In his work On Friendship, the thinker Alexander Nehamas observes that friendship begets probably the most sophisticated feelings, from “pleasure and contentment … to affliction and distress.” We are able to consider Augustine’s well-known stolen pears story which led him to comprehend that friendship is usually a harmful enemy (Conf. 2.8.16–2.9.17), to the more moderen literary humanist E. M. Forster, who mentioned, “If I had to decide on between betraying my nation and betraying my buddy, I hope I ought to have the heart to betray my nation.”. Friendships, actually, rearrange our world.
And that is uniquely true for pastors.
Latest research on pastoral resiliency have delivered to the forefront the influence that loneliness has on pastors and pastoral burnout. Many pastors admit to having few mates whom they will actually speak in confidence to. Anecdotally, I’ve recognized many pastors who’ve sought friendship inside their church solely to seek out that it creates a threat dynamic that comes with nice price, both driving parishioners away from their church or driving pastors deeper into loneliness and confusion inside their ministry. Whether or not it is because of a pastor’s personal emotional neediness, or the parishioner’s incapability to deal with their pastor’s burden, the outcomes haven’t been promising—each for the pastor or the parishioner.
Ought to pastors search out friendships amongst these whom they’re referred to as to shepherd, or is it wiser to look elsewhere? What do the Scriptures and the Christian custom should say? Most of these questions are the main focus of this text.
First, we are going to think about what friendship is in keeping with Scripture and with insights from the Christian custom. After that, we are going to flip extra on to our query: Ought to pastors be mates with members of their very own native church?
Desk of contents
1. The Bible & friendship
All of us get pleasure from a wide range of social preparations that we deliver into the native church—from marriage, parenthood, siblings, citizenship, and so forth. The New Testomony doesn’t annihilate these social preparations however elevates them, even because it relativizes them. For instance, the New Testomony reframes marriage typologically, with Christ as a husband and the church as a bride (Eph 5:25–33); it holds sibling relationships now in relation to Christ (Mark 10:29–30); it anchors our true citizenship in heaven (Phil 3:20). All of those social preparations exists inside an already/not but matrix: Some could have continuity between the current age and the age to return, whereas others will totally give approach to the age to return—“For once they rise from the lifeless, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, however are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25).
Friendship is one such social association that the Scriptures by no means converse to immediately. By no means as soon as are we commanded to be mates with anybody, however we’re commanded to like our brothers and sisters in Christ (John 13:34–35), love our wives as Christ loves the church (Eph 5:25), love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30–31), and love our enemies (Matt 5:43–48).
Nonetheless, whereas the Bible has zero imperatives associated to friendship, it does converse very tenderly about friendship. So what can we find out about friendship from numerous passages within the Outdated Testomony and New Testomony. Extra particularly, what can we are saying about the potential for pastors having fun with friendship of their native church?
The Outdated Testomony on friendship
Within the Outdated Testomony, friendship is variously expressed by emotional, social, political, and materials points. The most typical phrases related to friendship are רֵעַ and its associated phrases (Lev 19:18; Judg 14:20; 2 Sam 3:8; 16:16–17; Ps 35:14; Job 6:14; Prov 17:17; 27:9), which broadly talking is outlined as an in depth affiliate with whom one has a reciprocal relationship. One other necessary expression of friendship is the Hebrew noun חָבֵר, which is derived from the verb חבר, (“to hitch”), usually used within the context of forming political alliances (e.g., Gen 14:3). The noun חָבֵר refers to an individual with whom one is related or allied, although it doesn’t essentially carry a political that means (e.g., Ps 45:7; 119:63; Prov 28:24). The associated Aramaic phrase חֲבַר is used to explain Daniel’s companions—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—in Daniel 2:13–18.
A shifting instance of friendship within the Outdated Testomony is that between David and Jonathan—two males who discovered one another each enmeshed within the early days of Israel’s monarchy. In 1 and a pair of Samuel, we see the next qualities between these two males: tender emotion, intimacy, open communication, loyalty, and unmotivated kindness. Apparently, their friendship is described not with the noun רֵעַ, as one may count on, however with the verb אהב (“to like”): “The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan beloved [אהב] him as his personal soul” (1 Sam 18:1; cf. 20:17). Thrice in 1 Samuel, we learn that Jonathan beloved David “as his personal soul” (18:1, 3; 20:17). After which in 2 Samuel, David says of his lifeless buddy, “I’m distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very nice have you ever been to me; your love [אַהֲבָה] to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of ladies” (2 Sam 1:26). Whereas the central theme of friendship we see between David and Jonathan is covenant faithfulness, highlighted by the Hebrew phrase חֶסֶד (ḥesed) in 1 Samuel 20, it’s in the end their lived expertise of affection in the direction of each other throughout the monarchal battle that makes this actually a friendship.
