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Friending – The Foundation of Friendship*
Sycamore Creek Church
September 7/8, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Recently I’ve been making a new friend named Chad.  Chad is the director of the Peppermint Creek Theater Company.  He’s an actor, director, and also an entrepreneur in the arts.  I found out something really interesting about Chad.  Chad’s claim to fame is that he auditioned for…here it comes…Saved by the Bell!  Yes, Saved by the Bell!  That cheesy 90s teenage sitcom.  And he made it pretty far into the audition process.  Chad almost made it into a very elite group of friends.  Zach, Slater, Screech.  Jessie, Kelley, Lisa.  He could have been one of those friends!

Chad mentioned to me recently how friendship is kind of like an audition.  Peppermint Creek Theater runs their auditions every summer for the entire next season.  A host of actors and actresses try out for several roles in one of the many plays over the next year.  Directors are looking for just the right person to join their play.  But besides the right chemistry, there are two other things they’re looking for.  Are they available for all the rehearsals and what are they willing and not willing to do?  If an actor can only make half the rehearsals, then they’re not going to make the cut.  And if an actress isn’t willing to kiss someone (as a recent actress wasn’t because she felt it would disrespect her husband), then the director can’t cast them in a roll with kissing.  Friendship is similar.  How available are you?  How open are you?

I’m really excited about this series we’re entering because it has the potential to be the most significant series this year to impact your life.  We’ll be talking about friendship over the next four weeks.  If you get your friends right, it can orient your life in godly ways.  If you get your friends wrong, well, the opposite can be true.

Here’s a key thought for this entire series:

You show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.

The book of Proverbs in the Bible describes our future this way:

Walk with the wise and become wise;
associate with fools and get in trouble.
~Proverbs 13:20 NLT

If you hang out with people who are wiser than you, you’ll become wiser.  If you hang out with people who have a better marriage than you, your marriage will improve.  If you hang out with people who handle their money with care, you’ll begin to handle your money with care.  We rise to the level of the friends we have around us.

But if you hang out with people who are party idiots, you’ll become a party idiot.  If you hang out with people who always whip out their credit card with no regard to how they’ll pay for what they’re buying, you’ll bury yourself with debt too.  If you hang out with someone who gossips about their husband or complains about their wife, you’ll soon be gossiping about your husband or complaining about your wife.  These fools will drag you down. You see, we rarely grow alone.  We also rarely get in trouble alone.

I think it’s safe to say that we are the average of our closest friends.  If you partied last night, you probably had three or four friends who were partying too.  If you were stoned last night, you probably had three or four friends who were stoned too.  If you are seeking God, you probably have three or four friends who are seeking God too.  Same thing with your marriage, your finances, what you eat, and your health in general.  You are the average of your closest friends.

Take a moment and list your closest friends.  Right now.  Stop.  Write them down…Not your spouse, your dog, or your imaginary friend.  I’m talking about the people you can call at 2AM.  The people who you can be authentic and transparent with your hopes and dreams but also your fears and failures.  How many people did you write down?

Before we go any further, let’s define friendship.

A friend is someone you may or may not know well who accepts your friend request on Facebook.  This person is born to like and comment on your posts to make you feel good about yourself.
~Proverbs 17:17 FBV (Facebook Version)

No that’s not really in the Bible.  Here’s what the Bible says:

Friends love through all kinds of weather,
and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.
~Proverbs 17:17 (The Message)

What would your life look like if you had a handful of friends like this?  That stayed with you for decades?  Sociologist Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University, has found that since 1985, our number of friends has shrunk.  “The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants and those ties are also more family-based than they used to be” (Lynn Smith-Lovin, Professor of Sociology at Duke University

Here are the details of her research as published in the American Sociological Review.  Compared to 1985 there has been a 33% drop in number of close confidants, an 80% increase in spouse/partner only confidants, a 40% increase in family only confidants, and a 100% increase in no confidants!

Our friendships are getting fewer and fewer.  Why is this?  Increased work hours are crowding out friendships.  Longer drive times are doing the same.  Isolated entertainment options like watching shows on your iPad rather than the TV or the movie theater are keeping us from developing deep friendships.  Rising divorce rates break apart friendships.  When a couple divorces they divide their stuff and this often includes friendships.  And or course, we can’t neglect the rise of social media.

Social Media is redefining the way we think of friendship.  We have more friends and more people giving us advice, but our friendships are not nearly as deep as they once were.  Ten years ago you would never have considered picking up your phone and calling every friend you had to tell them about what you had for breakfast and then posting a picture of your oatmeal with the perfect filter to make it look professional.  We are becoming less invested in friends and more invested in how we appear.  Consider the rise of selfies.  We post these things and then we sit around and wait for it…wait for it…wait for it…YES!  SOMEONE LIKED IT!  Now don’t get me wrong.  If you are one of my 900 friends on Facebook, you know that I love sharing stuff on Facebook.  But we need to use social media to supplement our friendships, not replace them.  We have more “likes” and Facebook friends and we’re more isolated and alone than we have ever been.

