ending.

The film gives us Tom’s vision of his continuing presence in other people’s struggle and closes with Ma’s determination that her people will endure. Tom’s speech has its counterpart in the novel too. But the novel carries us into a darker final scene. The deaths associated with the journey have not ceased. Rose of Sharon, whose child has been stillborn, offers her breast milk to a starving man. We are left with an extraordinary act of bodily generosity amidst devastation. We are not shown whether the man recovers.

There are intimations that the wrath to come will arise among those rendered powerless, as they recognise that their numbers and solidarity can challenge the arrangements that sustain injustice. Yet there is no final overturning of that order within the story. Nor is the resurrection I affirm as a Christian presented as God’s decisive answer to death. There are images of renewal, and one can read a symbolic resurrection in Tom taking up Casy’s cause. My question concerns the hope offered by God’s action in Christ, which exceeds the survival of our values in other people.

Where does this leave us as a Church? We are supposed to belong to one vine, drawing life from Christ and bearing fruit together (John 15:1-8). We are called to look over one another in love. The inherited Church holds much of the power to enable change; what is emerging may be the fragile clownfish that needs nurture. I hesitate to turn this into a declaration that God will judge us for failing to support a particular project. God understands the tensions we live with, and we need compassion in facing them. My concern is what we may lose if inherited and emerging communities become separated, or if the new life is allowed to die before it can offer its gifts. In a season of chapel closures, already felt as a profound loss by many, losing what is new and emerging, and what it might bring to reinvigorate our common life, would be a further injury. I hold that God has a future for the Methodist people, although the shape we inherit may be very different from the one we know. Richard Andrew’s words in 2025, recalled in Mark Slaney’s 2026 Conference address, give me a firmer ground for that hope: “the Church has a future because God is faithful.”

Questions to carry with you

Who do you know who seems completely different from you, yet offers you great support?

Whose contribution do I find difficult to value, and what might I be missing?

Whose voice are we hearing least in a given situation, and how could we make it easier for that person to contribute?

Who helps us fulfil our calling, and how do we care for them in return?

Where this chapter comes from

The chapter revisits my doctoral research, submitted to Durham University in 2016, and my Love Your Anemone blog. The earlier writing includes What’s with the Clownfish and Why We Should Love Our Anemone (4 May 2017), Managing Competing Values in Fresh Expressions and the Wider Church (11 April 2017), Churches Together: What’s the Point? (16 October 2022), and Tending to Those Half-way Down the Mountain (19 April 2024).

The AI introduction, reassessment of oversight, discussion of institutional power, accounts of preparing for meetings and forming a youth-work charity, communication reflections, Post-it illustration, comments on silence, and expanded Steinbeck reading were substantially developed or reshaped through my spoken revisions on 14 October 2026. The siblings and Baptist-colleague accounts and other earlier additions were already present in the 13 October author revision. These recollections are personal testimony. References to published work support the historical and theoretical discussion; they do not independently verify every ministry recollection or judgement.

The text has been organised and edited with AI assistance. Some wording has been retained from an earlier AI-assisted draft; much has been recast in response to my dictated instructions. The marked review copy records those distinctions. Its labels describe the evidence available about the process, rather than proving an exclusive origin for each finished sentence.

Sources and further reading

Abraham, William J. (1989). The Logic of Evangelism. Eerdmans. The discussion draws upon his account of initiation into God’s kingdom. The astronaut illustration is presented as an image the author uses, not as a verified quotation from Abraham. Publisher’s page.

Atkins, Martyn (2011). Contemporary Methodism: A Discipleship Movement Shaped for Mission. Summary of the General Secretary’s Report to the Methodist Conference. Read the summary.

Audet-Gilbert, Émie, François-Étienne Sylvain, Sidki Bouslama and Nicolas Derome (2021). “Microbiomes of clownfish and their symbiotic host anemone converge before their first physical contact.” Microbiome 9, article 109. DOI: 10.1186/s40168-021-01058-1. Read the study. See its Background section for the nutrient relationship. Fish and anemone relationships vary between species.

