I asked the question that everyone in my car was itching to ask, “Do you think your pastor has friends in the church?” He craned his head to look me in the eye as I sank into the backseat. He couldn’t tell if I was asking a trick question. More serious this time, “Does he have friends?” He scrunched up his face and sat silently. Finally, his head bobbed up and down and he said, “Yeah, I think he has friends. Why wouldn’t he?”
The three pastors in the car all cut our eyes at each other, smiled, and thought the same thing: this guy doesn’t know. This man, who happens to be a leader in his church, who has been a Christian for 40 years, is clueless about his own pastor. I don’t fault him for it. Most of the non-pastoral types live in the matrix of illusion in which their pastor has deep relational connections that are symbiotic, healthy, and long-term. It’s not true though. Not even close.
Pastors are lonely and often friendless.
Before you open up your email and craft a brisk and blunt retort, give me a chance to make my case why the grass is green and the sun sets in the West. This is the most obvious, broken reality the American pastorate is facing today.
THE BIGGER PROBLEMS
Pastoral loneliness is a big problem, but it’s not the primary problem. It is a symptom of a few larger, systemic glitches within the church that no one knows how to fix.
1. Most non-pastors don’t have real friendships either. That is, this problem didn’t start with pastors—it started in the greater cultural landscape. For clarity, my definition of friendship isn’t simply a descriptor of the guys we watch SEC football with or the gals you grab a Margarita with after work. It can’t be our loose Instagram connections or those who follow our Facebook stories. Friendship is an activity of grace. It’s a result of grit and humility and kingdom fortitude. Friendship includes that person(s) whom we walk with, confide in, and invite to speak the truth of the gospel in our lives. These are people who know us in the deep places. They are the people who don’t mind staring at you in the middle of your meltdown and shouting over your doubt, “Stop lying to me and to yourself.” These are people who are in it (life, pain, suffering, joy) for the long-haul. I don’t know many people who have real friendship.
2. Pastors have strange jobs. This has always been a problem. It’s no surprise that pastors like theology. We read it, study it, preach it. It’s the framework for our vocation. But most people just assume that’s all we are. It gets awkward. I’ll bump into a church person at Wal-Mart and inevitably the conversation will get steered to the bible or the resurrection or church. I stumble at first, feeling out of place, disoriented by crying children in shopping carts, all the while thinking that I don’t really know what Exodus 14 or substitutionary atonement has to do with my armful of toilet paper. I mumble something spiritually appropriate and escape to the next aisle. It’s usually after encounters like this that I realize that most people don’t know what to do with us. It’s easier to keep us relegated to Sundays than to Tuesday night dinners.
3. Pastors have been told they can’t have friends. This, my friends, has been happening for centuries. Cloistered hermits and boring Benedictines hidden in the mountains have all taken their place in the great cloud of dissenters shouting that our calling as pastors means doing it alone. The more modern Baptistic, Pentecostal, or Presbyterian variety all echo what has been deposited in their broken souls as well: Having friends in ministry—at least, regular friends—is an impossibility.
WANNA BE FRIENDS WITH YOUR PASTOR?
This isn’t a pity piece on how the church world has failed to cultivate safe spaces for pastors to develop friendships. This isn’t even an article pleading with you to invite lonely ole’ Pastor Cleatus over for dinner. This is just stating the obvious—pastors are often lonely and without a friend. However, if this conversation has stirred up something inside your heart towards your pastor, here are a few suggestions:
1. Initiate. Every pastor I know is a master at initiating relationships, conversations, conflict resolution, lunch, coffee, and everything in between. If you scratch just beneath the surface, pastors would love an invitation for a coffee and conversation about nothing in particular.
2. Stop talking about church with him/her. Do you like talking about your work 24/7? Neither do pastors. And it gets weird when you bring up work with pastors cause, you know, you are their work. So it feels a bit self-serving on your part. So just don’t.
3. Don’t treat them like hirelings. Fifty words in an out of the way article on the interwebs is not nearly enough space to seriously address this subject. But if you would like to honor your pastor with the privilege of feeling safe around you, don’t treat him like a spiritual contractor or hired gun. He is a person and has moved his family because of a deep calling. And yes, he wants the privilege of shepherding your heart and growing a church, but your pastor is not first a pastor, but a person.
