Cara: In 2026, the GC Podcast is shifting to a new format with two miniseries released throughout the year rather than monthly episodes. This change is going to allow us to go deeper into meaningful conversations that support our shared journey of Kingdom Living.
Hello, friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in the context of Grace Communion International churches.
I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we are honored to host Reverend Dr. Eun Strawser for our final episode of our miniseries, exploring her book, You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone: The Power of Sharing Leadership.
In this series, we are exploring the role of shared leadership in developing local congregations that are participatory, relational, missional, and transformational, all as part of our 2026 theme of Kingdom Living. Because Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And so, as citizens of the kingdom and co-laborers with Christ, we’re sent into the world to reflect his light.
Eun, we are so thankful to have you for our final episode. Welcome, welcome.
[00:01:25] Eun: Thanks so much for having me again, Cara.
[00:01:27] Cara: It is an absolute pleasure. We’re going to dive into this final part of your book that I think — really the whole book is so rich, so, I was going to say — gives a lot of really rich pieces for us to chew on, but the whole book is rich, so I don’t even know that would be a true statement because the whole thing is. So, why don’t we just go ahead and dive right in?
You, throughout the book, talk about sharing leadership and leadership as having to do with power and power dynamics. And so, sharing leadership is connected with sharing power. And so, one of the, I guess, concepts that you introduce is this idea of sharing power with.
Can you share with us a little bit more of what you mean by that and how you envision this impacting the way that we lead in our local congregations?
[00:02:29] Eun: Yeah. And thanks for making some space to highlight this. I do think that if readers and listeners are going to walk away with anything from any of the series on my book is really just this thing.
Leadership is contending with power. And if we don’t, as leaders, as senior pastors or leaders in our church context, if we don’t reckon how do we personally contend with power and power dynamics, then we would be missing a huge point of the of something that I think Jesus is inviting and to transform us in.
I think the whole Christian life, the imitation of Jesus, has everything to do with how do we contend with power given to us, power taken away from us, and everything in between. To kind of highlight that sharing power and power with part probably borrowing from a better book than my book is Iris Marion Young’s book.
She’s a sociologist who wrote a landmine book called Justice and the Politics of Difference. And she does highlight these kinds of different power dynamics that a lot of sociologists over the years have been looking at. And I do think the congregation leadership — the church leadership — it would do well for us to think through this.
So, she lists out that there are four different kinds of powers. Things that we in church scope are familiar with is “power over,” or domineering power, very authoritative power.
Or “power through” is like the next wave in the climbing of these big, huge megachurches. These “power through” or influential charismatic leaders came to be.
So, those are probably the two most familiar kinds of powers. But she also lists out two additional ones. So, there is “power within.” So, this is all the power dynamics that are just already in existence in a closed set in society. So, another way to think about it is systemic power. So, anybody who does any sort of like advocacy work or all my folks who do Christian community development, they’re much more familiar with this kind of power.
And then “power to” is, another word for that is, a replacement of power. A lot of the history of different minority groups, let’s say, in the US or in the UK are probably familiar with these kinds of replacement models of power. But I think the biggest thing that when we think about power in these kinds of scopes is that it’s as if power is some sort of commodity that we give to or we can take away from people.
And that’s usually how I think non-Christian world dynamics think about how power dynamics are in play. But “power with” — a better word for that is “partnership.” And if you are a reader of the New Testament, and you can just see this word being flown around in all, every single one of the Apostle Paul’s epistles to all the first century churches, he uses this word “partnership” over and over again, and our Western churches misinterpreted and say that he’s talking about good old eating together Christian fellowship, the word koinonia.
And we think, oh, the church life and the way that we’re going to practice being imitators of Jesus is that we are going to practice fellowship and have fellowship with my brothers and sisters, but that’s not how the word is meant to be translated. It’s a deep partnership, and if you are a first century Christian and you hear that word “partnership,” you cannot help but go back to Genesis 1:2, that God has created humanity to be image bearers, both man and woman, human beings together, so that we are partnering with God for the good of this world. So, “power with,” again, if you’re trying to put some stakes on the ground around how does biblical power contracts work, that we need to think about partnership, and partnership definitely is a shared leadership language.
