My husband and I were relaxing in the living room of one of the elders and wife from the first church we pastored. The camaraderie was light and yet serious as we spent our usual time conversing about ministry together in the church to various people and talking about our lives and families.
As we joked around at one point, my husband and I remarked to our friends: “We really are just paid friends.” Now, as far as I remember, the light tone remained, but later we both regretted not guarding our tongues a bit better in that conversation.
It really is true to a certain degree that in our role we often are in the place of professional friends to our congregants, but making that glib remark to the elder and his wife was a rookie ministry leadership mistake.
I’m not sure if this couple was offended by that comment or if they’d even remember it today, but the incident has always stuck with me as a reminder of the fine line we walk in church leadership. We’re in relationships with so many people, usually more than one human being with limitations should be, most of the time. And too often these feel like friendships. They have the characteristics of friendship: we laugh together, pray together, listen to one another, share common interests with one another…but to have good boundaries, the line between ministry and friendship really shouldn’t cross too much.
Or should it…? For years my husband and I have tried to figure out how to balance life and ministry with personal friendships, and I’m not sure we’ve ever gotten it quite “right” in any of the churches we’ve served. Being burned by so-called friends and ending up in helping roles or in crisis counseling with people or having to confront people with their sin, it all makes for some messy business. There is no neat and tidy “how-to” for navigating the sea of human community.
What heartens me more than anything is the pure unadulterated humanity of Christ in leading. He had friends. They did ministry with Him. He spent more time with some of them than others. He even had an inner circle. (You mean He had friends in His “church” and He was exclusive with some over others!?)
He wanted friends. He needed friends. He called His closest followers friends. He said to them:
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15).
What a privilege to be a friend of Christ! What a humbling thought, though, that if Jesus wasn’t too good to have friends, then we certainly aren’t either.
The hardest things to do in ministry is first off, to find friends; and secondly to prioritize time with friends when so many people are needing our friendship in a ministry capacity. To serve others with humility, we need to humbly accept our own need for community, for people who will pour into us and build us up in a safe relationship so that we can keep loving and giving out to others, whether we are paid for it or not. Then we need to prioritize and pray to find those friends however we can.
Somehow we have to find the balance between ministry friendships that are both parallel and perpendicular, all the while remembering that even Jesus was willing to receive from his lowly followers though He was literally on a plain above them all.
May God grant us wisdom to have friendships of all kinds, all the while recognizing the need for true friends through whom we can humbly receive blessing and goodness and growth.
Taking It Further:
How is your input and output in the relationships? Is your pride keeping you from seeking friends (even if you have to look in unlikely places)? How can thinking about Jesus’ need for friendship help you shift your thinking as a ministry leader?