Caveat: This is not true of all pastors. But very few men and women I know who live and work in this space have cultivated any real, substantive relationships. Pastors need friends and most often those friendships are with other pastors. Encourage your pastor to lay down his competitive bent and reach out to the pastor who happens to be leading across town.
Totally agree but wish that maybe you had said more about why we don’t. It can get very lonely especially when things get hard.
Thanks Clay. Yeah, it seems like there is lots and lots to say on this topic. Pastors are a lonely lot. Off the top of my head there are 4-5 reasons pastors don’t have friends. 1. We are afraid of being seen as regular people 2. We are too busy leading to cultivate friendship away from ministry circles 3. We (secretly) like to demonize our people for not being friends to us. That is, we like being a victim. 4. We don’t know what real friendship looks like 5. Our competitive bent keeps us from connecting deeply with those who we might have the deepest affinity for.
Clay, what are some reasons you think?
Jon, you are spot on! I remember a time in ministry when me and my wife we were hit with the reality that we had no friends beyond surface relationships. We were walking through a very difficult season and literally had nobody we could turn to in order to help us navigate through that season. We purposefully made a shift in how we did ministry and life in general. Years later I had a veteran of many years in ministry tell me that as a pastor I can’t have friends in the church. My response was, “I’ve been there, done that, and I will not digress to doing ministry like that again. If that were the case then I can’t be a pastor.” I know your audience in this article is really church members and agree completely with you. From a pastor’s perspective I know for me I have had to fight against a cultural norm in the church that is not healthy at all. Doing life with people has to be a priority. Building healthy relationships that are characterized by mutual transparency and trust is huge. I’m convinced we do more in the area if leading people when we determine to lead in this area. It’s not easy because the norm in our culture is relationships that don’t go much deeper than the surface. It has to be intentional on our part!
So true. Thanks for the great feedback Tim!
Hey Jon – could you send me an email so I can have yours?
hwaynefair@yahoo.com
If you have time to engage an old guy for a few minutes – I want to send you something that you might find helpful (or not)..
Thanks – and keep up the good work!
-wayne fair
Thanks! Just emailed.
Hey Jon – great and timely article. Though I would contend that this extends beyond pastoral roles to, well, actually most people. Our easiest friendships are made over commonality. For most people, the majority of our lives are spent at work; I imagine the same is true for pastors. People we work with often tend to fill the time gaps. Depending on the job and community, this relationship can then extend beyond work. But it forms the basis for friendship based solely on the amount of time spent together and a foundation for mutual conversation – we work together and therefore have something in common.
Jobs that don’t have many peers (pastors, sole proprietorships, etc) tend to have fewer avenues to build relationships in the thing that occupies the majority of our time. Without other interests or venues, they are left with few ways to start to cultivate those relationships.
Let me interject here to say that I agree with you completely. And that pastors are in a unique role. It’s hard to build a peer relationship when the dichotomy of the relationship starts as a mentor/mentee or counselor/knowledge seeker. I would extend this to other roles as well. People often try to relate to us by talking about things they know we have an interest in. I often remind myself not to be off-put by thinking it one dimension but rather flattered that they would try whatever technique to initiate a conversation.
The challenge I think pastors face more than most is what you mentioned about feeling the need to stand out from or be held to a higher standard. If someone initiates a conversation about a spiritual topic – you must be at the ready. Your response judged more critically than most. For me, I have the fortune of being able to use some technical jargon and complicated sounding abbreviations to thwart any pretense of not being informed or at my best. For pastors, your engagement has effects beyond the Wal-Mart aisle to that of the church aisle come Sunday morning. A lot of pressure to be sure.
Perhaps I’m feeling lonely this afternoon as well since my response is becoming less of a comment and more of an article itself. I appreciate you pointing out that pastors are people too. Built with the same struggles, temptations, interests, conflicts, and whatever else as the people they shepherd. What is interesting is how discerning they need to be in the people they allow to shepherd their lives. $.02
Thanks Robert! Good stuff. True, all of it. I miss your face.
