What a great blessing it is to have friends who bring to us the presence of Christ by their presence! It is something I long for, and something I have experienced, but truth be told, as a church planter and pastor of a growing church, I have found ministry to be increasingly lonely.
You see, in such a role, it is often difficult to distinguish between your role as a pastor and your role as a friend. In a sense, you can never stop being the pastor. And in this role, oftentimes, people befriend you because they want something from you. And if you are not able to provide what they want, or if you don’t fit their agenda, they disappear quite quickly, and that is pretty hurtful. Hurtful enough to prefer isolation over opening yourself up to be hurt. But, as the great C. S. Lewis reminds us, that is not the better option.
Lewis says, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one … Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” [1]
And why would we want to become like that, when the alternative, though difficult to find, when found is so much more compelling? Dan Allender puts it beautifully. He says, “If you have someone who will weep with you, delight in the goodness of your glory, and confront you honestly and tenderly about your failure … No longer are you alone in the isolating work of leadership …” [2]
With that, let me offer some things that have helped me to pursue spiritual friendships in my life and ministry:
Firstly, be convinced that spiritual friendship is a biblical priority. In John 15:12, Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And how has He loved us? Verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Just as Jesus is our friend, we are called to be one another’s friends. In the New Testament, there are 59 “one another” commands, commands like, “love one another” (John 13:34), “honor one another” (Romans 12:10 NIV), “welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), “confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16), etc., commands that we simply cannot obey if we do not pursue spiritual friendships. We make time for what we truly value.
Secondly, distinguish between allies and confidants. Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky write, “Allies are people who share many of your values, or … your strategy … Confidants … usually operate outside your organization’s boundary … [and] can provide you with a place where you can say everything that’s in your heart …” [3] One of the biggest mistakes we can make in friendships is to mix the two up. We can feel especially close to our allies because we do so much together and share so much common interest. However, treating them as your confidants can put them in awkward or difficult positions when what you share does not align with your common interests. Confidants, on the other hand, are there for you. They share common interests with you only on a secondary plane.
Thirdly, open up your heart, eventually. John 2:24 says, “Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people …” It takes time to really know someone. It is easy to feel like you are familiar with someone but not so easy to know who they are until you’ve given some time to the relationship. This is especially true for those with a public ministry. Oftentimes, people can very quickly feel like they know you or are familiar with you because of your public persona. And they relate with you out of that assumed familiarity. It is easy to be taken in by that, but the truth is, you’ve only just met the person! This is not asking you to be suspicious or overly guarded, but it is asking that you be wise and take the time to get to know someone before you readily share your heart. All to say, give a friendship time. Let it naturally progress. Do not rush into vulnerability before the friendship is ready for it.
Pastor Huai Tze is the Lead Pastor of One Covenant Church.
* This is the first of his two-part reflection on spiritual friendship. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, where he shares further principles for deepening and sustaining these relationships.
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[1] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves.
[2] Dan B. Allender, Leading with a Limp (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2006), 124.
[3] Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Change (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017), 174–176.