Mutuality, Friendship, and Corporeality: Toward a Christian Leadership Model

Editor’s note: This article is a 2024 CBE Writing Contest grand prize winner. Enjoy!

Direction Without a Director?

How would our ministry function without a leader? 

It’s a question you hope you never have to ask. But after losing two directors in less than two years, our Bible college couldn’t avoid it. As an academic program manager (Amber) and curriculum development specialist (Israel) still young in our careers, we felt disillusioned and overwhelmed at what this leadership vacuum meant for the Bible college we served. 

The college is, after all, a school chartered in response to the conviction that a church needs a trained, male pastor-leader to thrive. Didn’t our college need a strong, male leader to thrive, too? 

However, after our interim director resigned, the board embraced a slow, deliberate approach to appointing his replacement, stretching the process from four weeks to four years. Meanwhile, our team’s approach to leadership morphed from one of hierarchy to one of mutual submission as we, Amber and Israel, stepped up as co-leaders. Instead of languishing without a traditional, rigid hierarchy, our ministry team thrived.

After four years, the board surprised everyone by appointing the two of us as co-directors of the Bible college, recognizing that leadership via mutual submission had organically arisen during our service without a named director. The appointment was unprecedented for our Bible college. Not only were we sharing leadership, but we were much younger than our predecessors, and a woman had never served in the director’s role. The board, however, recognized our ministry team’s effectiveness and cited a desire to not disrupt our work. 

Looking back, we consider our time working alongside one another and our team as a great gift. As we reflect on our season as co-directors, we recognize how its uniqueness drew from a rich, incarnated theology of mutuality, friendship, and corporeality among God’s people. 

It’s Mutual

A previous director had laid significant groundwork to empower us to function as a team that worked to identify solutions and accomplish goals together. During the transition, Amber observed in an email, “I think one of our strengths as a team—perhaps our greatest strength—is that even though each of us has jurisdiction over a certain area, the vast majority of our decisions, even some of the ‘minor’ ones, are collective decisions.” 

Meanwhile, Israel was researching his Master of Arts Theological Studies (MATS) thesis on the topic of loving mutuality in Christian marriage. On the day of our second director’s departure, Israel wrote to our team, “I am in no position to tell any of you what to do . . . I am your fellow laborer, and our team is characterized by mutuality, not hierarchy. I’m simply letting you know what has helped me to become more at peace and more functional and am recommending it to you as well.”

From Amber’s perspective, Israel had the skills, experience, and personality to assume de facto leadership. In Israel’s view, Amber’s seniority on the team and her educational background made her the heir apparent. Instead, we each gravitated toward rhythms of mutuality. Our entire team also leaned into our practice of serving with and alongside one another.

Teaming with Life

As we practiced mutual submission, several things happened. First, we grew in our appreciation for what each member contributed. Next, we grew in our confidence—and humility—in the roles we played. Most importantly, we learned to navigate ministry through the relational work of building consensus. As we grew corporately, we also grew individually in our unique skills and giftings.

As co-directors, Amber focused on administration and Israel on academics—our respective areas of expertise. Amber routinely surveyed the team, asking which parts of their job were life-giving and which were not. She then strategically re-assigned duties to ensure each person focused as much as possible on their areas of passion. In the process, we developed a model in which each member oversaw an area of work in their specialized spheres. This made for interesting dynamics as, for example, one of us would be a member on the registrar’s team, while the registrar was a member on our team! This required a high degree of humility and communication. 

We gave up control, individualism, and position-based authority in favor of trust, teamwork, and relationship-based decision making. We gained far more than what we lost, like trading the ability for the directors to make rapid, unilateral decisions for gaining the perspective, experience, and patience of consultation with our team. We worked toward a reality in which each team member could focus on their passion together with others, all in service to our shared mission, and under the authority of Christ. 

