Many church leaders today feel trapped in unsustainable patterns of solo ministry, carrying everything from sermon prep to pastoral care to vision casting on their own shoulders. Dr. Eun Strawser, a physician, author, and church planter in Hawaii, discovered that these church leadership best practices aren't actually biblical at all. In this episode, she shares how moving from exhausted solo leadership to shared community leadership transformed her ministry from one community to 12 missional communities serving over 650 people, all while maintaining her medical practice and raising three children.

Eun reveals the "four H's" of biblical leadership (humility, honor, hospitality, and hope) that create better leaders than secular markers of control, crowd, and contribution. Through compelling stories from her Hawaii context, including leaders like Kelsey who serves 500 seniors and Melissa whose community provides school supplies for 1,000 families, listeners will discover practical church leadership best practices for identifying, developing, and empowering leaders throughout their congregations. Whether you're feeling isolated in ministry or looking to multiply your impact, this conversation offers a roadmap for sustainable, Kingdom-focused leadership that actually works.

The leader is not a disciple first, if their leadership is not also includes because they are ⁓ practical, real life, in real time, in a real place, imitating Jesus first, why are we putting these people in a platform position to lead when it's going to be by default that people are going to be imitating these people? So I'd rather have every single person in a church or congregation ⁓ imitate a person.

as they're imitating Jesus, just as Paul has said.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Pivot Podcast, the podcast where we explore how the church can navigate a changing world. I'm Terri Elton.

And I'm Dwight Zscheile Today we are excited to welcome back to the PIVOT podcast, the Reverend Dr. Eun Strawser, a physician, author, church planter and pastor of Ma Ke Alo'o, a church of multiplying missional communities in Honolulu, Hawaii. You may recall our conversation with her a few years back around her previous book Centering Discipleship. She has a brand new book.

It's just out and it's called, You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone, The Power of Sharing Leadership. We were really eager to get Dr. Strawser back on the Pivot Podcast to talk with us about it. So, Eun's work addresses one of the most pressing challenges facing churches today. How do we move away from weary, lonely, and often domineering patterns of leadership?

towards something that actually empowers entire communities and connects churches more deeply with their neighborhoods. What makes Eun's perspective particularly valuable is that she's not just theorizing about this, she's living it out. She started and helped grow a church plant from one community to 12, serving over 650 people. All while maintaining a medical practice, parenting three children, and developing leaders who are deeply embedded in community.

renewal work. So welcome back to Pivot.

Dwight, that is the worst introduction because now everyone's gonna be like, darn it.

We're all intimidated. ⁓

Well, I love it. Well, this is an opportunity that I would like you to just share a little bit about your story and you can kind of add your own pieces ⁓ to whatever Dwight said. And particularly I want to recall in your book, you talk about some painful personal experiences where you were excluded and or disempowered from various levels of church leadership that when you were trying to bring your gifts into the church. And I just wonder,

Tell us about your story and maybe how some of those painful moments It came to be into this book and how it got you motivated to write this book

Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ While my first book, Centering Discipleship, I always said that it was a love letter ⁓ to my church. I feel like this book, You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone, was probably a love letter to myself. I cried a lot writing it, ⁓ much, much more than I did with Centering Discipleship. ⁓ And I felt like ⁓ writing it and all those tears when I was writing it was probably, I feel like it was much more

crying and weeping like collective tears for probably more than just me experiencing the impact of probably poor leadership and poor leadership in the church. yeah, I think that a lot of times when we are thinking about leadership and leadership for a person who looks like me, I am female, I'm a minority, I'm an immigrant, I am far, far, far away from my home of origin, all those kinds of things contribute to.

⁓ Can people like me lead? And then the second question for me leading in Hawaii, where this is not the place that I've grown up in, and there are a lot of minority people here, it really is asking the question, can people who ⁓ don't look like a classic picture of leadership also lead? And I think that ⁓ if you look at the first century church, if you look at how God thinks about leaders and appoints leaders and those kinds of things,

I think the answer is absolutely yes. And so I hope that that ⁓ is resounding in this book. But I also hope that the piece around it is that ⁓ leadership is not meant to be done on your own. Leadership, and I think how the first century church, a solid leadership and power is meant to be shared. So a little bit about me starting out. I never wanted to be a pastor.

