Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. Psalm 25:5 (ESV)
All believers depend on the Lord. It is not a choice, but a reality. We depend upon God to lead us and teach us. This means that we are not independent creatures, able to decide where we want to go and learn for ourselves what we need to know. The psalmist asks God to lead him and teach him. We need to do the same. Why? Because God is the God of our salvation. We do not save ourselves. We do not lead ourselves. We do not teach ourselves. We must wait upon God. There are things we need that we cannot do for ourselves.
Leaders, like mature believers, need to embrace dependence. It is tempting for small group leaders to believe they must have all the answers and be an inexhaustible resource for the students. But that is not a good example to set for students!
Felt Differences
One of the biggest felt differences between students and adults is the independence of adults relative to students. But leaders can express themselves in terms of dependence upon God that is true, humble, and faithful, not to mention surprising to students.
In the verse at the top of this article, the psalmist expresses to God a need to be led and taught. He also tells God that he waits for God all the day long. This is a clear expression of dependence upon God. Oftentimes, students see adults as self-sufficient. Students often believe that a mark of adulthood is to need no one and to be able to provide for oneself. The truth is that this kind of self-sufficiency may be a cultural ideal, but it is not a Christian one. There is a Christian form of independence. It is an independence from the world. It is a willingness to reject and be rejected by all that is wrong, false, unjust, and ugly. It is a lack of a need for the world and the things in it. It is, in the final analysis, even a lack of a need to sustain our very lives. This is a different kind of independence. It flips it on its head. Whereas sinners seek to be independent from God and depend on the world, Christians are dependent upon God and independent from the world. This is a world-altering, revolutionary, paradigm-shifting revelation to students. There is something, or there ought to be, strangely inverted about the way that small group leaders come across. They are at once everything the students might want to be in their heart of hearts, while at the same time representing everything they are afraid to be.
What do I mean by this last statement? I mean that students are generally intimidated by the felt need to be strong enough, wise enough, able enough, smart enough, not to need things as adults that they know they need now. Oftentimes, their expectations of what it means to be an adult are far too high. They think (maybe because adults often tell them) that adults are more capable, more powerful, more self-sufficient than they actually are. In a word, adults often seem more independent than students know how to be. And this is the trick. Small group leaders have an opportunity to show the students that, despite what they have heard or come to expect, older adults are not as different from students as they have come to believe.
Real Similarities
When students learn that their small group leaders are not as different from them as they thought, something strange happens. Students often separate their small group leaders in their minds from other adults. As small group leaders appear strangely more similar to students than they expect, they tend to think of the leaders more like fellow students than like older adults. I think students do this because they lack a category for adults that sees them as dependent and un-self-sufficient as students are. However, this is a conception that leaders should seek to resist where they can. Instead of allowing the students to conceive of the leader as being more like them, they should encourage the idea that the students are in fact more like all adults than they realize. Their leaders are not the exceptions, but the rule. This is a big change for students to realize, namely, that adults who seem miles apart are actually a lot like them. And indeed, they are.
Christians do well to cultivate humility and to accept their limits. Leaders do well to do the same. One of the temptations in leading a small group is to accept a role that is impossible to fill. Sometimes, a small group of students will develop a kind of dependence on a small group leader that the leader should reject. There may be students who simply admire the leader, or who have a felt need for the leader, or who are trying to flatter the leader. Whatever the reason, small group leaders need to remember their limits and accept the fact that they do not know everything.
It does no good to the students to make them believe their leaders know everything. Instead, it is far better to demonstrate humble dependence upon God and the resources he has given us, beginning with the Scriptures, his Spirit, and his people.
Conclusion
Small group leaders do not need to know everything, and they should certainly not perpetuate the students’ ideas that they should. Instead, leaders are wise to recognize when conversation ventures into territory with which they are unfamiliar. There is no need for leaders to believe they are failures for not knowing something. Instead, the failure would be in not showing the students how to deal wisely with an area of ignorance. Sometimes the issue is unimportant enough that it simply does not matter. Other times, it is important enough to address. In that case, leaders can show students how to make a plan to address any area of ignorance about which it is not okay to remain ignorant. This may involve personal Bible study, prayer, seeking counsel, something else, or any mixture of the above.
Small group leaders do not need to be independent and inexhaustible sources of wisdom for the students. They just need to be able to demonstrate how to go to the One who is and who has made himself available to us in Christ, through his Spirit, and according to his Word. That is why small group leaders should embrace dependence.