Lasting Friendships

Pastor, author, and blogger Tod Bolsinger has been posting a series over the past several days on the importance of fellowship within the body of Christ. The following passage from a recent post in this series stood out for me as I reflected on the friends that I am blessed to have:

When was the last time that you had a long, deep conversation of "big" talk? Y'know, when was the last time that you sat down and opened your mind and your soul and experienced Jesus speaking to you through the voice of a friend? If it was recently, I'll bet that it occurred a) because you are in a small group that has been meeting for a long time, or b) because you were talking to an "old friend" whom you have known for a long time, or c) you were in dire straights. (Desperation and trial often make us cut to the chase and get to the heart of a matter.)

And in a) and b) above you were able to go deep and talk honestly precisely because you spent a good long, slow time developing the relationship over time, through small talk. I learned in college (I was a speech communication major) that "small talk leads to big talk." Simple, short, caring conversations that slowly and appropriately go deeper and deeper, with increasing but not sudden or forced depth in intimacy develop the kinds of lasting friendships that truly enrich our lives. We need to grow closer slowly, over time. And that takes "the hang."

The Spiritual Discipline of proximity is about spending ample amounts of time near certain people, over a backgammon board, across a tennis court, on a bicycle, while running, over dinner, while stirring a cup of coffee, or in our church's case on our patio after services and at our all-church mid week dinner and education event called Big Wednesday.

Once we have spent a lot of time in small talk, then the big talk follows.

I just got back from Richmond where I had the chance to spend time with several of my closest friends. Two of them had come on the trip with our family. Two others live in Richmond and we try to hook up every time I'm in town. Another is currently serving as a missionary in Chile but happened to be in town with his wife this past weekend.

As I reflect on each of these friendships, these are all people that I had intentionally practicing the spiritual discipline of proximity with over the years. In each case, these were guys I met for breakfast with every week. Over time (and since we are all guys it took some time) we would deepen our relationship with each other in Christ to the point that we could feel comfortable discussing whatever we were struggling with at any given time. It's still that way today even though I don't get to see some of them very often.

My grandfather often said that if a man have five people in his life that he could call his close friends then he was truly blessed. I now understand what he meant. But in order to achieve that blessing it requires us to be willing to invest time in getting to know each other. In other words, we need to spend time just "hanging out".