I wanted to be a missionary. I'm fluent in Swahili. I ⁓ a fellowship in Tanzania on purpose because I thought that I was going to be the next David Livingstone and I'm going to bury my heart in East Africa. That's really what I thought my ministry life was going to be. And lo and behold, many, many, many ⁓ years later, and here I am planting churches convocationally ⁓ in Hawaii.

⁓ The first time that ⁓ becoming a pastor and ordained minister came to be was, I said no many, many, many, many times and it wasn't until my youngest, we have three kids and my youngest is probably around three or four. She like sits onto my lap and we're just in an evening service and ⁓ one after the other was all male ⁓ leaders up on stage, very, very visible, which is fine. I grew up in like a

a PCA church. So this is absolutely fine. was nothing different from my ⁓ experience. And yet my daughter, who's so young, we never talked about this. It wasn't like a highlight of dinner conversations. She just whispered in my ear and Kyriella was like, Umma, can girls be pastors? And I felt like this is the only way that God could be like, are you going to do it now? Since you've been asked so many times, are you going to go through the process now?

And so yeah, that actually started my own ⁓ ordination ⁓ journey of ⁓ becoming ⁓ ordained minister today. So it is a lonely road leadership. ⁓ I think that depending on our own stories of origin, it can be lonelier than that. But I hope that ⁓ folks from our conversation today reading this book can see that.

leadership not to be lonely, especially in the Kingdom of God, how we experience it, and that ⁓ it's not lonely because it's meant to be shared.

So a lot of the pastors that we talk to describe feeling exhausted, isolated, and pressured to control outcomes. So in your book you say, postmodern, post-Christian culture celebrates leadership gained through control, crowd, and contribution. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, if you kind of think about, ⁓ I think again, when we talk about leadership, we should always think about power dynamics more than just people who make sure that outcomes happen. And so if you're going to boil it down to who do we as people and groups of people hand over power to and why do we do that? If you use a simple model of thinking through control,

crowd and contribution. Oftentimes people want to give over power ⁓ to folks who are really good at taking control. If you're in a situation and the first person that comes in, they're able to delegate tasks really, really quickly, doing it in a commanding way, doing it in an intentional way, everyone will be like, yep, that's the person I want to ⁓ give up my power to. Or it's a person that you think who can be able to draw a really, really large crowd.

They must have some sort of special power or special influence that they hold. And so a person who's able to draw a really, really quick crowd, maybe because they're funny, maybe because they're beautiful, right? These kinds of things where people are like, yeah, that person can lead because they can draw a crowd. Or this is probably more familiar to me in my other fields, but it's a level of contribution or expertise. I had X amount of years, I had this many initials behind my name, and therefore I'm the most equipped or experienced.

to be able to take charge. But I think that if we don't examine why is it that we give up power, our own power, or a church's power, or a community's power, over to these kinds of people, it's not that these things are evil and it's up, no, they're wonderful and they make sense, but I don't think in the church we should only give up power to folks who can command, control, crowd, or contribution.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Thanks for that. The first part of your book, you talk about maturity as disciples. So I want to ask you, why begin there in your book? And tell us a little bit about what does that look like?

This is probably the thing that ⁓ differentiates between ⁓ leaders in the secular field and leaders in a Christian field. I think that this should be a prerequisite for every leader ⁓ in the church. ⁓ Otherwise, we will probably just borrow from the business world or even secular nonprofit worlds around people who are able to accomplish tasks or get certain outcomes. But I'm like,

I think in the church we should ⁓ care more about if leadership is a platform position, then it's already going to be something where people are going to model after that person. This is probably the thing where most churches, if you're thinking about church shopping mentality, which all of us are guilty of, ⁓ especially in the US, we're probably going to be shopping for churches for if the lead pastor or senior or very visible platform leader is able to

make me feel smart, you know, maybe they're really, really like a biblical scholar, or they're gonna make me feel really, really special or cool because they're a charismatic leader, or they, feel immense amount of care from them. So they're like a high shepherd, a gifted leader. Most of the time, people want to choose a leader or see a person as a leader because of how they make them feel.