Throughout this series, I hope to help you correct this isolation.  Today we’re looking at the foundation of friendship.  Next week we’ll be looking at how each of us may be one friend away from our lives changing.  The third week we’ll look at being one community away from changing our lives.  And we’ll wrap it all up asking whether there aren’t some friends that we need to unfriend!

So with our time left today I want to look at two things that are absolutely essential for friendship.  These are the greatest needs of friendship.  You might call this rediscovering the lost art of friendship.

Be Present
First, you can’t build friendships without being present.  Aristotle said, “The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not.”  You have to be present over and over again with your friends.  Face to face!  You can’t audition for the role of friend and only show up for half the rehearsals.  Say it with me: “I will develop my friendships face to face, not just thumbs to thumbs.”  I don’t mean belly button to belly button.  That’s only with your spouse!  I mean get together with your friends.  Coffee.  Walks.  Bikes.  Meals.  Whatever floats your boat.  Do life together.  Jesus said, “Follow me.”  Now he didn’t mean that by Twitter standards.  He meant, come and spend your life learning how to do life together with me.

The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing together.
~Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV

This month we’re beginning to focus on the small groups that we’ll be offering this fall.  My own experience leading a small group is that it starts out with a bang.  Lots of people.  Lots of enthusiasm.  Lots of potential.  But over time people stop coming.  I never know quite why.  But a group may begin with fifteen people but by the last meeting it’s down to five regulars.  Those five regulars are the ones who have prioritized friendship in their life.  They’re the ones who have not neglected meeting together.

As I have been preparing for this series over the last several months I’ve noticed something about myself.  I tend not to prioritize friendships.  I prioritize two, maybe three things: work, family, and self.  But I noticed that my friendships get pushed to the periphery of my life.  So I did what I do when I want to prioritize something.  I put it on my daily to do list.   Yes, I know I’m a geek.  But if I want to make sure I spend time on something, I put it on my to do list and write it in my calendar.  So each day I ask myself, “Have I planned some time with friends this week?”

One friend I’ve begun to invest more time in is Bill Chu.  If you’ve been around here lately you’ve met Bill, because he has preached a couple of times at SCC.  Now Bill and I have spent a lot of time together doing work related things.  We strategize about ministry and mission all the time.  But we had never done anything together without talking shop.  So I called up Bill one day and said, “Bill, let’s go out on a man-date.  Do something fun together.  Don’t talk at all about church or ministry.  What do you like to do?”  After some back and forth ruling out this and that thing, we settled on going to the Broad Museum.  You might call it a “broadmance.”  Yes, two guys going to an art museum to talk about art is rather unconventional, but you’ve got a geeky guy as your pastor.  Sorry.  Accept it.  We had a great time.  Best thing about it all: we didn’t even talk about church once!  I went home and checked “friendship” off my to do list.  No!  I put it back on my to do list.  When can Bill and I get together again?

How are you prioritizing friendship in your life?  A simple way to do it: join a small group this fall and prioritize your time to actually show up all semester long.

Be Authentic
Too many of us have shallow friendships because we don’t open up.  We’re not transparent or vulnerable with those around us.  Now I’m not saying you’ve got to spill your guts to every person who walks by or every person in the church, but do you have at least one or two or more friends who know not only your business but also your secrets?

Do you know that there’s a new phobia popping up?  It’s a fear of talking on the phone.  The phone rings and you let it go to voicemail.  Then you text them back.  You may even just now realize that you’ve got this fear.  I even feel it a little bit sometimes!  What’s this fear all about?  It’s because when we actually talk to someone we can’t control it.  But when we send a text, we can control the conversation.  But being authentic means giving up some control.  Facebook gives you the false impression of being authentic but our posts and our pictures are very calculated.  We each are building a carefully crafted brand on Facebook.  I’m not saying this is wrong.  I’m saying that this isn’t true authentic friendship.

James, the brother of Jesus, said:

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
~James 5:16 NLT

Did you catch that?  Confess your sins?  Admit your weaknesses.  Admit the places where you’ve messed up and screwed up.  We may impress people with our strengths, but we connect with people through our weaknesses.

Back to my bromance with Bill Chu.  Bill and I had a meeting scheduled one day to talk about some ministry strategy.  I don’t even really remember what happened that morning, but I called him barely holding it together.  I said, “I don’t have it in me emotionally to talk about what we planned to talk about, but I’d still really appreciate getting together to talk.”  Again, I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT EMOTIONS I WAS DEALING WITH, but what I do remember was the powerful feeling of having a friend that I could open up to about what I was really struggling with, a friend who would listen, and then point me back to God.

Where do you have friends who you can be authentic with?  Are those friends receiving you as you are, showing you compassion, and then pointing you back to God?  If your closest friends are not pursuing God, then you are likely not pursuing God.

So what do you need to do today?  Put friendship on your to do list.  Spend some time with friends this week.  Face to face.  And then open up and be authentic.  It may be the most important thing you do this week.

Prayer
God, we all need friends.  Thank you for sending your Spirit to invite each one of us into the friendship with you.  May your Spirit open up doors to old and new friends here on earth that can point us back to you.  In the name of Jesus, amen.

*This sermon series are based on a sermon series by Craig Groeschel.