Life and Leadership In Decentralized Communites
A fascinating new book, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, highlights a new phenomenon in business and politics that the world is only now recognizing—the power and reslience of decentralized communities. Brad and Wayne look at the parallels between this book and how the early church functioned as it emerged in loosely-knit communities, rather than rigid institutions to bear the life of Jesus to a broken world. If you add the personal headship of Jesus to these decentralized communities, it's no wonder those early believes had as much impact as they did. This book also looks at leadership in a way that closely resembles what Jesus and the early church taught about the nature of leadership in Father's family.
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I really enjoyed this pod-cast, and it was very timely for me. Father has been reshaping my ideas about leadership; beginning with how he leads us. I used to have this idea that he was sitting on this throne giving out orders, but now I see that He is inviting us to participate in what He is doing. In stead of ‘go do that’, he is saying ‘do you want to come along?’ I am also seeing that we are to emulate his leadership when he asks us to participate in such a role.
As a funny side note, I have to share a conversation that I had with a local youth pastor over lunch. I was telling him about this book, and he said that it sounded like what baptist churches already do. They break in half regularly and then you have 2 churches. I couldn’t help but laugh 🙂
Rick
your conversation made me think of how God continually spreads his word in those countries where the preaching of Jesus Christ is forbidden by the government, ie; china, india, afghanastan, iran, etc…, and yet His Church continues to grow. In those countries these believers just meet together and worship, no corporate identity, no head, just people who share and want to share the powerful message of Jesus Christ. like the starfish each assembly is sufficient of itself in Christ because the Spirit of God empowers that body of believers with the gifts it needs to reproduce itself.
stefan