But I think that if the leader is not a disciple first, if their leadership ⁓ also includes, because they are ⁓ practical, real life, in real time, in a real place, imitating Jesus first, why are we putting these people in a platform position to lead when it's going to be by default that people are going to be imitating these people? So I'd rather have every single person in a church or congregation ⁓ imitate a person.

as they're imitating Jesus, just as Paul has said.

So if the three C's of control, crowd, and contribution aren't the right markers, you offer an alternative here. You talk about four H's of mature leadership in your book, Humility, Honor, Hospitality, and Hope. ⁓ That's a curious list. And can you say more about those four H's and why you chose them?

Yeah, absolutely. think that this part was, ⁓ this book actually started with ⁓ these four H's. I've just been noticing over and over again as we've been growing and developing leaders, thinking through if it's not task-based, then what are you looking for? And it's not just a person who's discipled, right? Sometimes we think that discipleship alone is a leadership pipeline, but I'm like, then that gets rid of the fact that the entire congregation ought to be discipled, right?

every Christian should be disciple, every Christian should be imitating Jesus. therefore then what makes them ⁓ be delineated, what makes leadership delineated in the church? I think that we should start with these kinds of markers so that we can ⁓ save away from trying to get leadership positions filled based on people being able to do skill sets or task oriented things that people can learn to do once they're in a position.

So the markers that I'm looking for in leaders that obviously they are ⁓ imitators of Jesus, those kinds of things, those are all given. But when you kind of think through who are the people who are the most humble in the room and not folks who are just like don't think about themselves or think less of themselves, those kinds of things, but people who actually exhibit true humility. I think that the Bible, scripture says a lot of times,

It talks about humility so many times. It's a caricature of Jesus and also it's a caricature of why Jesus is honored because he's humbled himself, right, to a point where he has given himself over for others, right? And then what's next thing? And therefore, God has raised him up and honored him above all, right? There is a clear link that goes from people who understand and exhibit and live out humility.

They also are the folks who God honors, but they're also the folks who know how to honor the dignity of every single person in the room. Wouldn't you want a leader who thinks about themselves ⁓ in such a measures, because they're so busy thinking about others, thinking about the potential, thinking about the dignity of other people ⁓ in the room. They're the ones who are the first to honor everybody in the room.

And then if you have an honoring culture like that, then it moves easily. And again, this is so scripture-based that then Jesus talks often about ⁓ honor connected to hospitality. You know a person who is able to facilitate an environment that is welcoming to all. If that is not a hallmark of what it means to be a leader, then you would be choosing people who are ⁓ picky, who are choosy, who have biases, right?

those kinds of things. so, hospitality is a huge part. People who are able to open up their homes and their own lives for the sake of other people and to host them. And then lastly, all of these things ⁓ lead to hope. If you don't have a leader who's hopeful that the Kingdom of God really, really coming here on earth is really truly the answer to all the brokenness in the world, why would you have them in a leadership position ⁓ in your church, right?

If we don't have hopeful leaders, then most of our congregations will fall into despair. And despair is so easy to hold on to, especially in these days and times.

Yeah, I like that journey and the progression, the way that you kind of talked about how they build and feed on each other. But certainly hope is something we could use a lot of ⁓ these days. And I think it's also a balm for our weary and tired ⁓ ministry leaders, right, to remember we put our hope in God's vision and God's promises, not in our doing, which is ⁓ kind of is a theme throughout all of those ages.

That's really, I like that.

Yeah, I think the other way to think about the 4-Hs is opposite because I think that while the 4-Hs may be more difficult to spot out ⁓ in our context today, I think their opposites actually are really easy to see. Leaders who are in despair and not hopeful, leaders who take up too much space and don't know how to create space and make space for others, leaders who are going to create environments that are competitive.

because they're going to use their biases instead of seeing, knowing how to honor other people. They just want to honor themselves, right? Or folks who are a lead out of pride, a lead out of a selfish ambition, all those kinds of things. I think people can recognize easily in the church today. So I think when you don't have those things, you should be looking for those four H's and meters.

That's really helpful. I really appreciate that. So ⁓ the apest framework of Ephesians 4 or a apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher, that's been popularized in the past few decades by Alan Hirsch. Say more about that framework in relation to your understanding of sharing leadership.

