Higher Stakes Friendship

I was feeling a little depressed last week because I found out that the Hostess Corporation declared bankruptcy, carrying more than $800 million of debt. We still haven’t recovered from the crash of 2008, and the election year already seems even more rancorous than usual, but the thought of a world without Twinkies is too much to bear. My own personal belief is that the Twinkie is one of the great arguments for God.

There were also a few other emotional challenges that contributed to my feeling down. Someone at our church had given a really bad sermon (me), and I got into a really stupid argument that I had to go back and apologize for.

Then I got a call from my friend. Over time we have more or less drifted into the custom of calling each other early Monday morning to pray for each other. (At least it’s early for me; he lives in Atlanta so much of his day goes unblessed. This is one of many reasons why it’s wise to live in California.)

Somehow, whatever is going on in my life, it looks and feels a little different after being prayed over by my friend.

What an unusual gift lies behind that word “friend.” Some things in life we can acquire by direct effort—people can make a pile of money, or get their bodies into great shape. But no one can make someone become their friend. Friendship happens, when it happens at all, as a gift.

People in church ministry are particularly vulnerable when they don’t have friends. Another friend of mine told me recently a depressing litany about how many pastors are depressed, or have strayed sexually, or would take up another line of work if they thought they could get a good job. The single most powerful indicator of whether or not someone in pastoral ministry will be able to sustain their ministry is this: do they have a “full-disclosure friend,” someone before whom they have no secrets?

What does a full-disclosure friendship look like? Another friend of mine (actually, he’s a guy I really admire and like a lot, but we’ve never lived in the same town, so I probably can’t legitimately call him a friend; he’s more of a deeply-admired-good-chemistry-semi-disclosing-acquaintance) just gave me the five rules anyone needs to know.

He learned them in the oddest of places: an exercise class with five guys in it (go figure) who kind of hit it off. One night they decided to go out for dinner, and over time they found themselves getting together to talk about life, and eventually this led one of them to propose they try what they called “An Experiment in Friendship.”

They began meeting together regularly for dinner. It usually lasts three hours. They talk about everything: family, work, sex, religion, dreams, fear, what ticks them off.

They are not a “small group.” No church counts them in its “fellowship metrics.” They don’t even share the same faith: two of them are Buddhist, one is a religious mutt, one is “kind of a Christian,” the other is a minister/seminary president. Yet my semi-disclosing-acquaintance, who has been as immersed in intensely relational ministry leadership as anyone I know, says it is the most profound group experience he’s ever had.

The rules emerged slowly, organically, over time, as deeply transformative learnings always do. One night at dinner one of the men said: “Can I ask you guys a question; will this be OK or is it too personal?”

No, the others said, this is an experiment in friendship; and if that’s so we need to run some tests and look at some results. So eventually they codified the Five Rules:

We can ask anything, no holds barred.
if you answer, you must tell the truth, as much as you know it.
if you don’t answer, you must say why you won’t or can’t answer.
Everything that is said to each other will be held in absolute confidence.
We will make absolutely no judgments of each other.

Each word in these rules carries weight. For instance, telling the truth “as much as you know it” recognizes that often even we don’t know the full truth about our lives or motives.

These friends have met for years now. They can’t wait to meet. They are doing life together.

I wonder, “Why do churches have so many small groups, but so few reach this depth?”

I wonder how many people in churches would love to run an experiment in friendship? I wonder how many pastoral ministries would be saved by one.

Everybody needs help facing a world without Twinkies.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.