[00:07:03] Cara: Yes. Yes. And I thank you for sharing that link back as well to, to Genesis. I think that is, I don’t know, just really beautiful to think about — what’s the history of how God has been inviting us into partnership, and so what does that mean about how that reflects in our leadership and how we are as his people and as his church?
[00:07:33] Eun: We would actually be ― if people think about, if church leaders especially, think about “power with,” that sharing power, that partnership, it actually makes it so that leaders would think so much more highly of their congregations, leaders would think so much more highly about the community members who are future congregants, right?
That’s how we would be seeing everybody, right? If we have a vision for shared leadership, which means sharing power, partnership with, then it means that we have to have a higher viewpoint of our congregants and the community that our church resides in.
[00:08:12] Cara: Yes. Yes. Yes, I love that. I’m going to chew on that for a while. Yes. You’re absolutely right. Wow. Wow. I’m going to let that just marinate there.
One of the things that you talk about is the structures and of sharing power. And I think about when we think about leadership development in GCI and in our congregations, and what are those, I think in a lot of churches there’s that buzzword leadership pipeline, right?
And so, one of the things that I really appreciated is you talking about the fact that sometimes even our leadership pipeline, starting from there, it kind of influences, right, the extent to which we are going to be living into shared leadership or not, right? And so, again, I think in our journey of living into a more team-based, pastor-led or shared leadership culture and practice in GCI, I’m curious what advice would you give to a church that is committed to unbiasing their leadership pipeline so that they could foster more of this culture and practice of shared leadership?
[00:09:41] Eun: I like the way you phrased it. It’s such a caring way to say … to unbias our leadership pipelines. So, it’s so caring. It’s so pastoral. Yeah, I think that in order to unbias it means that we should also already know what our biases are.
Cara: Yeah.
Eun: And the way to do it … and again, this is something I really do believe in. I love the work of the Holy Spirit and all the ways that it’s organic and mysterious, and all these. But I also don’t think that God works haphazardly. I think that God also loves structure.
Cara: Yeah.
Eun: And intentionality. And I think if you’re in a leadership position, you have so much more a say over how structures and systems work within the life of your church, these rhythms and such, right?
And one way to think through it is to make an assessment of how are our structures and rhythms already biased towards one kind of leadership pipeline. Probably the most common leadership pipeline, whether we admit it or not … and this takes, again, a lot of humility to do this kind of assessment work, right? It feels exposing. But a lot of times the leadership pipeline draws in either people who have skillsets that we like — so, usually, it’s like people who are good communicators that can be on stage and can speak, people — or if the worship pastor route, people who can sing or are musical, right? Those are probably the two biggest avenues for church leadership down the road.
Other things that people may be thinking about are people who the main leader or leaders like to work with. So, it might be a personality based, right? When we talk about, oh, is there a fit, right? For things.
That fit probably is really covering over the fact that we want to work with people there who are easy for us to work with, and usually it is personality based, right? Any organizational psychologist would tell you that is true. So, how do we make it so that it’s unbiased?
We probably should be thinking about what is a biblical bias for a leadership pipeline, right? And that, and again, this is where that shared leadership and how sharing of power with and partnership works out better. So, if we can identify what are our biased structures, rhythms, strategy preferences for types of leaders that we already like to have, how do we make it so that there are biblical biases to this leadership pipeline?
Again, this is when that the last time we talked about a different tool. So, in GCI, you folks use the Five Voices. Something I’m offering is from Ephesians 4, the APEST, apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. But there should be a fullness of how the people of God are going to be equipped to do the works of service for the benefit of the congregation and the community around it.
If that’s the question to answer, then I would be looking for, okay, are all of those kinds of values and those ways that the congregation needs to be equipped in, are those being met? Are there places of where people know how to teach one another and learn from one another, how to care and heal one another, not just be healed, where they are equipped in welcoming and hospitality in their personal lives and in gathered spaces? Are there places where people are equipped in participating in the liberating of themselves, their community members, and the neighborhood around them?