The important thing ingredient of friendship we see here’s what we as we speak name reciprocity, which is the backwards and forwards alternate of actually coming into into the sorrows and joys of one other individual as a result of we all know that individual also can enter into our identical sorrows and joys. Reciprocity, as we are going to see, is among the key dynamics we’ve to ask about between a pastor and parishioner: Can it exist on the stage of friendship?
Use Logos’s Bible Sense Lexicon to uncover phrases associated to ideas like mates.
Jesus on friendship
Once we flip to the New Testomony, the idea of friendship (φιλία) is carefully tied to the Greco-Roman patronage system of the primary century AD. Friendship inside this body was seen as a reciprocal relationship between two people who have been social equals, marked by the alternate of providers, mutual loyalty, and intimacy. Despite the fact that patrons have been usually of a better social standing, they’d usually seek advice from their shoppers as mates (φίλος, philos). No matter social rank, the defining attribute of friendship was the expectation of reciprocity. This idea of reciprocity makes it all of the extra exceptional that Jesus loved friendship along with his apostles (John 15:15) and sinners (Luke 7:34)!
In John 15:13–15, we see three key points of friendship highlighted by Jesus.
First, he reveals us that love (ἀγάπη, agape) proven by sacrifice is central to friendship. We see this in verse 13. “Better love has nobody than this, that somebody lay down his life for his mates [φίλος].” Friendship, in keeping with Jesus, entails self-donation. You recognize a real buddy while you meet somebody who doesn’t simply offer you what you want, however within the truest sense offers you themselves and can threat themselves for you—even their reputations, which explains Jesus’s friendship with tax collectors and sinners (Matt 11:19). Mates donate themselves freely. They’re unguarded.
Friendship, in keeping with Jesus, entails self-donation. You recognize a real buddy while you meet somebody who doesn’t simply offer you what you want, however within the truest sense offers you themselves.
Second, Christ reveals us that his true mates are those that obey his instructions. “You might be my mates [φίλος] if you happen to do what I command you” (v. 14). Whereas there’s a explicit asymmetry that Jesus has with us that we don’t have with others (he’s Lord in all relationships), obedience is a wealthy part in all friendships. Mates obey each other once they search to please each other, which makes the bond all of the stronger. The bond goals to be each pleasable and unbreakable, and it grows in its power when it’s mutually skilled.
Lastly, we see that Jesus calls his disciples mates as a result of they’ve been made conscious of one thing that he has not instructed anybody else. “Not do I name you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his grasp is doing; however I’ve referred to as you mates [φίλος], for all that I’ve heard from my Father I’ve made recognized to you” (v. 15). That’s, I’ve simply instructed you a divine secret. On this case, his apostles have been made conscious of God’s will for the Messiah that lies on the horizon. Analogous to what we find out about all true friendships, Jesus is saying a buddy is somebody who allows you to all the best way in and tells you his or her secrets and techniques. Mates are unbuffered.
In abstract, we’re seeing that friendship in keeping with Jesus entails an unguarded, unbreakable, unbuffered bond with others. Depicted in each the Outdated and New Testaments, friendship just isn’t an off-the-cuff relationship however a deep, voluntary bond that influences all points of life, based upon the present of reciprocity.
If reciprocity, then, is among the central points of friendship, we are going to ultimately should ask: Is it sensible—or smart—for pastors to share on this stage of friendship with these they’re referred to as to shepherd?
2. The Christian custom & friendship
Shifting past the New Testomony, there’s a lot to glean from the Christian custom on friendship amongst clergy. From the friendship of Basil and Gregory, to Ambrose’s expectation of his clergy to domesticate friendships with each other, to Augustine’s routine travels to see mates, to Heinrich Bullinger’s and John Calvin’s friendship on the coronary heart of the Reformation, to Charles Spurgeon’s friendship with the previous slave Thomas Johnson, to the eloquent writings of C. S. Lewis, the Christian custom presents us a number of knowledge.
