Leader or Friend?
Originally published at Youthworks.net 13th March 2023. © Youthworks 2023.
“Remember, you’re their leaders, not their friends”.
I had been visiting a church’s children’s ministry and at the debrief meeting afterwards, these words from the head leader made me feel uncomfortable. But I couldn’t immediately put my finger on why.
As we engage in ministry to the children in our church, are we leaders? Of course we are!
Leadership is an essential biblical category. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that, ‘Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers” to encourage and build up the saints’ (Ephesians 4:11-13). In the pastoral epistles, Paul is at pains to relate to both Timothy and Titus the gravity of leadership, evidenced in the high bar set for leadership characteristics, whatever the level of pastoral oversight (1 Timothy 3:1-13; 2 Timothy 2:2; Titus 1:5-9).
Leadership is also essential from a Safe Ministry perspective. It is the responsibility of adults in the church to actively use the power they have to care for, protect, and direct towards maturity, those more vulnerable members of their ministry. For leaders not to act with the appropriate use of power is neglect.
If you have been asked to lead in children’s ministry, whether in the creche, or with older primary kids; whether weekly or once a term, you have a delegated authority over these children from your church. You must ‘lead’.
The affirmation of leadership, therefore, cannot have been the source of discomfort for me. What about the idea of friendship? Are we the kid’s ‘friends’?
The Bible affirms the importance of friendship as an ecclesiological category (a fancy word for how we think about the church). Jesus calls us his friends (John 15:15) and Paul’s letters remind us that all of us, no matter our age, gender, ethnicity, or any other distinctive, are equally included in the Kingdom of God (Galatians 3:26-29).
Chap Clark, in his book Adoptive Church, focuses on each of our statuses as co-adoptees in the Kingdom as the great leveller in the church. Older members, or members with leadership authority, are not any more adopted. Children, teenagers and other vulnerable people, are not any less adopted. There is a beautiful equality between us and the children. Since each member of the church are friends with Jesus through his death and resurrection, we are friends with the children, and we are equal as far as the Kingdom is concerned.
As I reflect on the directive given by this head leader, that ‘We are their leaders, not their friends’, I realised that my discomfort came not from what was affirmed, but from what was denied. Yes, we are the children’s leaders. But equally, we are their friends.
The difficulty comes when one of these realities overshadows the other. Perhaps what this leader had noticed was that their leaders were too concerned with being buddies with the children that they were failing to lead them properly. This is certainly worth addressing. Equally, we can imagine (or sadly, remember and name) individuals for whom leadership overshadowed friendship and expressed itself in domineering and authoritarian control.
The biblical requirements for leadership do not remove the Kingdom levelling of friendship. Neither does the ecclesial equality of friendship remove the high responsibility of leadership.
So how do we balance out these two realities? Perhaps the way to ‘square this circle’ is to think of ourselves primarily as older brothers and older sisters.
Both friendship and leadership are essential characteristics and concepts that we ought to hold dearly. However, taking one without the other can lead to an imbalance in our practice. If we consider ourselves as primarily older siblings to the children in our churches, then I think we can balance the authority required of us as leaders with the equality that being friends and co-heirs in the Kingdom provides. Being older siblings helps us to pursue maturity with familial warmth.
An ideal older sibling will have a warmth of relationship with their younger sibling but will desire for them to grow into maturity, using the power and influence of their age and experience, to guide their younger brother or sister in this direction.
Being an older brother to the children in my church means that I will treat them with love and familial warmth, recognising that despite being a bit older, we’re all members of the same Kingdom family together. It also means that I can see what they cannot yet see, in terms of how they can grow in their discipleship, and I will use the leadership power I have to direct them towards maturity.
Consider your relationship with the children that you lead at your church.
Do you tend more towards leadership, or towards friendship?
How does that express itself in your practice?
How might your understanding of yourself as an older sibling shape the way you relate to these younger brothers and sisters in the family of God?