It’s Not Just Ministry—It’s Personal

Our ministry partnership drew strength from a personal friendship with roots in our teenage years, something we believe to be one of the most important elements of our working relationship. After all, trust, affection, respect, and awareness are cornerstones of the Bible’s relational teachings (Matt. 7:1–6, 20:24–28; Acts 2:42–47; 1 Cor. 12:1–27; Phil. 2:1–11).

Before co-leading at the Bible college, we had the opportunity to learn alongside one another in the context of shared spiritual growth and volunteer ministry. When we met over a decade earlier, Israel was a convinced patriarchalist, but over time, he couldn’t deny the gifts of leadership and teaching that Amber displayed. Toward the end of high school and throughout college, Israel developed strong friendships with Amber and her fiancé, was a groomsman in their wedding, and connected through reflection with Amber via youth/young adult camps and other events. 

After we graduated from college, Amber would call Israel when the stress and frustration of vocational ministry became disorienting. Although we lived on opposite sides of the country, he was the closest thing she had to a peer in her ministry context. He would empathize but also offer encouragement and perspective for the way forward. Amber’s friendship also proved vital to Israel during these years, as she was one of his primary theological conversation partners while he pursued his Master of Divinity (MDiv) and began pastoral ministry. Amber’s influence laid the foundation for much of Israel’s research and convictions regarding vocation and the priesthood of all believers. Together, we cut our teeth on the challenges of ministry in a context that was rapidly evolving from modernism to postmodernism. By the time we were co-directing the team, we already had a decade of experience navigating ministry challenges together.

While we didn’t share the same depth of history with our other team members, we sought to develop meaningful relationships with them through sharing our lives and ministering together, as well. 

Male and Female, He Created Them

While we didn’t reflect on it at the time, it was incredibly meaningful to share leadership as a man and a woman. Women and men are different in various ways and are interdependent upon one another. God created the sexes to carry out the creation commission in relationship with one another. While Christians often focus on the reproductive component of this shared commission, there are other significant elements as well. Women and men were created to bear the image of God and take dominion on God’s behalf together. Neither gender can accomplish this created purpose alone (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:18–25).

Gender diversity was a huge part of the success of our team, particularly our shared work as co-directors. As we embraced our differences as unique individuals, we also embraced the fullness of God’s image and the capacity to play unique parts according to our gifts. As the team grew, we became concerned with bringing in diverse voices from different backgrounds, generations, and ethnicities. While we shared a lot in common, we also valued the differences that helped us reflect, plan, identify blind spots, bring balance, serve others, and walk in wisdom. 

This is My Body

Christ fulfilled humanity’s renewed covenant with God, so we find our place in this covenant as we fulfill our functions within the body of Christ. While Christendom often still makes hierarchical human authority a functional value within the body, we observe Paul operating as part of a team and advocating for apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to work together, “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ,” (Eph. 4:12). This is not the work of singular leaders but of leadership teams, comprised of individuals fitting together like puzzle pieces for the benefit of the whole.

In our shared work, we often returned to 1 Corinthians 12–14 and Ephesians 4:11–17 as guiding passages. As Christians, each member of our team saw their work as service to Christ, the Church, and the world. Because of this, we sought to balance unity and diversity. Each person was both indispensable and interdependent. We wanted everyone to do what they were uniquely called and gifted to do. 

Calibration Toward Wholeness

In many hierarchical systems, when the designated leader departs, chaos erupts. Our experience assures us that God’s ways bring order out of chaos. We recognize that whatever else it meant for us to be “directors,” we were responsible for equipping members of our team to thrive in ministry.

We sought to understand the unique that each member of our ministry team played in building up the body of Christ. Then, we worked  to foster an environment that best supported them to develop and succeed. The result wasn’t a power struggle but a calibration towards wholeness. 

As the church grows in our embrace of mutuality, friendship, and corporeality, we look forward to hearing many more stories of saints—both women and men—being equipped for ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. For the glory of God.

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