Hubology: Rise of the Equipping Servants

A Rewilded View of Leadership From Acts to your Network or Neighborhood. It Might Not Be What You Think.

What leadership and structure best support the organic growth of the decentralized church?

That’s the animating question at the heart of this Hubology series. And as any gardener knows, it’s not just about the seed—it’s about the trellis. The right support doesn’t overshadow the life of the vine—it disappears into it. If you walk by a healthy tomato plant your first thought is, ‘Wow, what a trellis,’ something’s gone terribly wrong.”

That’s what we’re after in this Hubology series: a leadership framework that’s almost invisible—serving, not centralizing. Formed for movement, not maintenance.

We explored the three functions of a hub: Equip, Coach, and Convene. But that raises a deeper question—who carries out this kind of work? Are they elders? Apostles? Coaches? Deacons?

Well... yes. And no. Sort of. But not quite.

To answer that, we need to peel back a few centuries of tradition, dust off a Greek lexicon or two, and read the New Testament like movemental practitioners instead of institutional architects.

🔍 From Deacons to Equipping Servants

If you've spent any time in the church world, the word deacon likely conjures images of offering plates, building maintenance, or budget meetings about the new carpet. But Tim Jore’s study The Equipping Servants of the Early Church invites us to see diakonoi not as the church maintenance crew, but as movement multipliers. Cory Ozbun, one of founder leaders of the KC Underground and one of the best equipping servants I know, sent me this white paper following the gathering of movement leaders in Cyprus. DOWNLOAD IT. READ IT.

Jore writes:

“The Scriptures do not describe ‘deacon’ as a localized church office. Instead, they describe a translocal servant role, defined by catalytic functions—strengthening churches, fostering unity, and multiplying disciples.”

Let that sink in.

That means when Paul commends Phoebe as a diakonos of the church in Cenchreae, he’s not saying she made the coffee. He’s saying she helped catalyze and equip a network. The same with Timothy, Epaphras, and Tychicus. These were not church custodians—they were apostolic functionaries, operating across city churches, bringing relational glue, doctrinal clarity, and spiritual maturity.

So why has “deacon” become a static office in so many churches?

Jore would argue it’s the linguistic and institutional drift that set in after the New Testament era. Over time, the church traded organic roles for organizational titles—swapping out dynamic equipping servants for stationary office holders. The result? A profound misreading of the diakonos function.

We don’t need more church officers. We need equipping servants who catalyze decentralized movements.

Reconsidering Acts 6: The Origin of Deacons?

Acts 6:1–6 is often cited as the origin story of deacons. But a closer reading suggests this doesn’t align with the way diakonoi functioned throughout the rest of the New Testament. The seven men appointed in Acts 6 are never actually called diakonoi in the original text (read Jore’s paper)—and they quickly move beyond food distribution to perform miracles and proclaim the gospel (Acts 6–8).

If we want a clearer picture of diakonoi as they appear in the early church, a better text is Acts 20:1–6, where we see seven named leaders operating as part of Paul’s mobile apostolic team:

"Paul was accompanied by Sopater (Berea), Aristarchus and Secundus (Thessalonica), Gaius (Derbe), Timothy, Tychicus, and Trophimus (Asia). These men went on ahead and waited for us in Troas..."
— Acts 20:4–5

This was a multi-ethnic, multi-regional team—Grecian, Galatian, and Asian—working with Paul to encourage and strengthen networks of churches throughout Macedonia, Troas, Tyre, Caesarea, and Jerusalem (Acts 20:1, 6; Acts 21:3–4, 8, 17).

Two of these team members, Timothy and Tychicus, are explicitly identified elsewhere as diakonoi—but there is no indication in Acts that they were doing a different kind of work than the others. This suggests that all seven functioned in the same way: as equipping servants to the wider church.

