The last thing you need is another book on leadership. So how is UnLeader different?Leadership-centric conversations dominate the contemporary evangelical church scene. The largest church leadership conferences each year include talks from corporate business executives and world famous CEOs. We are drilled with the message that if it worked for them it will work for the church.There is one overwhelming problem. Jesus himself is not our first choice when it comes to who we model ourselves after as leaders. Many times the life of Jesus directly contradicts much of what is being imported into the church under the mantra of effective leadership.This book is not about eliminating leadership in the church. UnLeader will help you redefine and recalibrate your view of leadership according to Jesus' life. Renew your ministry, reimagine your path to authentic servant leadership, and discover that the only leaders worthy of being followed in the Church are the ones who are following Christ himself.Reviews'In a culture obsessed with leadership and leaders, this book turns the pyramid upside down, provoking all Christians to reexamine what the New Testament really has to say about the subject.'-Frank Viola, author of Reimagining Church'UnLeader is a fast, engaging read that makes a compelling case for a different way - a starkly Biblical way - towards leading the church into God's future. -David Fitch, B R Linder Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary'As the church struggles through seizmic shifts, UnLeader unwraps the reality of true God-sized influence. The future of the church and the fate of the world, at least in your neighborhood, are at stake...so read only if you intend to give your life away.' -Hugh Halter, author of The Tangible Kingdom and Sacrilege

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.

When Christ calls people, he invites them on a journey--a journey taken together in community. We have reached a point in history, however, when we think of the church as a fixed place where isolated individuals show up, consume a Christian message, drink some coffee, and get on with their lives. The times demand, and the gospel proclaims, that we recover our identity as a church that is a people on a quest for the kingdom of heaven, formed intimately by a loving God and called onto a long journey for the sake of our neighbors and our world. InThe Missional Quest you?ll learn how to take your church on a long run, and how to sustain yourselves and one another along the way, through the power of God for the sake of the world.

Servantship is essentially about following our Lord Jesus Christ, the servant Lord, and his mission--it is a life of discipleship to him, patterned after his self-emptying, humility, sacrifice, love, values, and mission. Servantship is humbly valuing others more than yourself, and looking out for the interests and wellbeing of others. Servantship is the cultivation of the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: making yourself nothing, being a servant, humbling yourself, and submitting yourself to the will and purposes of the triune God. Since servantship is the imitation of Christ, it involves an unreserved participation in the missio Dei--the Trinitarian mission of God. In this pioneering work, sixteen servants describe the four movements of radical servantship. Servantship is the movement 1.from leadership to radical servantship; 2.from shallowness to dynamic theological reflection; 3.from theories to courageous practices; and 4.from forgetfulness to transforming memory. Servantship recognizes, in word, thought, and deed, that "whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave--just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." "Servantship, as a collection of essays, has a global appeal for leaders both inside and outside the walls of the church. As Robert Greenleaf unknowingly produced a movement from outside the church that proved transformational for the topic of leadership studies within the church, this new work has the potential to transform leadership studies well beyond the walls of the church by transforming the culture of leadership studies within the church's walls." --Wayne Ballard, Associate Professor of Religion, Carson-Newman University "Ever since Robert Greenleaf's pioneering work on servant leadership, there has been a need for a thorough theological exploration of the subject. Graham Hill's insightful book meets this need in a balanced and thorough way. There are many books on leadership but the servant dimension has often been overlooked. A timely contribution." --Martin Robinson, Principal of Springdale College, Birmingham "Servantship reflects a constructive effort to paint a picture of what following Christ means and what it entails. . . . The result is a sensitively drawn portrait with artfully nuanced strokes that will inspire new ventures of service in imitatio Christi. . . . This is a book thoughtful Christians will want to read." --Neville Callam, General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance "Servantship deserves prime place among recent missional books, offering a powerful corrective to leadership-fixated churches. Combining thoughtful theology, cultural analysis, and practice, its stories and questions humble and inspire. It jolts you to see what's missing today. From the Australian context, Graham Hill has provided a challenge to the Western church that we dare not ignore." --Michael Quicke, Charles Koller Professor of Preaching and Communication, Northern Seminary "I am excited to recommend this important new work on servanthood and leadership. Graham Hill's book offers important insights and correctives to all of us and our views of leadership. Together the contributors help move us from the board room, back to the role of the bowl and the towel." --Terry Walling, Adjunct Professor, Fuller Theological Seminary Graham Hill is Senior Lecturer in Applied and Pastoral Theology at Morling College in Sydney, Australia (a theological college affiliated with the MCD University of Divinity and the Australian College of Theology). He is the author of Salt, Light, and a City: Introducing Missional Ecclesiology (Wipf & Stock, 2012). Graham's ministry experiences include church planting, pastoring in a large growing congregation, and coaching pastors and planters of missional experiments.