FCLP 20 | Discipling vs. Leading – Why Confusing Them Is Slowing Your Team Down

In this strategic leadership episode of the Female Church Leaders Podcast, Kadi Cole introduces a simple but powerful distinction that brings clarity to a common source of tension in ministry: the difference between discipleship and leadership. While both are essential, they operate from different expectations and responsibilities.

This episode helps female church leaders recognize where misalignment may be creating confusion on their teams and offers a framework for leading with greater clarity. You’ll gain language for navigating conversations more effectively and building healthier cultures where both discipleship and leadership function as they were designed.

TIMESTAMPS

0:47 - Sarah's story: confusion about church staff expectations

1:42 - The discipleship bucket: belonging and equality in Christ

1:44 - The leadership bucket: privilege, responsibility, and stewardship

3:36 - Discipleship vs leadership explained

3:41 - How leadership builds on discipleship foundation

4:29 - Understanding church hurt

Resources mentioned;

Emerging Trends in Leadership Development  - kadicole.com/trends

Podcast: FCLP 14 | How Female Church Leaders Can Step Into Spiritual Authority Wisely

Next Steps and Resources:

• Take the Quiz: Identify your growth gap with our Sticky Floor Quiz at femalechurchleaders.com.
• Join a Cohort: Be part of our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort for guided coaching and monthly Q&A with Kadi. Visit closingtheleadershipgap.com to learn more.
• Stay Connected: Follow us on Instagram @femalechurchleaders for daily encouragement and leadership tools.
• Spread the Word: If you found this episode helpful, please follow, rate, and share the podcast to help us reach more female church leaders.

