A Word to Leaders Before You Lead
The language of formation is rich with promise. It speaks of intentional shaping, of a life oriented toward God, of disciplines that carve channels through which grace may flow. But language is never neutral, and the history of the church is littered with the wreckage of good words poorly wielded. Holiness became a weapon. Accountability became surveillance. Discipline became domination. The shepherd’s crook, designed to guide, was turned to strike.
This appendix exists as a safeguard. It is not a retreat from the convictions expressed throughout this work. The case for friction—for deliberate resistance to the path of least resistance—stands. But a tool that can shape can also scar, and leaders must understand the difference before they place any instrument in another person’s life.
I. The Danger Is Real: Formation as Moral Panic
Scrupulosity is a particular affliction of conscientious people. The Scriptures themselves anticipate it. Paul addresses the weak in conscience in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8–10 not with contempt but with pastoral delicacy, recognizing that a conscience over-sensitized to threat becomes a conscience incapacitated for freedom. The person tormented by every choice, paralyzed at every decision point, weaponizing self-examination against themselves—this person does not need more friction. They need the settled confidence of one who knows that there is therefore now no condemnation (Romans 8:1).
When a community begins to treat every comfort as suspect, every pleasure as a concession to the flesh, and every ease as evidence of spiritual laziness, it has not achieved rigor. It has achieved anxiety with a theological vocabulary. This is not the same thing as godliness, and leaders must be honest enough to say so.
The prophets were unsparing about religious performance divorced from genuine transformation. Isaiah’s indictment of fasting that produces nothing but hunger and grievance (Isaiah 58:3–7) is a standing rebuke to any community that confuses the form of discipline with its fruit. Friction that produces only more friction—more rules, more vigilance, more suspicion of the ordinary—is a wheel spinning without traction. It consumes energy while going nowhere.
II. Three Misuses Leaders Must Recognize in Themselves
1. Friction as Control
There is a kind of leadership that finds in formation-language a legitimate-sounding framework for managing people. The introduction of complexity, delay, and difficulty into congregational life can function—consciously or not—as a mechanism for keeping people dependent, uncertain, and therefore manageable.
The tell is directionality. Biblical formation moves people toward greater reliance on God and toward greater mature independence from human authority. Paul’s goal was that the churches he planted would no longer need him (Galatians 4:19–20; Ephesians 4:13). A leader whose formation practices produce perpetual need for the leader’s guidance should examine whether they are making disciples or making followers of themselves. The Lord Jesus Christ warned plainly against those who would bind heavy burdens on others and not lift a finger to help carry them (Matthew 23:4).
2. Friction as Proof of Holiness
There is also the temptation to perform rigor—to make difficulty itself a badge of spiritual seriousness. This is the error of those in Colossae whom Paul addressed: their harsh treatment of the body carried an appearance of wisdom but was of no value in checking self-indulgence (Colossians 2:23). The appearance of difficulty is not its substance.
A leader who introduces friction because it signals something to observers—whether to the congregation or to other leaders—has already crossed from formation into theater. The question to ask is not does this look serious? but does this bear fruit? The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) is the benchmark, not the intensity of the discipline that preceded it.
3. Friction as Proof of Commitment to the Leader
Perhaps most dangerously, friction can be deployed as a loyalty test. When compliance with a particular regime of difficulty becomes the measure of whether a congregant is genuinely committed—to God, to the community, to the pastor’s vision—a line has been crossed that pastoral authority was never meant to cross. The sheep belong to the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4), and under-shepherds hold their role in trust, not in ownership.
III. Guidance for Calibrated Leadership
Anchor Friction to Scripture, Not to Preference
Any practice of deliberate resistance that a leader commends to others should be anchored to a demonstrable biblical principle, not to the leader’s own temperament, cultural background, or aesthetic preference. Frugality commended as formation must be distinguishable from frugality commended because the leader simply finds abundance distasteful. The former can be reasoned from texts like Proverbs 30:8–9, Luke 12:15–21, or 1 Timothy 6:6–10. The latter is preference wearing borrowed clothing.
Watch for Diminishing Returns
The purpose of friction is to produce attentiveness, gratitude, and dependence on God. When further friction produces diminishing returns on these outcomes—when people become more anxious rather than more trusting, more self-focused rather than more others-oriented, more rigid rather than more discerning—the dosage has exceeded the benefit. A wise physician does not increase medication when symptoms worsen under the current prescription.
Protect the Vulnerable
Not every person in a congregation is at the same place in their walk, in their psychological health, or in their history with religious coercion. The person recovering from an abusive religious background, the person already prone to excessive self-condemnation, the new believer still learning that the Father’s disposition toward them is grace rather than suspicion—these people require different handling. Paul’s instructions in Romans 14 make clear that the strong are responsible for the welfare of the weak, and that the exercise of one’s liberty must be constrained by love, not defended by principle.
Let People Breathe
The Sabbath principle is not incidental to formation—it is structural to it. God wove rest into the very fabric of creation (Genesis 2:2–3) and into the covenant given to Israel (Exodus 20:8–11). The purpose was not merely physical recovery but an enacted declaration of trust: that the world did not depend on perpetual human striving, that provision came from above, and that the people of God were free to stop. Any formation framework that never allows people to stop, to enjoy, to receive beauty and pleasure without suspicion, has departed from the grain of creation itself.
IV. The Pastoral Test
Before introducing any friction-bearing practice into a community’s life, a leader would do well to sit with several questions:
- Can I articulate from Scripture why this practice serves transformation rather than performance?
- Does this practice move people toward God, or does it move them toward me?
- Am I prepared to release people from this practice if it is producing harm rather than health?
- Would I subject myself to this practice without making sure others could see me doing it?
- Is the person I am guiding becoming more free or more fearful?
The answers will not always be clean. Formation is never a precise science, and leaders who require certainty before acting will rarely act at all. But the questions function as a kind of ongoing audit—a habit of self-examination that prevents the gradual drift from shepherd to overseer to controller.
V. The Goal Restated
The aim of all formation, including the friction this work has commended, is love—love for God with the entirety of one’s being, and love for neighbor as oneself (Matthew 22:37–40). Every practice, every resistance, every deliberate slowing-down exists in service of that end. When the practices serve the goal, keep them. When they obscure the goal, question them. When they contradict the goal, abandon them without apology.
The church has never lacked for disciplined people. What it perpetually needs is transformed people—those whose inner life has been so reshaped by grace that the love of God flows naturally outward, without the machinery of compulsion. Friction, rightly understood, clears the channels for that flow. It was never meant to be the water itself.
“For freedom the Messiah has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” — Galatians 5:1
