Elders Lead a Healthy Family: Shared Leadership for a Vibrant Church

Elders Lead a Healthy Family explores the biblical paradigm for shared leadership: elders as the spiritual big brothers and shepherds to the family of God. This book is a fresh biblical alternative to the standard fare of pragmatic church leadership. Delivered in a winsome and irenic style the book addresses the key concerns of our day including pastoral burnout women as elders women and the pastoral gift power in leadership abuse of power in ministry ministerial pay and fostering missional-leadership structures. The answer to so many of the problems facing the church is not more coaching or better education. The answer requires our churches to change the very structures that foster abuse isolation and burnout. If we hope to save our pastors then we need our pastors to abandon the pastor-as-CEO model of leadership. If we want to reach the lost we need a systemic change in the way we plant grow and maintain our churches. Instead of putting a solo leader at the top of Church Incorporated we need to build teams of elders doing ministry together as they lead the family of God. A refreshing alternative to the numerous familiar (and generally fruitless) attempts to baptize the pragmatic priorities of secular leadership theory into the waters of New Testament ecclesiology. . . . Elders Lead a Healthy Family ought to be required reading for vocational and nonvocational church leaders alike. --Joseph H. Hellerman Author of When the Church Was a Family Elders Lead a Healthy Family is a fascinating fresh look at church leadership. No one wants their sacred cows questioned but thats exactly what this book does. With excellent scholarship and personal stories J. R. Miller builds a biblical case for elder-led churches. --Lyn Smith Bible Activist Speaker Author Elders Lead a Healthy Family provides an alternate model to help churches and church leaders embrace Gods design of shared leadership. --Benjamin L. Merkle Author of 40 Questions about Elders Miller is a rare combination of theorist/practitioner except when youre doing what youre writing about; then it stops being theory and starts becoming experience. I appreciate Joes well-rounded approach to the subject of shared leadership. A heady piece with heart. --Peyton Jones West Region Catalyst North American Mission Board I highly recommend this resource to pastors and leaders as a guide to understanding spiritual leadership in the local church. --Rick Dunn Executive Director Gateway Leadership Initiative Miller has done a huge service for all tired pastors and leaders. He has written a wonderful book reminding us of the biblical blueprint of plurality leadership for the church. --Benjamin C. Shin Talbot School of Theology Biola University J. R. Miller is Professor of Applied Theology & Leadership and Dean of Online Learning at Southern California Seminary. Joe is a coach to church planters and planting his second elder-led church. He has authored multiple books on church history biblical theology leadership and a devotional for building teams. Joe and his wife Suzanne enjoy the sun and surf with their three sons in San Diego California.