Author Interview: Joseph W. Handley, Jr. 

Missio Nexus’ leadership thoughtfully summarize books, giving you the Leader’s Edge to help inform, stimulate and provoke profitable discussion. The Author Interview is an informal conversation with the author to to give you more insight to the book.

Author Interview

Polycentric Mission Leadership: Toward a New Theoretical Model for Global Leadership*

By Joseph W. Handley, Jr.   

Fortress Press, 2023  

191 ebook pages 

Find it on Amazon

*As an Amazon Associate Missio Nexus earns from qualifying purchases.

Summary

This book’s goal is “to find a better approach to leadership in a world where everything—from supply chains to political conflict to the church—is global” (page 22). With this goal in mind, the author proposes what he calls the Polycentric Mission Leadership model, which has six key themes that characterize strong leadership: collaborative; communal; diverse; entrepreneurial freedom; relational; and charismatic. The assessment of this polycentric model is conducted primarily in the context of the Lausanne Movement through qualitative interviews with key leaders. Using various resources and findings about polycentric leadership, the book argues that this model of leadership may provide a fresh approach that leads to creative solutions in the world of mission today. 


Leader’s Edge
No portion of Leader’s Edge or Author Interview may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, nor copied for public use without the permission of Missio Nexus. Send a request to: Info@MissioNexus.org

Related Articles

Managing Conflict in a Multicultural Team

Conflict occurs wherever human beings live or work together. It is no surprise then that conflict is a major issue in multicultural teams. All of the eighty-one people we interviewed explained that their team had experienced some degree of conflict, and in some of these teams, conflict had deeply hurt team members and damaged the effectiveness of their team (Hibbert 2002; Hibbert 2011). 

What is Polycentric Mission?

By Allen Yeh | The term polycentric mission has become popular. While the term has a more recent origin, the concept can be traced to the inception of the church. In its earliest days, no one place held authority. The West became a Christian center for a millennia, but now we see a return to polycentric Christianity that goes from everyone to everywhere.

Responses