Okay, thanks for that question, Terry. A-Pest, think if people don't know that it might not be common knowledge, but a lot of the writing that Alan Hirsch did alongside J.R. Woodward and Neil Cole, they were all kind of writing it around the same time, right around when the church missional movement was coming around in the late 90s, early 2000s. And it probably was a response to thinking through that.

really like draw a huge crowd, maybe to not be offensive, but maybe be entertaining enough to draw a large crowd of people. And so a lot of these mega churches started happening around then. A lot of the writings around Apes at that time was really trying to address the fact that apostolically wired leaders or even prophetically bent leaders were being ⁓ outskirted and not given leadership positions because they felt ⁓ too offensive, ⁓

⁓ too harsh on the congregation perhaps or too many changes, too fast-paced, those kinds of things. And so I think that the response during that time was trying to shift through, again, it's a leadership question. Who do we want to give power over to to lead our congregations and things? My contribution and why I use APES in this was for twofold. One was

that I think that apes can be utilized as a toll, ⁓ especially in this ⁓ landscape of a lot of churches use like personality based tests. You all know who you are, you know, we all love a good enneagram, right? Or, you know, strength finders and things. And we try to think that that's how leadership should also be identified.

If you're kind of thinking through how scripture and especially the first century church looked at choosing and who's having conversations together around challenges to the church, you do see these giftings pop up of apostles and prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers all having conversations together to come up with a solution or make a decision, right? And so if you're paying attention to that,

The church should be using the pointed gifts that Christ has given to the church from Ephesians 4. That's one portion of it. I think the second part and probably more meaningful to me is that, a pest probably should be reclaimed not to just a white male dominated culture that has prized, I think in the recent years, these apostolic, you know,

⁓ male leaders who can start things, start new initiatives, come up with ⁓ the best new idea and run with it and take charge. I think that we miss something if we also leave out and say that it's apostolic leaders who should be in leadership because shepherds and teachers or evangelistic wired leaders have failed in church leadership. I think thinking through and rethinking through a Passover, it's offered through the lens of including women, ⁓ minority leaders.

thinking through how does the immigrant church actually offer a gift ⁓ through that lens is a more helpful, ⁓ robust, and holistic way of thinking about and trying to think through how is leadership and power shared in the church.

Well, so I'd love to hear from on the ground in your own experience because ⁓ as I introduced you at the beginning, I listed all the things that you do, which is many, you wear many hats. So obviously you're not doing all the ministry yourself in your community. ⁓ and it works and it thrives because you are actually sharing leadership. I wonder if you can share some stories of maybe some of the leaders that you have raised up or that the spirit is raised up in your context and, and how that works in your own context in Hawaii.

think the impetus for that really wasn't just because I'm lazy and I don't want to lead or I'm so busy raising three children that I can't lead. It wasn't really from that. The starting point was knowing that I moved from West Philadelphia from the East Coast to Hawaii. I am an outsider. I am a transient person. And therefore in a local place with local roots, local traditions and cultures, I probably shouldn't be leading.

the whole thing by myself, especially because I come from the East Coast and I'm not from here. And so it really was coming from ⁓ looking at the landscape of churches in Hawaii. There's a lot of transient leaders who have come, planted churches, with this aura of we have something great to give to this culture. And if you're living in Hawaii and you have a history, a recent history of oppression,

colonization, that will not float well. A lot of the conversations, spiritual conversations we were having earlier on in Hawaii was, you know, a lot of local indigenous ⁓ Christians really wrestle with their own identity. Am I a Christian first and then I'm Hawaiian second? Am I Hawaiian first and then Christian second? And so it was a big contention for a lot of folks here. So I knew that even from the get-go leading this and starting this

this is my second church plan here in Hawaii, I knew that I had to reassess a leadership and a leadership pipeline differently. So that was one. And then the second part about why doing shared leadership in our local context was really because a lot of, you know, doing a church plan, trying to do a missional model that's pioneering, especially here in Hawaii, part of the thing was a lot of our leaders weren't used to ⁓ leading or doing church this way.

