Friendship in ministry

Recently I’ve been thinking about lockdown lingo!
That being phrases that we are using to the max and will now never forget!
Here are a few for a laugh!
Coronacoaster – The ups and downs of your mood during the pandemic!
Quarantini – A new cocktail drink to help you through!
Coronials – Move over millennials, the future generation of babies conceived or born during quarantine will be the coronials!
Furlough Merlot – Goblets of the grapey stuff consumed in an attempt to relieve the frustration of not working!
And my favourite, Covidiot! – Someone who thinks sunbathing or driving several hundred miles to climb Mount Snowdon in their flip flops is more important than following Government advice.

We haven’t even started with flattening the curve, asymptomatic, PPE, Social distancing, self-isolation, the new normal,  Zoom/Zoombombing, Doom-scrolling, iso (isolation) WFH (Working from Home), bubbles and unprecedented!

This final one though really caught my attention “zumping/zumped” basically its means you are breaking up with each other over Zoom! Dumped over Zoom! Ouch! Is this really what the world has become?

But honestly, the reality is that relationships have suffered strain in this season and often friendship is at the bottom of a leader’s priorities.
According to a recent YouGov survey, more than one in ten of us has no close friends and a further one in ten has no friends at all. The need for friends and friendship is an issue which the Church must address as now, more than ever, people face social isolation and struggle to connect.

Leadership can, and often is, lonely, yet the Bible has many cases that give insights into the way leaders have nurtured friendships that strengthened and encouraged their own souls as well as the soul of their friend. But the bible is full of many cases that leadership loneliness does have to be something we always come under.

• David and Jonathan shared a deep and affectionate relationship (1 Sam. 18:1–3)
• The apostle Paul always travelled with a team, and he enjoyed strong relationships. At the end of his life, he twice requested his friend and partner Timothy to visit him (2 Tim. 4:9)
• Ruth modelled honour, friendship, care and companionship with Naomi
• Mary and Elizabeth were pregnant together, carrying world-changing babies in their wombs
• Jesus led his disciples, and called them his friends (John 15:13–17). Even within the group of twelve, Peter, James, and especially John were very close to Him. He also formed friendships outside the inner circle, with people like Mary, Martha, Lazarus (11:5, 11), as well as Mary Magdalen.

Proverbs addresses the topic of friendship, describing a friend as a “keeper of confidences,” “a shared of wisdom” and “one who sharpens another through relationship”

We all need those kinda friends in our lives and leaderships and like the saying goes: it’s lonely at the top. But sometimes that loneliness is a choice.
It’s easy to list all the reasons why friendship for a leader is difficult and complication, and I’m certainly not saying it’s always an easy road to navigate. Many of us can recount stories of the hurts that we’ve given and received within leadership and sometimes it seems easier just not to bother. In addition, the task of leadership with all its requirements sometimes overtakes the importance of relationship with peers. BUT friendships as leaders is not impossible. Actually, it’s essential for our own growth and if we deny friendships as leaders then we deny the beauty of Christ that is so often produced in these relationships.

Great Leaders do life with others… One of Kyria’s values is  “Relationship”- We believe that leadership cannot successfully be done alone.
In a recent blog Sheridan Voysey encouraged his readers “To recover friendship as a holy calling” and “To be a friend is a holy calling as valid as parenthood or career.”

Here are some questions to investigate as we explore the role of friendships in ministry:

• What would the recovery of prioritising friendships look like for us, and for our leadership contexts?
• Do my friendships get the attention they deserve? How can I honour my friends more and seek to gain and give to new relationships?
• How can I apply Jesus’ strategy for doing life well with others? How, like Jesus, can I develop deep relationships as opposed to the more common surface level relationships?
• Are there past hurts and failures in the area of leadership loneliness that can be surrendered to Jesus to gain new freedom and perspective in this area?

We pray to God for each of us as leaders that He will give us the wisdom and strategies needed to invest in deeper friendships for our own benefit and the benefit of our friends.