Right here we are going to simply think about Ambrose, Augustine, and C. S. Lewis—two pastors and one parishioner.
Ambrose on friendship
Ambrose wrote three books On the Duties of the Clergy. In e book 3, Ambrose wrote,
Don’t desert a buddy in time of want, nor forsake him nor fail him, for friendship is the assist of life. … If mates in prosperity assist mates, why do they not additionally in instances of adversity provide their assist? Allow us to help by giving counsel, allow us to provide our greatest endeavours, allow us to sympathize with them with all our coronary heart. If mandatory, allow us to endure for a buddy even hardship. … Protect, then, my sons, that friendship ye have begun along with your brethren, for nothing on this planet is extra lovely than that.
On the coronary heart of Ambrose’s imaginative and prescient for his clergy was the double present of pastor and buddy. Mike Aquilina displays on Ambrose’s sturdy admonitions to his clergy in his e book Friendship and the Fathers, highlighting that whereas bishops are the chief pastor to pastors, bishops like Ambrose understood that their function was to domesticate a synodical tradition the place clergy might exists as each mates and pastors to 1 one other. It’s one factor for pastors to indicate pastoral decorum with one another, it’s one other factor for pastors to indicate friendship.
Pastors, below Ambrose, didn’t merely debate and determine on church issues, however they associated to 1 one other the best way parishioners associated to them. Pastoral constancy and longevity was rooted in reciprocity amongst pastors holding friendship with each other. Once more, Ambrose says, “It’s certainly a consolation on this life to have one to whom thou canst open thy coronary heart, with whom thou canst share confidences, and to whom thou canst entrust the secrets and techniques of thy coronary heart.”
Not mentioned explicitly, however we’d assume, clergy loved friendship not inside their native congregation, however inside their native diocese, which is a consortium of clergymen who shepherd parishes in a selected area. Inside my very own Anglican custom, we’ve a diocese that consists of clergymen overseeing many parishes all through the western a part of the US. A few of my deepest bonds come from these relationships with different clergy who “get” what I’m experiencing.
Augustine on friendship
Peter Brown narrates in his biography on Augustine that within the remaining season of his life, he evidently traveled for 2 main functions: theological consultations and to go to mates. Issues of religion and mates have been all that mattered to him in the long run.
Even in his personal preaching, he understood the worth of friendship for his personal folks, for “[i]n this world two issues are important: a wholesome life and friendship. God created people in order that they could exist and reside: that is life. But when they aren’t to stay solitary, there should be friendship.”
In his most private work, the Confessions, Augustine says,
You solely love your buddy actually, in spite of everything, while you love God in your buddy, both as a result of he’s in him, or so that he could also be in him. That’s real love and respect. There is no such thing as a true friendship until You weld it between souls that cling collectively by the charity poured forth of their hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Because it pertains to his personal life, we see how central his mates have been to him on three events. First, along with his lifelong and greatest buddy, Alypius, we see friendship expressed as “the place you go I’ll go, and the place you lodge I’ll lodge. Your folks shall be my folks, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Like Augustine, Alypius was at one time a Manichean, and the 2 mates have been each transformed to the Catholic religion and baptized collectively by Ambrose in 387. Alypius later turned a member of Augustine’s first monastery in Tagaste. When Augustine was ordained a priest in Hippo, and based a group in that metropolis, Alypius joined him there and was subsequently ordained bishop of Tagaste round 384. Augustine praised Alypius, whom he referred to as “the brother of my coronary heart.” Whether or not it was Augustine who influenced Alypius or Alypius who influenced Augustine, it’s exhausting to know. As James Ok. A. Smith notes in his On the Street with Saint Augustine, friendship and private identification for Augustine run in the identical grooves, the “rutted paths worn by others grow to be the best approach to go. And so I glide and reside another person’s life.”
Second, with the well-known unnamed buddy in Confessions, Augustine writes movingly about this buddy falling sick, changing to the religion, after which being rapidly baptized. Augustine, nonetheless unconverted, recounts visiting his sick buddy:
And I did this as quickly as he was ready, for I by no means left him and we held on one another overmuch—I attempted to jest with him, supposing that he additionally would jest in return about that baptism which he had acquired when his thoughts and senses have been inactive, however which he had since realized that he had acquired. However he recoiled from me, as if I have been his enemy, and, with a exceptional and sudden freedom, he admonished me that, if I desired to proceed as his buddy, I have to stop to say such issues.