Tune in and get ready to lead with clarity, strength, and joy. Your calling matters, and we're here to support you every step of the way!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Female Church Leaders Podcast, a weekly resource for women who love God, love the church, and are called to lead. I'm your host, Katie Cole, Church Leader, Autor, and Executive Coach. After more than 30 years in full-time ministry, Open as the only woman at the table, I understand how meaningful yet challenging your calling can be. That's why I created this podcast to remind you that you're not leading alone. Each week, I'll share practical tools, biblical insights, and honest encouragement for the real challenges female leaders face in ministry. So you can grow your skills, strengthen your faith, and lead with more confidence and joy without burning out or striving to prove yourself. We drop a new episode every Monday because Sunday is coming and you are gonna be ready for it. Sarah walked into my office and she was completely discouraged. She had been on staff for a few months after volunteering in the church for a long time. She loved Jesus, she loved people, she had been really faithful, and she was so surprised because she didn't like being on paid staff at all. She thought that working at a church would feel like weekend ministry all the time, that we would sit around and pray together, have Bible studies, probably even worship and staff meetings every morning. Instead, she said it felt like all we were concerned about was trying to get things done. She was confused when our lead pastor would walk by her and not stop to talk or minister to her in the way he might on a Sunday. I explained that nothing had actually gone wrong. She just didn't understand what had changed. See, she had moved from one bucket into another bucket, and she didn't know the difference. There are actually two distinct buckets in ministry: the discipleship bucket and the leadership bucket. And if you don't understand the difference, you will consistently misread what's happening around you. You will expect things from people that don't match their role. You will avoid conversations that desperately need to be had, and you can unintentionally create confusion and sometimes even hurt. So let's talk about the difference. First, the discipleship bucket is where every follower of Jesus lives. We are all equal at the foot of the cross. Everyone belongs here and is welcome here. We are all sinners, saved by grace through faith. We all need Jesus. We are all in the process of being transformed. Galatians 3.28 says, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In the discipleship bucket, there is no hierarchy, no ranking of value, no earning to belong. This is the place of unconditional love and fellowship where we all belong and get to stay into eternity together. Now, the leadership bucket, on the other hand, is very different. Leadership is not something you automatically receive. It is not a right, it is a privilege. It cannot be taken, it must be given to you by someone else. It is recognized, it is entrusted, and it is something you steward only for a season. It comes with responsibility, it comes with expectations, and just like it can be given, it can also be taken away. In fact, every leadership calling is temporary. At some point, you will be done in your leadership role. You can choose to step out of leadership, you could be removed from leadership, and you can disqualify yourself from leadership. However it happens, one day you will leave your leadership role, but you never leave being a disciple. Now, even though these two buckets are different, they're also connected. The leadership bucket actually builds on top of the discipleship bucket. You don't ever move beyond discipleship. We actually practice discipleship our whole lives, but you can build leadership on top of it. 1 Timothy 3 talks about aspiring to leadership, but leadership is completely optional. It is not required to be loved or fully approved by God. That work of identity happens only in the discipleship bucket. And if the discipleship bucket is not strong, if it's not built with a good foundation, if you are looking for leadership to define your worth, your value, or your identity, your leadership will collapse under the pressure of discipleship. Because leadership doesn't form you, leadership reveals you. This helps explain why many leaders are experiencing this but don't have language for it. When we hear about church hurt, it almost always originates in the leadership bucket, not in the discipleship bucket. It's about expectations that weren't clear, authority and power that wasn't handled well, accountability that felt confusing or inconsistent, or leaders who use discipleship and family language to manipulate leadership output. If you are in the process of healing from church, taking a step out of the leadership bucket is probably wise, but you've got to dig in on the discipleship bucket where healing and identity rebuilding happens. These two buckets also clarify how to understand the different opinions about the role of women leading in the church. There are actually no biblical limitations that I can find on women in the discipleship bucket in any theological context. Women are fully included into the kingdom of God through the cross. We are called as complete disciples and able to fully embrace all aspects of the discipleship bucket wherever your church stands on the topic. That's just being a Jesus follower. By the way, if you want to learn more about living fully into the spiritual authority you have been given as a disciple, check out my recent podcast on how you can step into your spiritual authority wisely, which is episode 14. Where the disagreement about women leading in churches happens is in the leadership bucket, where incidentally, there are hundreds of disagreements among godly church leaders on how to lead well in today's church context. Those are leadership conversations where we can agree to disagree, not discipleship ones that unify us as Christians. And when those lines get blurred together, it creates confusion and division. Now, each bucket also operates from a different posture. In the discipleship bucket, the posture is belonging. You are always welcome as a disciple. You are in the process of being formed just like everyone else, and you are growing in your relationship with Jesus. But in the leadership bucket, the posture is stewardship. You have been entrusted with something. You have a role to play that others are counting on. There are expectations and consequences. There is someone you are accountable to and answer to. This is what it means to lead. Ephesians 4 makes this shift pretty clear. Leaders are called to equip the saints or the disciples for the work of ministry. As you step into leadership, your role changes. You are no longer just participating, you are no longer just receiving. You are developing others, you are equipping others, you are leading others, and that requires clarity, responsibility, and accountability. And this is where we see a lot of confusion. Leaders who still expect to be discipled in the same way they were before stepping into leadership, wanting their church or their boss to feed them spiritually, wanting staff meetings to meet their personal growth needs. But a disciple who leads also knows how to feed themselves. Leadership requires that you take responsibility for