The diakonoi weren’t the top of a pyramid—they were the circulatory system. They strengthened churches, raised up leaders, mediated conflict, carried messages, and coordinated generosity across regions. (Acts 11:27-30; Romans 15:25-28; 1 Corinthians 16:1-3) In Paul’s words:

“Tychicus, our dear brother and faithful diakonos in the Lord, will tell you everything... I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.” (Ephesians 6:21–22)

Encourager of hearts. Informal intel courier. Apostolic emissary. Basically, the person you want in the room when your church is tired, confused, and on the verge of factionalism.

🧩 Rediscovering the Pattern

Consider this rewilded leadership pattern in the New Testament:

• Local Elders (presbyteros, poimainō) - localized mothers and fathers of extended spiritual families (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1–4). They live long among a people. They offer care (James 5:14), guidance (Hebrews 13:7), correction (Galatians 6:1), and presence (Philippians 2:22).

• Equipping Servants (diakonoi) - Translocal, Spirit-led catalysts. They strengthen, unify, multiply, and equip.

• Apostolic Equipping Teams – These equipping servants formed Spirit-led teams. They pioneered, raised up, and released. These apostolic teams weren’t appointed from the top down like institutional execs—they emerged from the field. Tested in real mission, they were agile, Spirit-led, and deeply collaborative. Think Paul and Barnabas in Antioch (Acts 13:1–3), Priscilla and Aquila shaping leaders on the move (Acts 18), or Paul’s crew of eight catalyzing a movement in Ephesus (Acts 19–20).

  They planted where nothing exists (Romans 15:20), strengthened where the church was fragile (Acts 14:21–23), and built unity across cultures (Galatians 2). They don’t micromanage—they multiply. They don’t seize control—they catalyze.

  And their leadership was marked by humility, suffering (2 Cor. 6:3–10), service (1 Cor. 4:1–2), and adaptability (1 Cor. 9:19–23).

These leadership roles are perfectly designed for a particular kind of expression of the church—one that is decentralized, Spirit-led, and saturated with mission. Let’s look closer.

🕸️ Spider or Starfish?

You’ve likely seen the graphic: Spider ➔ Spiderfish ➔ Starder ➔ Starfish. It’s not just cute—it’s a taxonomy of structure. You can dig deeper in The Starfish and the Spirit.

A spider represents centralized leadership. It has a head. Cut it off, the whole system dies. Information and authority flow top-down. There’s often one primary leader, one vision-carrier, one person holding the mic.

A starfish, by contrast, is decentralized. Cut off a limb, it regenerates. Each arm contains the DNA of the whole. It grows by multiplication, not just addition.

God’s Spirit enlivens and empowers all forms of the Church. Period. No matter what form of the Church you lead, God is for you and so are we.

But, here’s the punchline: The early church was a starfish. In starfish movement, the diakonoi and apostolic teams were like synapses in a spiritual nervous system—running along the networked body of the church, transmitting encouragement and equipping. Local elders were like the immune system and memory centers of the body—helping communities heal, stay healthy, and remember what’s true. The beautiful synergy of the sodalic and modalic, representative of what Ralph Winter called “the two structures of God’s redemptive mission.”

🪴 Trellis Thinking and the Two-Entity Structure

At KC Underground, we’ve long used the metaphor of the garden and the trellis. The church is the garden. Living, growing, messy, abundant. The trellis is the structure—necessary, but not the point. And if it’s doing its job, you shouldn’t even notice it.

So what kind of trellis actually supports movement?

We use a two-entity model:

• The Mission Agency – functions like the translocal diakonoi and the apostolic equipping teams. These are your hub teams, equipping everyday disciple-makers and microchurch leaders. They build tools, provide coaching, and cultivate a culture of equipping.

• The Network of Microchurches – decentralized spiritual families, led by local elder-level leaders. They live among the people they serve and shepherd.

These two structures serve one another—not in a top-down hierarchy, but in a relational web of mutual support and equipping. It’s APEST in motion, not in marble. It’s Ephesians 4 embodied through shared leadership across a decentralized network.

As Jore puts it:

“Equipping servants are not localized deacons nor subordinate to elders. They are complementary leaders whose authority is based not on office, but on trust, service, and demonstrated fruit.”