Hanging right here is how this buddy positioned a wedge between Augustine and himself because it associated to his new life in Christ. Friendship was being relativized earlier than Augustine in relation to Christ, which turns into a big characteristic of friendship for Augustine within the years to return. A couple of days later, this unnamed buddy dies. Augustine falls into what reads like a despair:
My coronary heart was completely darkened by this sorrow and in all places I seemed I noticed demise. My native place was a torture room to me . . . And all of the issues I had finished with him—now that he was gone—turned a frightful torment. My eyes sought him in all places, however they didn’t see him; and I hated all locations as a result of he was not in them, as a result of they might not say to me, “Look, he’s coming,” as they did when he was alive and absent.
Lastly, when on the eve of the barbarians’ arrival on the gates, the aged Bishop Augustine lay on his deathbed, encircled by North Africa’s church leaders—lots of them as soon as his classmates, now his closest mates. Augustine wished to face the tip along with his closest mates round him.
There is no such thing as a better comfort than the unfeigned loyalty and mutual affection of excellent and true mates … the extra mates we’ve and the extra dispersed they’re elsewhere, the additional and extra broadly prolong our fears that some evil might befall them from amongst all of the mass of evils of this current world.
This very transient take a look at Ambrose and Augustine highlights a key dynamic for pastors and friendship. Whereas friendship within the native congregation might or will not be attainable, friendship amongst those that serve within the kingdom may be very attainable. Most frequently for pastors, the closest companion stands out as the pastor down the road or the priest in your diocese. What we’re seeing with Ambrose and Augustine is that there’s something of a built-in congruence that exists amongst pastors that makes friendship for them available, indirectly with these they serve within the native church, however amongst those that are referred to as to serve the native church.
C. S. Lewis on friendship
In his e book The 4 Loves, C. S. Lewis dedicates a prolonged and memorable chapter on friendship (philos) that engages an important plot level within the historical past of friendships. What’s peculiar about Lewis’s dialogue on friendship is how a lot he believes it has been devalued within the trendy world. He writes, “To the ancients, friendship appears the happiest and most totally human of all loves… the fashionable world, as compared, ignores it.” He goes on, “Few worth it as a result of few expertise it,” as a result of it’s “the least pure of loves; the least instinctive, natural, organic, gregarious, mandatory.”
This alleged devaluing of friendship might strike many people as odd, particularly if we predict we’ve a number of mates. So we’ve to ask: What’s friendship in keeping with Lewis, and the way does this accord with what we’ve noticed to date?
Maybe his most well-known quote from 4 Loves defines friendship as:
aris[ing] out of mere companionship when two or extra of the companions uncover that they’ve in widespread some perception or curiosity and even style which the others don’t share and which, until that second, every consider to be his personal distinctive treasure (or burden). The standard expression of opening friendship can be one thing like, “What? You too? I assumed I used to be the one one.”
Key to this definition is the phrase “uncover.” Once we “uncover” one thing, we “discover” one thing that was not a given, it’s extra like a present.
Lewis restates this definition in one other manner, saying it arises out of mere companionship when two or extra of the companions uncover that they’ve a standard love for a similar factor which provides beginning to like for an additional. This sort of love, as Emerson mentioned, “Do you like me?” means “Do you see the identical reality?”—Or a minimum of, “Do you care about the identical reality as me?” Once we “uncover” friendship, we’re discovering somebody seeing what we see in the same manner that we see it and caring about it the best way we care about it. This doesn’t imply we’ve full settlement on all the things, but it surely does imply we’ve full respect. This discovery turns into a “mutual selecting” of one another due to a standard love for a similar object.
Lewis understands as a parishioner what Ambrose and Augustine perceive as pastors. Let’s imagine that Lewis strikes awfully near what we mentioned earlier: Friendship entails a excessive diploma of reciprocity. You encourage the opposite individual to open up as they encourage you to open up as a result of there’s a sense of seeing the identical factor. This places friendship in a form of catch-22 dynamic—who strikes first? It’s born of one thing each reciprocal and susceptible.
