Friends
18/07/12 04:38
When I was growing up, my friends were usually the children of our parents’ friends. We lived in a small town, so everyone knew everyone else. The kids in our Sunday School class were also in our class at school. There was only one elementary school in town, but my class was large enough to have two sections. I had friends who belonged to our church, but I also had friends who went to other churches. My parents’ social circles were similar. They were friends with families in our church and also friends with those who went to other churches.
High school brought a few new friends as students from country schools joined our class for high school.
Along the way I made a few friends who lived in other towns, primarily through church camp. These friends were often from families my parents knew because they were active in the statewide church conference and our whole family was involved in church camp.
When I went off to college I made a few new friends, but my circle was pretty small. I was a bit younger than my classmates and I had to work hard to keep up. The activities of the campus chapel were the primary source of friends.
At seminary, new friends came easily. We were in a small community of like-minded people pursuing similar academic interests.
Over the years a few friendships have remained strong. There have been friends who we knew for a while and with whom we lost touch and others who have become life-long friends. Distance seems to make no difference when it comes to friendship. Living in different cities, even living on different continents, has not deterred our friendships.
Being a pastor changed the process of making friends a bit. A pastor needs to be fair in relationships with the entire congregation. There can’t be special members of the congregation who receive special treatment or special attention from the pastor. At the same time, the work of a pastor brings one close to the people served. It is natural for warm feelings to develop between pastor and members of the church. Still, there are limits to “letting one’s hair down.” A pastor can’t complain about his or her work to the people served. There are stories that are told to the pastor that must be held in confidence. There is a sense of always being a bit “at work” even in casual settings that involve members of the congregation. Still, over the years, we have developed life-long friendships with members of each congregation that we have served.
We have developed friendships with colleagues over the years. In each setting, there were pastors serving other congregations who became friends. Denominational meetings tend to be gatherings of friends and a bit like reunions for us. There have also been strong friendships that have developed with pastors of other denominations. I have long participated in ecumenical Bible study with other pastors and have found friends among clergy from other denominations.
I was thinking about friendship yesterday because I was taking a look through my Facebook “friends.” The social network has provided me one way to connect with others. I was a slow adopter. I signed up for Facebook when a nephew was traveling in South America. The site gave me access to his travel photos and information that I couldn’t have obtained directly from any other source. In the beginning, it seemed to demand more of my time than I was willing to give. I turned off the alerts that notified me when contacts in the network post information to their walls. I didn’t initiate many new friend contacts. I responded when asked to be someone’s friend and usually said, “yes” if it was a person that I knew. I still don’t post much on Facebook. I’ll occasionally respond to the post of a friend. I also post notices about church activities on the site. Our church has its own Facebook page and we have a Facebook group as well. I try to check out those pages from time to time.
I use an automated program to make church posts to Facebook. That means that I am not actually visiting Facebook when the posts appear. I decide what announcements need to be made and when they should appear. Then I enter them into Hootsuite and schedule the posts. Hootsuite posts to multiple places in Facebook and to a couple of Twitter feeds at the scheduled time, whether or not I am sitting at my computer. This creates some confusion, because people see my posts and assume that I’m looking at Facebook, which I probably am not doing.
I also created a profile on Linkedin, a site that is supposed to focus on professional relationships. Linkedin is owned by the same company that operates e-harmony, an online dating service. That results in some unwanted e-mails from time to time, but the development of a professional network is interesting. The web of relationships is different from my Facebook network.
It is clear to me that the term “friend” has a wide variety of different meanings. I have people who are included in my list of friends with whom I feel close and others I feel that I hardly know. There are folks on the list for whom I have warm feelings and fond memories and others who seem to me to be quite distant.