And so it really was trying to be like, if I can learn to quickly share power and really ⁓ exercise a gift of the church, is its people, right? If you're kind of thinking about who did Jesus bank his entire ministry on, it wasn't a new technology. It wasn't a new methodology of learning. It wasn't even new content, not really. He really banked his entire ministry on people, on people who maybe are sloppy.

who none of the world would have actually chosen them to be leaders, right? And it wasn't that, I just think that Jesus really, really banks on the dignity and gifts of all of these people. And really, he's just like, if you ⁓ love them and have people see how loved they are by a God who freely and uniquely and genuinely loves them, what couldn't people do?

right, and together for the sake of flourishing for the community. So if you're kind of thinking about doing church that way, then you need different kinds of leaders. You don't necessarily need leaders who could teach and communicate well. You need leaders who have an ingrained, discipled, ⁓ missional impulse. They think about their neighbors and they actually know their names and care for them. You think about ⁓ what is the needs of the entire community and not just the needs of a Christian community, right?

You're kind of thinking about these people. Again, the APES model is helpful because if you use it in a way I think it's intended for, you look for the folks who are the most secret and gifted at creating in certain environments. a local story here is, ⁓ we didn't think, I didn't think for sure that our ⁓ missional community was going to grow in any regard. I literally thought...

Jesus, I've done big church before and so I don't have to do this. If you keep these like 15 disciples and I get to disciple them for the next ⁓ five years, I'll be super, super happy. No growth, I don't care. ⁓ But the funny thing is if you lead in a different way and allow for shared leadership to happen, then ⁓ there were two of our folks who were being discipled. Their names are Melissa and Kelsey.

And they just happened to be wired where they ⁓ are evangelists and they had a prophetic bent. So it's people who thought about all people, that all people are welcomed, ⁓ and they thought about what is this justice-centered needs that God is calling me to or calling a community to. So those are two wirings that these two particular people had. And because Kelsey and Melissa were being discipled for a year,

From year one to year two, we multiplied from one community to three different communities because Kelsey started leading another community and Melissa was starting to lead a different community. And I did not intend that to happen. ⁓ Kelsey's heart was, she happens to be ⁓ a hospice care nurse. So if you're a hospice care nurse, then God made you to love seniors, right? You just have a special, special love for this population of people. And Kelsey did more than that.

⁓ She loved those who are low-income ⁓ seniors. They're called kupuna in our community in Hawaii, and it means like the most revered ones, our elders. And they all lived in their neighborhood. She happens to live in a neighborhood where she walks down the street or she bikes to work, and there are three different low-income senior living facilities right on her bike path. And so she really felt a sense of call as she was being discipled that this is the place that God was leading her to.

brought a group of folks to join her in this so that she could disciple them as they're ministering to these kapuna. you know, we're in year seven now, and from the start to now, they serve about 500 people on a regular basis throughout the pandemic. They were able to provide one month's worth of grocery for all 500 residents.

for about three years throughout the length of the pandemic. And people hear that part of the story and they're like, well, that's really good charity work, but where's the Jesus part of this, right? After the pandemic and what was the fruit of that was because so much of the needs, real life needs were met, because that's also part of imitating Jesus is you meet these basic needs of people and you show up for them and you're present with them.

Now there are discipleship cores within each of these low-income senior living facilities and they are led by the seniors. It's no longer like a volunteer group coming in to leading. The seniors are actually discipling each other. And if you're going through a discipleship model with a group of ⁓ octogenarians, you know that these people need to be discipled within five to 10 years, because that's the remaining lifespan, right? So your urgency is really, really different.

about how to imitate Jesus and what do people need to be equipped in. So that's Kelsey's story. Melissa's story was that she was living ⁓ in a condominium. She and her husband, ⁓ two little ones, they're living in a former Japanese agriculture setting called Kanyohei. And it's probably like low to mid economic status. And Melissa really did not love living there. She's like the person who's like constantly going on.

⁓ you know, truly looking for like the next place to live so she can get out. But when she was being discipled, she really felt this call that God was moving her towards her neighborhoods and to stay. ⁓ If you kind of think through, again, ⁓ years past, she's been able to, ⁓ she started doing just community dinners right on with her neighbors in her hallway, which is all open air because we live in Hawaii. ⁓

She discovered that there are other Jesus followers right in her hallway. They started meeting so they can pray for their neighbors. A lot of the loneliness that we felt, all of us felt during the pandemic, it was actually demolished in that one little condominium during the pandemic because people shared their resources, all of them. They had resource sharing parties, ⁓ but it didn't stop there.

they started thinking through who else are our neighbors? Is it really just limited to our hallway? And they knew that there was a houses population about 50 families. And so we knew that the local ⁓ washer dryer place laundromat was already closed, that they didn't have access. So they needed access to means. They started doing pop-up drives for these people to experience dignity that way.

