CURATE A COMMUNITY ON MISSION
Enable everyone to show up and step up with who they really are.
REIMAGINE CHURCH
MULTIPLY LEADERS
MULTILPLY DISCIPLES
Cut the head off a spider and the body dies. Most organizations are organized around this vulnerability and fragility.
The weight of top down, disempowering, highly centralized leadership is crushing the church, burning out leaders, and increasing the cynicism of those outside the faith.
CUT A STARFISH IN HALF.
Both halves of a starfish have everything necessary to regenerate new starfish. The Church was originally conceived to grow as a decentralized, bottom up, starfish movement.
REIMAGINE CHURCH
Learn the 5 points of multiplication in a genuine movement.
MULTIPLY LEADERS
Family trees, not organizational charts.
MULTIPLY DISCIPLES
Be one. Make one. Start a movement.
WE KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BEAR THE SCARS, WOUNDS, WINS, AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN LEADING CHURCHES TODAY.
The Spiderfish - leaning toward centralization
The Starder - leaning toward decentralization
- We've coached and trained thousands of church planters, pastors, leaders, and denominational networks across the globe.
- Over 100 cumulative years of experience leading in many contexts - including traditional church, church planting, mega churches, disciple making movements, and church planting movements.
- We have produced Seminary Courses, Podcasts, Hundreds of Webinars, and 27 Books about Discipleship, Church Multiplication, and Leadership.
HOW DO YOU CURATE A COMMUNITY ON MISSION?
1) Buy the Book.
2) Listen to the Podcast.
3) Join The Starfish and The Spirit Learning Stream.
ENDORSEMENTS
“Like a cool rain after a decade of drought, The Starfish and the Spirit delivers relief, respite, and a total rethink on what it means to follow Jesus in this remarkable mission field we call life! Bravo to Rob and Lance for following and inviting us to join them.”
— Hugh Halter, author of The Tangible Kingdom, FLESH, and Happy Hour
“This book is a game changer. Get this down, and church multiplication becomes easy. My advice: Read The Starfish and the Spirit in concert with your key leaders to unlock a Great Commission future for your team.”
— RALPH MOORE, founding pastor of Hope Chapel
“If you want to learn the ways of decentralized disciple-making, then this is the book for you. In this manifesto on multiplication, Rob and Lance have laid the ground work for how to see movement happen. Rob and Lance have proven track records as practitioners. If you want to grow, be challenged, and practice unleashing the potential of raising up leaders, then pick up a copy of The Starfish and the Spirit.”
— Myron Pierce, author, lead pastor of Mission Church, founder and president of Every Inner City
“As a church planter in the West, I often have “yes, but how?” questions about disciple-making movements and microchurch multiplication. In this book, Rob and Lance have crammed eye-opening insights into every page, along with practical tools for every leader to reimagine the future of the church. If you’re passionate about catalyzing every member of your church to effectively help others find their way back to God, get reading.”
— Emma Jeffery, regional director of NewThing Western Europe, Soulcity Church, United Kingdom
“It’s been nearly fifteen years since the release of The Starfish and the Spider, a groundbreaking book on the genius of decentralized systems and the limitations of hierarchical command-and-control structures. Now Lance Ford and Rob Wegner take that prism for understanding the patterns and potential of self-organizing systems and apply it to apostolic movements to brilliant effect. I kept asking myself, Why hasn’t anyone done this before? But I’m glad no one has. I can’t imagine anyone doing it better than these guys.”
— Michael Frost, Morling College, Sydney
“The Starfish and the Spirit is a handbook for movement making. If you have a growing sense that God meant more for his church, read this book and discover what’s missing!”
— DAVE FERGUSON, lead visionary of NewThing, author of Hero Maker
IS YOUR CHURCH A SPIDER OR A STARFISH?
If you cut the head off a spider, you kill the entire organism. But if you cut a starfish in half and fling each half to opposite ends of the world, you get two starfish. A starfish has in each of its cells all that it needs to completely regenerate a whole new starfish.
Leveraging this metaphor, popularized by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom in their NYT bestselling book The Starfish and the Spider, Lance Ford, Rob Wegner, and Alan Hirsch show how the distributed structures of starfish networks will prepare today’s churches for the challenges of tomorrow. The Starfish and the Spirit is about creating a culture where church leaders view themselves as curators of a community on mission, not as the source of certainty for every question and project. Imagine a church led by a team whose gifts and talents are completely unleashed, enabling everyone to show up and step up with all they are. What would it be like to see this kind of healthy leadership reproduced for generations?
JOIN THE STARFISH LEARNING STREAM
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
LANCE FORD has written multiple books on leadership and disciple-making and has designed training systems used by leaders across the globe. He serves as an adjunct professor at multiple seminaries and is the cofounder of the Centralized Conferences.
ROB WEGNER leads the Kansas City Underground, a decentralized network of reproducing disciples and microchurches in Kanas City. Previously, he served as teaching pastor at Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, and at Westside Family Church in Kansas City.