Cameron, Kim S., and Robert E. Quinn (2011). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework. Third edition. Jossey-Bass. The chapter applies the framework to church life; it does not treat people as fixed psychological types.

Cockling, Ian Neil (2015). Watching Over One Another in Love: Methodist Superintendents and Oversight in the Church. DThM thesis, Durham University. See printed pp. 150-152 for communication and engagement with Conference decisions, and p. 191 for the summary of tensions between expectation and practice. Read the thesis.

Cray, Graham, editor (2004). Mission-shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context. Church House Publishing. See also Fresh Expressions, “Our Story”, undated, accessed 14 October 2026, which connects the report with the subsequent initiative. Read Our Story.

de Bono, Edward (1985). Six Thinking Hats. Little, Brown. See also the official de Bono summary of the six approaches (2018). Read the summary.

Ford, John, director (1940). The Grapes of Wrath. Twentieth Century-Fox. Tom’s speech about his continuing presence is followed by Ma’s closing affirmation of endurance. The novel’s final scene is omitted from the film.

Godfrey, Mollie (2013). “‘They ain’t human’: John Steinbeck, Proletarian Fiction, and the Racial Politics of ‘The People’.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 59(1), pp. 107-134. DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2013.0010. The discussion here draws on the published abstract’s account of Steinbeck’s appeal to white, middle-class readers; it does not claim to summarise the full article. Read the abstract.

Howe, Julia Ward (1862). “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The line quoted is from the final version, reproduced in Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto Libraries. Read the hymn. Its biblical background includes Isaiah 63:1-6 and Revelation 14:19-20.

Leach, Jane (2007). “Pastoral Theology as Attention.” Contact 153(1), pp. 19-32. DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2007.11759074. Article reference.

Leese, Hamish, and Graham Horsley (2019). Methodism’s Hidden Harvest? The Story of the First Fifteen Years of Methodist Involvement in Fresh Expressions. The Methodist Church. Methodist resource page.

Mackrell-Hey, Langley Adrian James (2016). Effective Oversight of Methodist Fresh Expressions: An Exploration of How Fresh Expressions Are Challenging the Practice, Discipline, and Ecclesiology of the Methodist Church, with Specific Reference to the Task of Presbyteral Oversight. DThM thesis, Durham University. Repository record. The author’s own published extracts are available for the introduction and method and literature review.

Methodist Church (2005). The Nature of Oversight: Leadership, Management and Governance in the Methodist Church in Great Britain. Paragraph 1.7 relates oversight to remaining true to the Church’s calling; paragraph 1.10 develops its reflective and shared character. Read the report.

Methodist Church (2026). Artificial Intelligence Report. Conference Agenda, report 36, especially section 7. Read the report. See also “Methodist Conference debates AI”, 30 June 2026, for the Conference’s consideration and adopted recommendations. Read the account.

Slaney, Mark (2026). The President’s Address to the Conference. The address recalls Richard Andrew’s 2025 statement that the Church’s future rests in God’s faithfulness. Read the address.

Steinbeck, John (1939). The Grapes of Wrath. Viking. The chapter’s interpretation of solidarity, secularisation and resurrection is the author’s theological response, not an assertion that Steinbeck’s intentions have been conclusively established.

Williams, Rowan (2003). Presidential Address to General Synod, July. The address recalls earlier mixed-economy language in Wales. Read the reproduced address.

Aquarium of the Pacific (undated). “Fish-Eating Anemone.” Used for the example of movement using the foot; movement differs by species. Accessed 14 October 2026. Read the species account.

Biblical passages: Luke 15:1-7 and 15:11-32; Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 12:12-27; John 10:10 and 15:1-8; Isaiah 63:1-6; Revelation 14:19-20. The feelings of the ninety-nine are the author’s question, not an event narrated in Luke. Describing the father as prodigal is an interpretative use of the term.