And are there ways that people are equipped to be sent out to be the image bearers of ascending God, right? If those kinds of things … I would be looking for those kinds of things where they are biblical biases. We’re not just looking for a church a leadership pipeline for people who are good at caring for a nice social club so people feel valued when they come.
No. It’s not just that. It’s that people, when they come, they experience the healing of Jesus, and they know and are equipped to help heal and participate and partner with Jesus in healing one another, right? So, I think if you use the clarity of whatever shared leadership equipping tool the church is using, that helps to clarify, I think, unbiasing or making a biblical bias in their leadership pipeline.
[00:14:22] Cara: Yeah. And what I really like about that is it helps us to zoom out to the larger community, right? And helps us to think beyond. Because one of the things that we do emphasize a lot and practice a lot in GCI is mentoring and pastoral mentoring and leadership mentoring. And I think that’s often where maybe we can get stuck in the weeds of that one-on-one, right?
Which there’s … If that’s important, then there’s that place for that, right? When we don’t, I think, zoom out to that larger context of what’s happening in the community or all these different learning spaces, environments being cultivated and these different ways of equipping being given, then maybe it’s easy to get just stuck with what we’re familiar with. Because when I think about unbiasing this leadership pipeline, I think about challenging ourselves not to just make a bunch of mini-me’s, right? And I think that’s a lot of times like what you said “Oh, fit,” and, “Is this someone that’s easy for us to work with?”
We like to make and we like to work with people, I think, often that remind us of ourselves or that can do the things that we do or would do things the way that we would want it to be done and carry on things the ways that we’ve always done it. And so, I think often in leadership development and leadership development pipelines, we set things structurally up to just make a bunch of little us’s, right?
And so, I really like this way of kind of zooming out and saying, “It’s not just about what me as one leader is producing or what a leadership pipeline is producing out of one program or something like that, but like, what are we seeing out of the, the church community, and how is that impacting us in the context of our community or our neighborhood?” I think that zoom out puts us into a more meaningful context.
[00:16:26] Eun: Yeah. I think and again if we go out outside of salaried or paid professional ministers and you think of what is the rhythm and reasons for how a congregation chooses their lay leaders, let’s say.
Usually we pick people who are, seem professional or are the most devout among us, right? And but those are such generic, non-biblical, ways to measure leadership. It’s so easy.
Cara: Yeah.
Eun: Identify. Again, you go back to part one of the book. You go and figure out very clearly, are these people disciples? Do they actively imitate Jesus in their personal lives, right? And then you start noticing within the context of the congregation, are these people who are marked with those, those four H’s: humble, honoring of others, hospitable, and they’re hopeful. And then see which whichever tool you’re using, which kind of equipping environments do these people facilitate.
And the only way that you can see these things is if you as a leader, main leader, trying to unbias your leadership pipeline, as Cara so lovingly stated, is do we provide active spaces where we can actually see this happening?
Cara: Yeah.
Eun: How in the world would you know that a leader is good at and gifted at equipping people so that they will be learners from God and from one another? How would you know if they are equipped to equip others in the congregation to be people and a gathered group of people who are more hospitable because they really believe in the indwelling presence of God in their lives. Like, how do you know that? I bet you can’t just know that from a Sunday morning worship service.
You’re really good at knowing who can speak well on stage and who can sing well on stage, but you would not know who are the people who really love that when a facilitation of learning is happening together in the room, that everybody has access to God’s word, and everybody can teach one another around that, right, that everybody gets to partner, koinonia, partner with the living God in participating in the healing of themselves and others in the community around them, right? How would you know if you don’t already intentionally provide active spaces where people can practice this out?
[00:18:49] Cara: Yes. Yes. No, that’s a good word. That’s a good word.
And just as, I think, for our listeners, a note maybe to maybe reference and follow up on is, I think we have this, I guess, structure where, with the faith, hope, and love avenues is one way that we help to bring clarity around, are we having fullness, like, holistic opportunities for ministry participation, or are we getting kind of singular-minded and just focusing on the one thing that we’re comfortable with or that we’re good at or whatever.
Or are we creating these spaces for people to participate in the fullness of God’s ministries and to be equipped in them and to show that maybe they do have this gifting to be able to equip others in this.
