Over the years I have heard many reasons why pastors should avoid the entanglements of friendship. Some say friends might be nice, but the time and energy demands of the ministry simply won’t allow for such self-indulgence. Friendships in the congregation are certainly out of bounds, according to many, and even too much ministerial golf is a problem.
Though this has modified somewhat in recent years, both clergy and congregation can have difficulty with the pastor engaging in something so human as friendship. Congregations have been notorious for keeping pastors properly perched atop a pedestal, and many pastors like the view from that perch. They are reluctant to come down and enter relationships of vulnerability and intimacy.
And if the friendship happens to be with a church member, others in the congregation can become suspicious. Charges of favoritism and undue influence have been whispered in the halls of more than one church.
To be sure, not all these reasons are easily dismissed. Maintaining a friendship does demand a fair amount of time and energy (both of which can be in short supply). And certainly some charges of favoritism and influence-wielding are well founded. Pastors at times have had their perceptions skewed and judgments clouded because of improper loyalties to one or two members.
Though some of us may not want to admit it, however, neither roles nor robes nor collars nor titles can hide the reality that we are human. People need friends—even people who happen to be pastors.
Many biblical examples support this position. From David to Jesus to Paul, the wise have always known it is unwise to travel through life without the joy, comfort, and encouragement of companions. Beyond this scriptural precedent, the three best reasons I can offer for pursuing friendship are named Dick, Jim, and Gary.
The Colleague
Dick is the associate pastor of the largest Lutheran church in my town. It’s hard to appreciate the significance of this friendship without knowing what it’s like to be a Baptist minister in Northfield, Minnesota.
I was born and reared in southern Ohio and attended college in Columbia, South Carolina. I graduated from a Baptist seminary. All my life I had breathed Baptist air. Suddenly, four years ago, I found myself in a bastion of Norwegian Lutheranism—five Lutheran congregations in a town of twelve thousand people. Not to mention Saint Olaf College, an American Lutheran Church school that dominates both the topography and the theology of Northfield.
I needed to learn the territory. I began meeting with a clergy study group consisting of five Lutherans and one Baptist (guess who?). It was there I met Dick. With a little cultivation—invitations to lunch, spur-of-the-moment visits to his office—a friendship began to develop. What a gift from God it has become.
First, Dick has become my interpreter of Lutheranism. He hasn’t formally enrolled me in one of his confirmation classes, but he instructs me nevertheless. During our discussions I have gained valuable perspective on why these people believe and act as they do. I will never forget the “Aha!” that exploded in my head one day as we were discussing (arguing?) baptism. All of a sudden I understood why we were constantly talking past one another even while employing the same words and turning to the same Scripture passages: Dick’s focus was on the activity of God in baptism, mine on the response of the believer. Suddenly his rationale for infant baptism became clearer. (We still don’t agree, of course, but now I better understand why he believes such a strange way!)
But beyond the role of interpreter, Dick has become a stimulus for my personal growth and professional development. We are both bibliophiles, but with differing tastes. His passion is history; mine is fiction. Over coffee we’ll share titles, authors, themes, insights, and potential sermon illustrations. I haven’t joined the Historical Book Club yet (Dick is still hoping for the free books awarded for recruiting a new member), but I have expanded my tastes to include more than novels. Similarly, Dick has been introduced to the joys of Chaim Potok, Saul Bellow, and Frederick Buechner. Together we have wrestled with Kierkegaard, Claus Westermann, and Rabbi Harold Kushner. He was challenged that I often did sermon exegesis from my Greek text. I was amazed when I learned he was reading several verses from his Hebrew Old Testament each night before retiring. Iron sharpens iron, Proverbs says, and my mind has grown sharper as it has been honed by my friend.
Our families have also benefited from our friendship. Our children are about the same age and our wives are both nurses at the local hospital. We have celebrated birthdays together, shared Thanksgiving dinners, and crashed together on Easter afternoon after leading nonstop services through the morning. It has added a certain dimension of sanity and stability to our lives to be able to share fishbowl stories with others who understand the joys and traumas of being pastor and family.
The Mentor
Jim is another friend. Actually, it would be more proper to introduce him as Dr. James Mason, because he was one of my favorite professors during seminary. Now, in addition to being my friend, Jim continues to be my mentor in ministry.