your own spiritual formation and connection. That doesn't mean you do it alone or without community. It just means you don't rely on someone else to spiritually parent you anymore. See, out of spiritual formation of your soul comes the function of your leadership. Formation is first, then function. Now, the opposite is just as important. When someone is placed into leadership too early, before their life as a disciple is strong enough to support it, it creates pressure they are not ready to carry. They may have passion, they really probably do have potential, but leadership accelerates everything. The expectations increase, the responsibilities increase, the spiritual warfare increases, and without a strong discipleship foundation, it exposes what isn't ready. And then we end up spending leadership time discipling someone rather than spending our time leading them to disciple others. At best, this situation slows multiplication, but at worst, it creates unnecessary hurt and a lifetime of confusion. In my opinion, the best antidote to this confusion is simply naming what kind of conversation you're going to have. When someone is in the discipleship bucket, your posture is different. There's time, there is space, there is care and understanding. You're walking with them in their spiritual formation. But when someone is in the leadership bucket, the posture shifts. Now we're talking about stewardship. There is a role, there are expectations, there is responsibility, and there are consequences. Both conversations are good, but they are not interchangeable. And clarity around the conversation changes everything. You can do this by simply explaining what's about to happen. You sit down with someone and you say, Hey, I just want to check in pastorally or as a friend. Or you sit down and say, Hey, I want to talk to you about a situation as your leader. Same person, two different conversations. Now both of you understand what is actually happening in the discussion. Where this breaks down most often is when leaders avoid clarity. You feel the tension, but instead of addressing it directly, you soften it, or you delay it, or you over-spiritualize it, or you over-explain it. And the person doesn't grow because they don't know which bucket they're in and what kind of conversation you are trying to have. Sometimes someone needs a discipleship conversation, even if they are a high-level leader, space to grow, process, and experience the sanctification process. But instead, they get leadership pressure and it feels crushing. Not because they don't want to grow, but because they're being held to a standard they aren't mature enough yet to handle. Other times, someone needs a leadership conversation, clear expectations, ownership, and accountability. But instead, the conversation stays in the discipleship bucket. It focuses on how they feel, what they are processing, and what God is saying to them. That's not a bad conversation. It's just not the right conversation to have with you at that moment. And it leaves them confused and you probably frustrated. Because when they think this is a safe place to grow at their own pace, and it's actually a leadership space, they are losing credibility, trust, and potentially even their job. One thing to keep in mind as you have these conversations is that leadership is not really defined by who is paid or not paid by the church. It's easy, especially when you have more than one or two people on your team who are paid staff, to think about your leaders as those with a paycheck from the church. But you may have people on staff who are still functioning only in the discipleship bucket. Their jobs don't actually include any formal leadership, even though they're on paid staff. And you probably have volunteers, people like small group leaders, for example, or elders or team leaders who are clearly in the leadership bucket, even though their roles aren't paid. Responsibility determines the bucket, not their payroll status. Make sure you are thinking clearly about who is actually leading and who has leadership responsibilities, not just the people who are on staff and are dedicated disciples. Luke 16, 10 says, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. What Jesus is showing us here is progression. Trust is built over time. It's formed in the small, unseen places before it's ever tested in larger responsibilities. That's the role of discipleship. Discipleship is where character is formed, it's where faith is strengthened, it's where someone learns to walk with God in the everyday ups and downs of their life. And then leadership builds on top of that. Leadership doesn't create trust, it reveals it. It extends what has already been formed in discipleship into greater responsibility. And it also protects identity. If someone steps out of leadership, they haven't lost their place in the kingdom or your church. They are still a disciple, they are still a part of your church, still growing, still loved, still part of the body. Discipleship is what we hold on to tightly, but leadership is something we hold loosely. Discipleship builds trust. Leadership extends it in that order. So here's your action step for this week. Look at your team and make two lists. And please be honest with yourself. Who is in the discipleship bucket? Who is in the leadership bucket? Then ask yourself: am I leading them accordingly? Think through if your expectations are aligned with where they really are. Are you offering care when it's needed? Are you giving too much care? Are you bringing accountability in honest ways? Then think about your next key conversation. Decide ahead of time which bucket you're operating in. Then say it out loud to the person as you get started and lead from that clarity. If this kind of insight around leadership and development is helpful for you, there's another layer of this conversation that's worth paying attention to. How leadership itself is continuing to shift. We've created a resource called Emerging Trends and Leadership Development to help you keep building healthy, forward-thinking leadership cultures. You'll find a link in the show notes. Thank you for the way you're growing in clarity. Thank you for the way you're leading people with both wisdom and care, and the way you're building something that lasts. It matters more than you know. Remember, you are called and equipped to lead with the authority and the wisdom God has entrusted to you. And we are here to cheer you on. I'm so glad we got to spend this time together on the Female Church Leaders Podcast. I hope you're walking away encouraged, equipped, and reminded that your calling truly matters. To keep growing, join us for our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort at ClosingThe Leadership Gap.com. It's a guided coaching experience, including live QA with me, designed to accelerate your leadership journey. If this podcast has been helpful to you, would you please take a moment to follow, rate, and share it? Your engagement helps the algorithms suggest our resources to female church leaders we haven't had a chance to meet yet. And don't forget to follow at female church leaders on Instagram for encouragement and leadership tools designed just for you. You can also follow my personal feed at Katie Cole spelled K A D I C O L E. Keep leading faithfully, keep growing your leadership gifts, and I'll see you next Monday because Sunday is coming and you are going to be ready for it.