More Than Friendly
Not long ago, I was attending some training for church planters. There were lots of sessions and many talks over several days. It was like drinking from a fire hydrant. Yet there was one moment in one session that still after all this time stands out with crystal clear clarity. The presenter was sharing how friendship was a key value for him in his own church planting work. In fact, Christian friendship was a hallmark of his life and work with other church planters, church staff, church members and even friends in the community. He couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. I deeply resonated with this. In fact, I knew that if we were called to plant a church, friendship would have to be a key value and emphasis for us.
Friendship. We know it when we experience it. It happens at the intersection where love and affection meets trust and encouragement. It is often discovered and it requires steady intentionality. Sacrifice sustains and deepens it. A dear friend is one of life’s great treasures. Without good friends we are the poorer for it.
Jesus speaks to friendship in John 15:9-15:
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father, I have made known to you.
Jesus’ tells his disciples that friendship with him is bound up in their mutual sharing, sympathy, steadfastness, and sacrifice. In fact, Jesus is the greatest friend of all time. He alone has excelled in all of these for our eternal good.
As we plant Lakeway Pres, we long for the church to be a rich community of friends bound to Jesus and one another. We want to be marked by Jesus’ own approach of making friends and welcoming others. Gospel-shaped friendships will be a non-negotiable of our shared life. The gospel of Jesus demands it and provides for it. Jesus has already done the heavy lifting of friendship. He took up his cross and laid down his life for us. The enmity and estrangement that existed between us and him, he tore down once and for all. Faith in Jesus not only gains friendship with Jesus but we also gain a whole kingdom of friends, the most unlikely of friends. In the community of Christ, we don’t get to choose our friends. They are chosen for us already!
And here is the crux of the matter, the church must be far more than just friendly. The church is dying with friendliness. Being friendly is not the same as being friends. And in church we are called to be friends with Jesus and friends with all whom he is calling into friendship with himself.
So how can we foster and embody friendship within our church plant. Here are some practices we can grow in by God’s grace and help.
Cultivate and practice curiosity. Especially with those who are new or less known to you. Good questions are key to knowing others. They will propel conversation, minimize small talk, lead to deeper places. Good questions help us discover what makes the other person happy, sad, discouraged, hopeful, angry. Good questions really are essential for Christian community and friendship. Cultivating and practicing curiosity with require us to keep growing ourselves. Too often our selfishness, our lack of love for God and for our neighbor block us from life-sharing conversations that foster and deepen friendship.
Now, I apologize for being blunt, but as you and I practice and cultivate curiosity, we will need to shut up more. We must learn to listen well, to really hear, receive and process what people say us in response to our questions. My wife, as she read this, gives a hearty Amen! And we will need to be ready to lead with vulnerability. As we ask good questions, we will want to find appropriate ways to reveal our own hearts and to share our own struggles and disappointments, our own hopes and dreams. Finally, we need to make space by slowing down. And not just outwardly. We need our interior space to drop the hum and whirl of life down to a speed so that we don’t drown out the other person with our own noise.
May Jesus’ community, here and everywhere, grow in gospel friendship. It really does begin and end with Jesus. He has loved us to the point of laying down his own life. So that we can take up his life and share it with friends who are growing together in mutual sharing, sympathy, steadfastness, and sacrifice. Let’s be far more than friendly, lets be friends in Jesus.
There really is nothing better.