In the New Testament, mentoring was a well-established pattern of developing young ministers. Jesus mentored the Twelve, Barnabas brought along Paul and John Mark, and Paul in turn mentored Timothy and Titus. It is hard to read the Gospels or Pastoral Epistles and not feel the warmth of friendship that developed and sustained these mentoring relationships.
My friendship with Jim began during my last year of seminary. I worked as his teaching assistant and grew to know him outside the classroom. After walking through some difficult times together, our relationship grew. When I graduated, I did not want that friendship to become merely a fond memory. Jim was of the same mind.
To maintain our tie has taken a certain amount of determination and willingness to bear the cost. Northfield is about an hour’s drive from Bethel Seminary and the phone call is long distance, but the costs are really minimal. In addition to the joy of sharing life and faith and ministry with another, I gain many other things.
He knows me. He had me in class. He knows how I think, my biases, my values, my strengths and weaknesses.
Further, having preached at my church and spent time with the congregation, he knows my context. He also knows the broader context of the denomination and theological tradition in which we serve. This shared history is invaluable. When I call him for advice, he is able to plug into my situation almost immediately. If I’m stuck on a sermon, he is often able to break the logjam. If I’m facing conflict within the congregation, he offers perspective and helps me see the issues more clearly.
If I am excited about a new opportunity, I can float my trial balloon past his discerning eye. Or if I’m just discouraged, I can dump on his doorstep. As he told me one Monday after a particularly abysmal Sunday, “Don’t worry about it. Some weeks your highest goal is just to get through it.”
I cannot measure the degree to which this friendship has contributed to my satisfaction and success in ministry. Countless pitfalls have been avoided, several tight spots have been navigated, more than one timely sermon has been constructed—all with the help of my mentor and friend.
I’m convinced that potential mentors like Jim are available for almost every young minister. Former professors, veteran pastors serving nearby churches, executive ministers serving the district or judicatory are all potential mentors. Seldom will these friendships just happen. They demand intentionality and a willingness to invest time and money. But for both guide and novice, the joys of the journey are multiplied by sharing them with another.
The Layman
In many ways my friendship with Gary is the most risky yet most beneficial of any I enjoy. Gary is a layman who just happens to be a member of the church I serve. Yet the benefits for me (and for the congregation) far outweigh the risks.
Quite simply, Gary keeps me honest in my Christian walk. My greatest temptation in ministry is the tendency to be a “professional Christian.” It is an easy snare. I can give appropriate counsel, teach what the Bible says, call for a commitment to obedience and devotion, lead a board meeting, and then go home assuming I am leading a Christian life—as if my walk with the Lord consisted solely of making pastoral pronouncements or carrying out professional responsibilities. Gary won’t let me get away with that.
He is in a unique position to call me to account. As an active member of the congregation, he knows what goes on in worship services and at church business meetings. He listens keenly to what I proclaim from the pulpit and to what I teach in the classroom. He is also aware of successes and failures in the various church programs. He has the platform of our friendship to challenge me to become what I believe and to practice what I proclaim. He is not shocked that at times I preach above where I live. What minister doesn’t? But during fun times together or at our regular weekly prayer times, he encourages me to apply my sermons and my counsel to myself. He challenges the “private me” to live up to the “public me.”
Beyond the direct ministry of encouragement, simply the integrity of his life is a tremendous motivation to press on in my own pilgrimage. A college basketball coach, he is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. Yet his personal walk with the Lord, his ministry as a youth leader, and his involvement in church outreach projects always come first. He is a passionate Christian, not a professional one. He is a constant reminder that I want to be the same.
Where to Find a Friend
In reflecting upon the friendships I enjoy, I have sifted out some things to consider in the friend search.
1. The place to begin is with yourself. The old adage “To have a friend, be one” has become an old adage because it is true. Most friendships don’t just happen; they are the result of intention and commitment. To reap the long-term benefits of friendship demands an investment of time and energy.
This doesn’t come naturally for me. Saying yes to friendship usually means saying no to half a dozen other things. In my earlier years, my Type-A personality left little room for actually pursuing friendship.