And listeners, when you’re chewing on this and marinating further, I think, thinking about how does this apply to the context of the faith, hope, and love avenues and those teams there and with the avenue champions and what does that look like — there would be a suggestion that I would make for how that practically translates into our local church structures.
And so, the final question that I have for you, Eun, is you draw a connection between shared leadership, centered discipleship, and mission. And I do want to mention, if folks haven’t given it a listen or seen in Equipper our small group study guides for centering discipleship, to go ahead and check that out.
We have another mini-series with you on your book, Centering Discipleship, and some guides there to go through that with your local congregation and leadership and to dig deeper into that. So, if you haven’t done that, I would highly recommend, because there is a lot of richness there, and I think that we see they’re connected, right?
And we see, I think, a lot in this chapter where those connections happen and how these are processes that are going to come together. And so, you draw this connection between the shared leadership, the centering of discipleship, and mission. So how does shared leadership impact our approaches to discipleship and mission?
[00:21:21] Eun: Yeah, I think that probably if a leader is or a pastor is just kind of starting out, my biggest recommendation is probably to center discipleship first …
Cara: Yes.
Eun: … before sharing leadership. Make that be, like, the most foundational piece of the life of your church. Because if you, kind of, if you were to, if everybody was to kind of break down and boil down what is it that people expect from the church or participating in the life of a church, most people think that it’s the church service, that worship service, that it’s the main event of the church, right? The main event is the church service, and that’s going to help meet my needs to attain intimacy with God, experience personal wholeness, have a deep connection, communal connection with others, and I will participate in the renewal of the city or neighborhood around, around me, right?
They think usually it’s a worship service, a church service that hits all of those things. And every senior pastor knows that’s just not true. We just won’t say it out loud because we hope that maybe it would. Maybe it would. Maybe we could give a good enough sermon or sing a meaningful enough worship song that people can participate, compel them to participate in the renewal of the community around them, have them have a deep connection with the congregants, experience personal wholeness and intimacy with God.
But we also know that’s not true because it’s misplaced. There’s a different reason why a church service, this public worship service exists. And so, where’s a better place where intimacy with God, personal wholeness, a deep connection with others, and participation in the renewal of the city around them lies in.
And then the next misplaced place are leaders. People think that it’s in the leaders. It’s the leadership, a leader’s job to make sure that I have an intimacy with God. I experience personal wholeness, a deep connection with others, and participation in renewal, and that’s just not true.
The, I think, the best thing that the leader can do in the anticipation that leadership will be shared is disciple the people God has given you. It’s discipleship. It’s imitation of Jesus, an active imitation of Jesus. Not just having works done for you, but you do that working out of your faith with the Holy Spirit, imitating Jesus that helps produce in you a deeper intimacy with God, an experience of personal wholeness, have a deep connection with others and a participation in the renewal of the community around you, right?
Discipleship is a thing that helps you to connect that deep spiritual confidence and tether that to a social competence so you know how to live like Jesus in the world around you and not just know and be known by Christ, right? So, I think, discipleship is actually that centered peace around it.
And if you’re having discipleship be that centered peace in the life of the church because your hope is in the people of God doing the works of service. Then there, you answered that question. You need shared leadership so that the people of God can be equipped so that it benefits the community, that mission the community around them.
[00:24:39] Cara: Yeah, and it’s almost like when you have that discipleship centered, the shared leadership almost becomes — what’s the word that I’m looking for — it becomes necessary, right, to move forward in this way where discipleship is truly centered in the life of the congregation, because you’re not going to be able to center discipleship in these while using some of these other approaches and structures of leadership that we might be used to of maybe there’s like the senior pastor does everything or maybe two or three people do everything, but they all have the same skill set or giftings or big personalities or whatever that is. But if we’re really centering discipleship, then we’re not going to be able to do that without shared leadership is what I’m hearing.
[00:25:31] Eun: Yeah. And I think it also, another word that you had used earlier is, it produces — I think it produces in the church a posture towards the community around them, right? We know effective mission is not when a self-highlighting group of Jesus people come into a neighborhood and be like, “We are the saviors of the world.” “You are welcome.”