Boom.

🛠️ Hub Leaders and Governing Elders

In KC Underground, and in the Underground Network, let me share how we are working this out. The roles of Hub Leaders and Governing Elders carry particular importance. To clarify:

Microchurch Leaders as Functional Elders

Microchurch leaders are functionally serving as elders because they have become spiritual parents within their communities. Their leadership flows from lived faithfulness, incarnational presence, and relational discipleship. While not every microchurch leader pursues formal eldership, all are expected to embrace these biblical standards by signing the Microchurch Leader Commitment.

Formal Roles: Hub Leaders and Governing Elders

As the movement matures, we also develop formal service roles that provide broader oversight to networks of microchurches. These roles carry greater responsibility and need clear naming so that the community understands their weight and function. We are currently using two terms:

• Governing Elders serving collectives of microchurches.

• Hub Leaders serving on Hub Teams connected to the mission agency side of the two entity structure.

These reflect the two kinds of leadership we see in the New Testament mentioned earlier in this article:

• Local Elders – rooted in a specific community, modalic in nature.

• Equipping Servants forming Teams – apostolic leaders like Paul, Aquila, Priscilla, Phoebe, etc., who fueled and equipped the movement, sodalic in nature.

First, it means stop thinking of hub leaders as middle managers. They are not regional bishops. They are not gatekeepers. They’re equippers. They are diakonoi—servants who move between, beneath, and alongside microchurches to help them flourish.

A good hub leader is part apostolic, part pastoral, part missional strategist, part spiritual doula. They don’t show up to take control. They show up with a towel and basin—and a whiteboard full of vision.

Here’s what they do:

• Equip leaders for disciple-making

• Coach microchurches in rhythms of life and mission

• Convene catalytic spaces for collective discernment

• Build tools, environments, and pathways for formation

• Function as spiritual bridges across cultural gaps in the network

And they do all of this not with positional authority, but with relational credibility and Spirit-empowered service.

In KC Underground, our Hub Support Team (episkopos) includes Advocates and Coordinators who serve the Hub Leaders as they serve the networks of microchurches and disciple-makers—not as bosses, but as servants. Their legitimacy flows from their lived faithfulness, not from a title on a chart.

KC Underground is a work in progress. We haven’t perfected this—we’re discerning and adapting as we go. Up to this point, we have trained elders and have a 9-month process for that. Hub Leaders have often worn both hats—functioning as servant equippers and practically carrying governing elder responsibilities. Now, we have a working team focused entirely on developing the Governing Elder role, trusting the Spirit to raise up those rooted, shepherding voices from among the microchurches.

It’s messy. It’s beautiful. It’s biblical. And it works.

Relational Authority, Not Hierarchy

Governing Elders do not report to Hub Leaders. They relate to one another in mutual submission and shared responsibility. In the New Testament, each network of churches had a circle of elders without a single human authority “in charge.” Paul had significant spiritual influence, but it was relational, not hierarchical. (see Acts 14:23; Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1-3) We envision something similar: a strong, trust-based relationship between Hub Leaders and Governing Elders, marked by spiritual authority, wisdom, and collaboration—not position or control.

🙏 A Prayer, A Challenge, and a Reminder

So let’s end with this:

Prayer: Lord, may we be the kind of leaders who disappear into the garden. May our structures serve life, not control it. May we be faithful, humble, and generative. Let the church grow wild and beautiful again.

Challenge: If you’re in a hub role—live like an equipping servant. Read Acts again with that lens. Step off the org chart and into the kingdom web. Ask: who am I equipping? Who am I strengthening? Where is the Spirit moving, and how can I join?

Reminder: And if our trellis is getting more attention than our tomatoes, it might be time to prune our leadership model. Or at least stop staining the lattice and start sowing the seeds.

Let’s build trellises that vanish into the garden.
Let’s reimagine hubs as equipping servants.
Let’s lead like Jesus.

And let’s multiply.