The Starfish and the Spirit: Unleashing the Leadership Potential of Churches and Organizations

Imagine an organizational model for church leadership that enables the entire team to unleash their full potential.

The joy and vigor coming from a collective strength, intelligence, and skill in the community of leaders not only brings greater potency but better yields for your ministry. What would it be like to see this kind of healthy leadership reproduced into the second, third, and fourth generation, on multiple strands?

Leveraging the metaphor Ori Brafman popularized in his NYT best-selling book, The Starfish and the Spider, Rob Wegner, Lance Ford, and Alan Hirsch show:

• How to take a close look at your church's organizational structure and how to adapt instead of simply adopt a certain kind of structural approach.
• How churches can function without a rigid central authority, making them nimbler in reacting to external forces.
• How seeding starfish networks inside today's churches will prepare the church of tomorrow to be agile while maintaining the accountability to be effective.

The Starfish and the Spirit is about creating a culture where church leaders view themselves as curators of a community on a mission, not the source of certainty for every question and project. It's about creating a team of humble leaders "in the middle" of the church, not at the top--leaders who naturally reproduce multiple generations of leaders, from the middle out.

Rob Wegner leads the Kansas City Underground, a decentralized network of reproducing disciples and microchurches in Kansas City, Missouri. Previously, he served as teaching pastor at Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana and at Westside Family Church in Kansas City. Rob also serves on the leadership team of NewThing and on the Exponential Network Team, leading learning communities and speaking at national church conferences.