Great insight. I think there are so many sides to this situation. For one, our definition of what a deep friendship should look like. I have 3 very deep friendships but we don’t do lots of social things together. We’re either spread out by geography or other factors, but with a simple call, they’d drop their world to help mine. They tell me the truth and love me through anything. I have another friend who’s wife told him he had to find someone to spend some time with, so we committed every Tues. for lunch together. It was a standing date for a long time and we grew deep and close. Both of us found one of our best friends out of something that was more formal and structured. We had no idea we’d become so close when we started. We could talk about anything and because we’re both in a “para-church” ministry situation, we had nothing to compete over. I could go on and on about what deep friendships look like for me, but one thing is true of all of them, NO 2 LOOK THE SAME. My 2 “surrogate big brothers” are among my deepest, most trusted, most loved friends” but we don’t get to do lots of social things together. We’ve learned how to best feed our relationship with what works for us. All this being said, for a pastor to have many deep friends within his congregation is tough. People will assume you have favorites, and in honesty you do. Often the best friends can come from places where you aren’t responsible for leading their spiritual life, you can be a peer or just like them. Another issue is that popular pastors who have tons of relationships can fall into the trap where they think they have to lots of deep friends too. That doesn’t work. Understand that all friendships serve purposes, for both parties. Some are more for mentoring and training, some are just for fun, some are work friendships, and some are life coaching and support friendships. Allow your friends to fit where they fit naturally and don’t expect someone to be all things to all people. At the end of the day, Jon, you have tons of friends who love and care for you more than you know. Count me among that multitude and if you’re open to risking your reputation by hanging out with me more, I’d be up for that anyway. Love you my friend.
Good stuff, as always. I agree, friendship can look different in different seasons, for different people. I like how Pete Scazzero in the Emotionally Healthy Leader says each person should have a friend who is a pastor (shepherd the heart), prophet (speak truth), evangelist (look outside of themselves), teacher (mentor) and apostle (call them to greatness).
I have always considered you a good friend…often in the apostle role. I suspect you probably do that with everyone you come into contact with…you have a gift to see a seed of grace and then you water it and tend it. I can’t tell you how many times, in moments of discouragement, I have returned to words of challenge and faithfulness you have spoken to me. Love you, my friend.
I have worked at having friends in the church. One is a psychologist and another a inter-cultural missionary in our very diverse community. These two I can trust plus a few others to varying degrees. Beyond that, probably not. I am now in a larger church so that may explain why I can have a few good friends.
Hi Bev! I appreciate your story…I’m encouraged to hear that you have found some meaningful community. The larger church context does seem to offer more opportunities. On the flip side, many of my pastoral friends in larger churches have found the pressure, to-do lists, and pace of larger church to make it more difficult. What advice would you give them?
This is a good article and timely. Thank you. I’ve just entered a Sabbatical from being in full time ministry for 23 years so the change of seasons has brought up the whole topic of friendships. It’s a hard self discovery journey. One of the things I’m learning about myself is that I deeply care for people everywhere the grocery store etc. One of the hardest parts of my Sabbatical is actually letting go and not doing all these caring things. I’m realized I’ve become so good at this skill set over the years that I don’t even give my friends a chance to be friends to me because I’ve unconsciously become so quick to care for( Shepherd) people and lead when needed I’ve lost the self awareness of others in the room, patience, and learning how to receive. Which has directly affected and changed relationships with people that use to be friends with me to me being over them. So I’m realizing in this new season of life maybe my friendships are few and shallow because I’ve forgotten how to be on a team vs lead the team.
On another note – let’s Also let’s be honest – everyone needs to vent from time to time about their job it doesn’t matter what field. When you are pastoring finding those circles you can do that in without being judged it’s very hard. Being a pastor and having friends who are close to you and you close friend with them is complex.
Jessica, thank you for reading the article and your insight. Yeah, I’m not sure those outside of vocational ministry have an idea of the emotional toll ministry takes. Adding insult to injury, the lack of personal margin makes it increasingly difficult to create sustainable friendships. Blessing on your sabbatical!