3. Pastors & friendship
We now flip extra on to the query: Can, or ought to, pastors be mates with members of their very own church?
As we’ve seen, friendship requires reciprocity and vulnerability. However after we think about the pastoral workplace within the New Testomony, we uncover that there’s clear incongruence within the relationship between pastor and parishioner: Pastors are referred to as to evangelise (2 Tim 4:2), educate (1 Tim 3:2), administer sacraments (Matt 28:19; 1 Cor 10:16–17), marry (1 Cor 7:39), and bury (Gen 23:19; Matt 8:21). They’re additionally referred to as to provide counsel (2 Tim 3:16–17), hear confessions (Jas 5:16), and at all times maintain confidence (Prov 11:13).
Pastors, lets say, expertise a built-in incongruence amongst their those who exists just by nature of their calling. This incongruence is probably why pastors have callings which might be so distinctive that they’re to be extra extremely esteemed for having them (1 Thess 5:12–13), and but can be judged extra strictly in the event that they fail in them (Jas 3:1). Pastors are warned probably the most severely (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet 5:1–3; 1 Tim 3:1–7), and but are forgiven probably the most tenderly (John 21:15–19).
The function of a pastor entails them having and holding very intimate information of the folks they’re referred to as to shepherd, which is a sort of data that isn’t at all times, nor appropriately, to be reciprocated again to their folks. As Bonhoeffer says, “the pastor solely needs to know so as to assist,” not so he can reciprocate. The pastor’s workplace of non secular care “doesn’t exist to declare solidarity however to pay attention and to proclaim the gospel. Correct distance helps set up correct closeness,” says Bonhoeffer.
In the end, as Bonhoeffer says, “the pastor doesn’t bind anybody to himself at any stage, however solely to the Phrase and Spirit of Christ.” The Phrase and Spirit, lets say, create what we’d name an “intimate distance” between the pastor and their parishioner. The pastor is aware of so much about their parishioner, however it’s not information to be appropriated for closeness to themselves, however in order that the parishioner may applicable closeness to Christ.
The distinctiveness of this calling makes friendship within the native church between pastor and parishioner one of many harder relationships to navigate. And strikingly, the New Testomony is silent on the social association of friendship between pastors and parishioners. Whereas we are able to draw out invaluable insights from Jesus’s friendship along with his apostles and the tax collectors and sinners, the asymmetry between him and us should even be preserved. Maybe we might discover extra certain footing by looking for to obey the fifth commandment (Exod 20:12), to honor our ancestors of the religion who’ve gone earlier than us and the way they thought deeply about this complicated topic.
If we might tie the insights of Ambrose, Augustine, and Lewis collectively to type a threefold chord (Eccl 4:12), we observe that though it’s not not possible for a pastor to seek out mates within the native church, it’s additionally not a assure. Sustaining the connection between pastor-as-pastor to parishioner and pastor-as-friend to parishioner is complicated. It is going to at all times entail threat (however then once more, so do all friendships).
Friendship within the native church for a pastor will at all times be a present and never a given. However what’s a given is that friendship is at all times a kingdom actuality, no matter whether or not it’s skilled as a neighborhood church actuality.
My very own story is one in all friendships each inside and out of doors the native church. I can say that one of many best items I’ve acquired in ministry, subsequent to serving the folks of God within the church, is a bunch of pastors I name mates. Throughout lengthy seasons the place I had no mates in my very own native church, these pastoral friendships have sustained me. There have been seasons the place I’ve loved the present of friendship within the church, throughout which these identical pastoral friendships have formed me to be a greater buddy.
Can pastors have mates of their native congregation? Perhaps. Can pastors have mates within the kingdom of God? Completely! We aren’t referred to as to be mates with everyone, however we’re referred to as to like everyone. Friendship is each distinctive and mandatory for pastors, however the place it is going to be discovered just isn’t sure.
Bedell’s beneficial sources for additional examine
- Friendship and the Fathers: How the Early Church Evangelized, by Mike Aquilina
- Pastoral Friendship: The Forgotten Piece to a Persevering Ministry, by Michael A. G. Haykin, Brian Croft & James B. Carroll
- Made for Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows and Doubles Our Joys, by Drew Hunter
Further works on friendship and pastoral ministry
Associated articles on sensible ministry