None of that has ever worked in the history of the church, ever, right? But what does work? When discipleship is the thing, that imitation of Jesus is the thing that is the compelling heart behind why the church moves alongside the community around them, and they’re actively being equipped by all these different types of leader gifts to this congregation, then mission actually gets reshaped so that we are, have postures where we want to be with our neighbors and not just over our neighbors or influence our neighbors or all these weird power dynamics, right?
I think the biggest thing to note, again, that shared leadership and leadership has everything to do with our interaction with power is that the power with, that sharing power, shared leadership that partnership viewpoint of power — that needs to replace all of these other kinds of power. That’s the work of Jesus on the cross — that he squashed out every other kind of power in the world, right? And for what? Not so that there’s just weakness that exists. It’s this new kind of power, and this new kind of power is what the Apostle Paul is talking about in koinonia, this partnership kind of power.
And the partnership kind of power is effective. It’s empowering. It’s valuing. It’s dignifying. Wouldn’t a neighborhood that is paying attention to an empowering, partnering kind of Jesus community, wouldn’t they want to be a part of that? I would. If this thing, this gathered group of people where they experience an indwelling presence of the living God and they’re a body of a resistance that is for me and with me alongside my journey in this neighborhood, why wouldn’t I want to be a part of that?
[00:27:55] Cara: Yeah. That’s compelling.
All right. That gives us a lot, I think, to sit with and to be hopeful about and to be excited about in our local congregations — about what it can look like and what it ought to look like for us to be the church. So, I’m really excited.
Listeners, please, if you haven’t read already, please go ahead — and in the show notes there’ll be information for you how to access a copy of You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone: The Power of Sharing Leadership. And as I just mentioned, and as we just discussed, centering discipleship is really right the center of it all. And it seems to me, like, these … Are they meant to be like partner, like, they’re sister books?
[00:29:00] Eun: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes.
[00:29:03] Cara: Okay. So, I didn’t want to speak on your behalf for that, but to me that’s what they seem like. They come together. And so, please also, if you haven’t checked out those resources, please do that because, as we were just discussing, it’s really the centering of discipleship that’s going to bring us to this point of saying, “Oh we need this shared leadership.”
And it’s the shared leadership is to serve this centering of discipleship and this kind of, like, different way of being and structuring the life of our local congregations in our communities. So, please, we’ll also have all of the links to that in our show notes. Go ahead and check that out. I would very much so encourage you to do so.
And thank you so much for joining us again. Your two sister books are incredible. They give us so much to think about. They give us so much to pray about, to be hopeful for. And I think really are just a compelling vision of how we can be the church differently, how we ought to and are called to be the church differently than I think that we have maybe the kind of cheap commercialized image we’ve been sold, right?
And so, I am just so deeply appreciative for you for all the hard work that you have put into these works, and all of your life experiences and your own faithfulness and your own journey as a disciple that you’ve been willing to share with others so that we can be drawn into, I think, a vision and an existence of God’s church that is, I think, more real and more reflective of who he really is, that’s more beautiful, that is more of a piece of his kingdom here on Earth. And that is just more of who we really are being shaped and formed to be as people. So, thank you so much for your work and for joining us for these three episodes.
[00:31:14] Eun: Thanks for having me.
[00:31:15] Cara: And as is our tradition, would you be happy to close us out with a word of prayer?
[00:31:23] Eun: Yes, I’d love to.
Jesus, I’m so thankful that you told us, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” That’s such a trust and a gift to us. You think so highly of your people, and would that be a model for us to think so highly of the people you have given us to lead and love. Would you continue to make GCI community be growing as local congregations that are participatory, relational, missional, and transformational in a biblically biased way, in the way that you long and hope for us. Thank you so much that you desire for everyone to be living in your kingdom. Would you give us clarity? Would you give us courage? Would you give us compassion to be able to live in this way and lead in this way? Jesus, we thank you that you not only instill in us hope, but you say that we, your people, your imitators, are the hope of glory is Christ in us, that you live in us, you are with us, and you’re among us. It’s in your good name we pray. Amen.
[00:32:42] Cara: Amen. Amen. Folks, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.
Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at info@gci.org with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.
