Photo by Dave Linschied

When I was a school teacher, I developed a mantra that I carried over into my ministry when I served as a children’s pastor: You can be friendly to your students but you cannot be their friend. When you are a child’s friend, the child may not recognize you as an authority figure and will not listen to you when it is time to do so; this affects the teaching and potential discipline.

There needs to be a clear line between being friendly towards the student and being the student’s friend. If you do not make this clear, kids will not know when they have crossed the line and they may ignore you when you need to teach or discipline them OR by disciplining them you have ruined the “friendship” forever. This relationship and this line makes sense when you are teaching 8-year-olds. But does this mantra apply to adult church members as well?

To be pastoral is to be friendly, to care about the well-being of others, to sympathize and be there for them in their time of need, and to be a spiritual, emotional, mental, and perhaps even physical support. However, being pastoral does not necessarily equate with being a friend.

When I was in seminary, my Pastoral Theology professor said that pastors can and should be friends with members of the congregation, though not necessarily with all of them. I was surprised by this, not because I believe that pastors should be loners who cannot socialize with her/his congregants, rather because I had never seen this actually happen, at least not publicly. As a pastor, I still ask myself and my fellow pastors this question: Can pastors be friends with their members? Having solely experienced church and ministry within Korean immigrant churches, I never saw pastors interacting with members as friends. Pastors were friendly towards their members – compassionate, considerate, even sociable – but I can’t say that the pastors could call a member their “friend.” (It was assumed that pastors have these relationships outside of the church, oftentimes with other pastors.) Perhaps this comes with the various labels that are used as markers and identifiers for the individuals within the church: Elder so-and-so, Deacon so-and-so, Sister/Brother so-and-so, etc. There is no “friend” marker or identifier. Perhaps the absence of the marker hinders pastors from seeking friendships with their members.

Why does the marker not exist? Is it because churches encourage general friendliness rather than genuine friendship? Is this why I find it rare for pastors to be friends with their members? Are pastors unlikely to be friends with their members because they are unable to be vulnerable with their congregations, to be truly human before their members? Perhaps the unspoken standard of perfection — Christ-likeness being equated to perfection — of pastors plays into this, that the fear of revealing their humanness and various aspects of their lives to others cripples them from being a true friend to their congregation and from exposing more than is necessary of themselves. Perhaps pastors are afraid that once they reveal a little too much of themselves, members will start to talk behind their backs. We are expected to be friendly to all our members; are we not allowed to be friends with them? Are we afraid that by having a friend in our congregation, we will disrupt the dynamic of pastor and member?

Is friendliness all that pastors can strive for, to have friendly qualities with/towards our members without ever actually being their friend?

Diana Kim is a pastor of a local Korean church in Torrance, CA. Her primary goals in serving are to teach and equip the next generation to be passionate for Jesus and to live out His passion and care for the world. Diana is currently a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary and is majoring in Christian Ethics. Her current research area of interest is Asian American feminist ethics.