During seminary, however, a classmate and the Lord made some changes in me. Steve and I enjoyed one another’s company before and after class, but it probably would have gone no further had it not been for Steve’s persistence. The crowning touch of his effort came when he persuaded me to join him and two other classmates on a fishing trip to northern Minnesota.
I had never done any serious fishing before, and when I was informed we would leave shortly after midnight so we could “hit the lake before dawn,” I had a thousand second thoughts about the whole venture. But I went. The joys of sharing a Minnesota sunrise, my first walleye, the camaraderie—the whole experience convinced me the lost sleep was a small price to pay for the profound wisdom of investing in friendships.
2. The most important trait a potential friend can have is allowing you to be you. Without this, no possibility for real friendship exists. This seems elementary enough, but pastors especially discover that the characteristic is hard to find.
A pastor must be willing to be “disrobed” within the friendship. And the friend must be willing to accept you without your vestments or title. Friendships take place between two persons, not between a person and a persona.
When I came to Emmaus, my desire was to be a real person and in some sense to be a friend to the whole congregation. I soon learned how impossible that was. Even small churches have too many people to enjoy close relationships with everyone. Furthermore, not everyone wanted me as a friend (what a shock!). Several folks preferred to relate to me as a pastor rather than a friend. I have come to accept this.
Yet this reality made it even more important to cultivate friends who would allow me to be me. If I was going to see my pastoral role as a vehicle for ministry rather than a straightjacket, I needed to be able to step out of it occasionally—to be Rick, not Pastor. My friends let me do that.
Such friends are not easy to find. But I have found that they renew me as a person before God, so that my role as pastor under God is infused and strengthened with genuine humanity.
3. A friendship is reciprocal. For it to work, both sides must be receiving something from the relationship.
On the surface this sounds cold and economic. In practice it allows for warmth and depth to develop. A relationship that consistently drains one member is bound to run dry sooner or later. A genuine friend has something to give and at times needs to receive. Without this balance, no lasting friendship can be sustained. The relationship becomes a ministry, not a friendship.
The kind of friendship I’m advocating rules out reclamation projects. It is altogether right to befriend the friendless and to reclaim those beaten down by life’s vicissitudes. However, this type of ministry only demands greater resources to nourish you. Similarly, you cannot expect to attach yourself like a leech to someone else and suck out all the life. If a friendship is to sustain itself, it must be reciprocal.
4. Though most of us would rather not admit it, we probably will not be able to develop a deep friendship with someone we view as a competitor.
I know that ideally we serve Jesus Christ without thought for position, place, or privilege—and fellow servants are brothers and sisters, not competitors. I believe in those ideals. Yet often I am unable to convince my emotions. I have worked at continuing my friendship with my seminary and fishing buddy Steve. We have spent some delightful times together since taking our respective churches, but it is difficult to overcome the tendency to compare. It takes tremendous effort to overcome our competitiveness-which-leads-to-defensiveness-which-doesn’t-lead-to-intimacy. I have not, nor will I, let go of my desire for friendship with Steve, but this hurdle must be overcome before we can enjoy the intimacy we once did.
I don’t like admitting that. But it’s true. And I believe part of the reason my friendships with Dick, Jim, and Gary work so well is because we are in different enough spheres that competitiveness is not an issue. We can truly rejoice with one another’s successes and grieve over one another’s failures, which doesn’t happen when even the tiniest bit of jealousy is present.
5. To find friends means being open to serendipity. Friends can be found in the most unusual persons. God loves surprises. And some of his best surprise packages are unlikely people who become our best-loved friends.
Gary, for instance, was at first dead-set against joining our church since it was—horrors!—Baptist. When he and his wife moved to Northfield, I called on them after they made a token visit to us, the closest church to their home. That was as far as it would have gone if God had not continually directed Gary and Susie to our body. I continue to be amazed that a very tough prospect call eventually blossomed into one of my deepest friendships. And I can’t help but believe that one of the reasons the Lord directed Gary here was for the strength and support we both have been able to draw from our friendship.
Seeking a clear word from “the Preacher” of Ecclesiastes can be a difficult proposition. However, there’s some solid ground in these words:
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! (4:9-10)
In the midst of all of his searching and struggling, “the Preacher” discovered a truth that remains solid counsel for preachers thousands of years later: Pastors need friends too.
Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