But again, it didn't stop there. They kept on asking who are our neighbors. It can't be just limited to our hallway. And so they adopted their local elementary school. The He'i'a Elementary probably has about a thousand families every year who are below the poverty line where their kids don't have school supplies to come in to school. And so in just three years time, Melissa's community meets 100 % of

school supply needs for all 1,000 families and then some. They also like partner with like a local halfway house for men and so these men, these huge men all tatted up and they're like, know, tank tops and they're the ones with like a little unicorn ⁓ backpack and they're like, who wants one? And all the kids are like, uncle, we want that, you know. The entire community is involved in

the work that Melissa started. How did start? Because God moved her to ask the question, who else is your neighbor? These are things that are discipled into people. If we don't disciple our people, we won't have the best leaders. We won't have leaders who care about their neighborhoods. We won't have leaders who actually think about God's kingdom, includes the neighborhood and community that the church resides in. We won't have those kinds of leaders if we don't disciple people.

love that story and I love the organic nature, both of those two different stories, very different, but they came out of that location and the gifts of those folks, but also the common question, and who else is my neighbor? And what does that look like? ⁓ I think for pastors that might be intrigued that say, I'm kind of curious about this. I would like to get involved, but maybe feel a little bit overwhelmed.

What would you say to them as a place to get started?

That is a very common response to any of the teaching or training that I do, right? People are just like, ooh. And a different way of asking is like, maybe this is just unique to Hawaii, right? People are asking that kind of question, you know? And for me, I think that it's really, don't stop anything that you're doing. ⁓ And please don't all of a sudden think to get rid of all the people that God has given you to lead in love. Your starting point is the place that God has given you right now.

in the place that you're at with the people that you have. So if that's your first inkling that I'm gonna scrap everything or scrap everybody, just stop, don't lead that way, right? Our foremost part of leading is that God has given us people to lead and love. And it is our job to love them and to lead them through these kinds of changes or assessments or anything like that ⁓ towards mission. So that's the first thing.

I think the second thing is to, know, again, APEST isn't a tool just because I think it's the best tool, but I do think it's a good starting tool to have. And so if you're going to use APEST, ⁓ the book kind of nails it down. I do use different syntax in describing APEST on purpose so that people won't feel intimidated by it. I use different terms, different languages, different descriptions.

⁓ I think it's easier to identify ⁓ how to share leadership ⁓ via a model of thinking through what kinds of people create certain environments. I think if you kind of think through it and identify leaders that way, APES actually is a much more usable ⁓ tool to identify who has God already given you. I think those are two simple ways to kind of think through what may be some next steps.

I think the last thing for every leader to do is really assess their own relationship with power. ⁓ If we don't do that, then I think that we would always want to grasp it and hold on to it. We would feel like sharing leadership is ⁓ exposing ourselves, making ourselves vulnerable to a competition that maybe the congregation will start comparing my leadership, critiquing my leadership, but it really does. And this is where humility comes in so much.

Can we be leaders? Are we actually leaders who are so humble enough to understand that God may have provided a sharing of power that we haven't anticipated? Not a sharing of just tasks and for the leaders to not just do all the work for all the people, but is Christian leadership really so that leaders are in positions to equip Jesus imitators to do the works of God that actually benefit for the flourishing of the community that church resides in?

That is the definition of these appointed leaders in Ephesians 4. So I think that anybody in a position of leadership, we should contend with our relationship with power.

Well, Eun, this has been such a rich conversation and we're so grateful for your wisdom and for your new book, You're Never Meant to Lead Alone. So those viewers or listeners who are struggling with how do I share ⁓ ministry, how do I share power and share this work, we do encourage you to get that book. It's an incredibly rich guide. Thank you, Eun, for being with us today.

Thanks for having me.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Pivot Podcast. You can help us spread the word about Pivot by liking us or leaving a review on whatever platform you're viewing this on or listening to. You can also share Pivot with a friend and help spread the word. So for this week, this is Terri Elton and Dwight Zscheile signing off.