The relatively new term “frenemy,” sometimes spelled “frienemy,” refers to someone who might be an enemy pretending to be a friend. It can also describe a friend who is also a rival. Businessweek reported that the increase of frenemies in the workplace is the result of increasingly complex relationships that intertwine personal and professional relationships. The article reported that there has been an increase in close personal relationships that bridge professional and personal spheres. I suspect that these relationships have always been present, but the article seems to say that they are more common in the current social environment than they were in previous generations.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of his disciples as friends. The distinction he makes is that the relationship is not hierarchical, but one of equals. Jesus also speaks of the power of love. “You are my friends if you do what I command you. What I command is that you love one another.”
Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and other social networks are simply tools. They are neither good nor bad. They do not make friendships. For those who love genuinely, however, they can be a way of staying in touch. I still prefer face-to-face contact. I’ll use the tools, but find them no substitute for spending time with my friends and demonstrating my love through actions.
High school brought a few new friends as students from country schools joined our class for high school.
Along the way I made a few friends who lived in other towns, primarily through church camp. These friends were often from families my parents knew because they were active in the statewide church conference and our whole family was involved in church camp.
When I went off to college I made a few new friends, but my circle was pretty small. I was a bit younger than my classmates and I had to work hard to keep up. The activities of the campus chapel were the primary source of friends.
At seminary, new friends came easily. We were in a small community of like-minded people pursuing similar academic interests.
Over the years a few friendships have remained strong. There have been friends who we knew for a while and with whom we lost touch and others who have become life-long friends. Distance seems to make no difference when it comes to friendship. Living in different cities, even living on different continents, has not deterred our friendships.
Being a pastor changed the process of making friends a bit. A pastor needs to be fair in relationships with the entire congregation. There can’t be special members of the congregation who receive special treatment or special attention from the pastor. At the same time, the work of a pastor brings one close to the people served. It is natural for warm feelings to develop between pastor and members of the church. Still, there are limits to “letting one’s hair down.” A pastor can’t complain about his or her work to the people served. There are stories that are told to the pastor that must be held in confidence. There is a sense of always being a bit “at work” even in casual settings that involve members of the congregation. Still, over the years, we have developed life-long friendships with members of each congregation that we have served.
We have developed friendships with colleagues over the years. In each setting, there were pastors serving other congregations who became friends. Denominational meetings tend to be gatherings of friends and a bit like reunions for us. There have also been strong friendships that have developed with pastors of other denominations. I have long participated in ecumenical Bible study with other pastors and have found friends among clergy from other denominations.
I use an automated program to make church posts to Facebook. That means that I am not actually visiting Facebook when the posts appear. I decide what announcements need to be made and when they should appear. Then I enter them into Hootsuite and schedule the posts. Hootsuite posts to multiple places in Facebook and to a couple of Twitter feeds at the scheduled time, whether or not I am sitting at my computer. This creates some confusion, because people see my posts and assume that I’m looking at Facebook, which I probably am not doing.
It is clear to me that the term “friend” has a wide variety of different meanings. I have people who are included in my list of friends with whom I feel close and others I feel that I hardly know. There are folks on the list for whom I have warm feelings and fond memories and others who seem to me to be quite distant.
The relatively new term “frenemy,” sometimes spelled “frienemy,” refers to someone who might be an enemy pretending to be a friend. It can also describe a friend who is also a rival. Businessweek reported that the increase of frenemies in the workplace is the result of increasingly complex relationships that intertwine personal and professional relationships. The article reported that there has been an increase in close personal relationships that bridge professional and personal spheres. I suspect that these relationships have always been present, but the article seems to say that they are more common in the current social environment than they were in previous generations.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of his disciples as friends. The distinction he makes is that the relationship is not hierarchical, but one of equals. Jesus also speaks of the power of love. “You are my friends if you do what I command you. What I command is that you love one another.”
Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and other social networks are simply tools. They are neither good nor bad. They do not make friendships. For those who love genuinely, however, they can be a way of staying in touch. I still prefer face-to-face contact. I’ll use the tools, but find them no substitute for spending time with my friends and demonstrating my love through actions.