ABSTRACT
The language of friendship is not without its detractors in an age which may have forgotten its art. In light of social media influences potentially weakening this concept’s strength, it is necessary to reclaim those biblical and theological resources which might inform a notion of friendship sufficiently robust to support the third movement of the prophetic imagination, that is, the coding of the previously proposed discourse regarding church leadership. Chapter 7 engages John 15, Thomas Aquinas and Aelred of Rievaulx, each significant contributors to this subject. A perspective of friendship as sacramental is constructed, suggesting that it is in human friendship that we respond in mutuality to, and are formed together in love towards, the Friend in whom all other friendship finds its place. Tensions between friendship and the neighbour-love foundational to incarnational ecclesial leadership are also exposed, a matter which could prove problematic to the proposal that incarnational ecclesial leadership is imagined as friendship.
