Navigating the Complexity of Church Relationships

In this episode, CCEF faculty explore the challenges and expectations that come with church relationships. They discuss the importance of clear communication, understanding different personalities, and the role of vulnerability in fostering meaningful connections. They emphasize how our future hope and the steadfast friendship of Jesus are a source of comfort and strength in navigating these relationships.

Mentioned in this episode: A few donors have committed to matching each dollar donated to CCEF in the month of May, up to $300,000. Give to CCEF this month to double your impact!

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guests
1:41 God's Goal for Our Bible Reading
9:33 Navigating Engaging Scripture in Hard Seasons
16:09 Creative Approaches to Engaging with Scripture
21:38 The Role of Community in Engaging with Scripture
24:24 The Long-Term Relationship with Scripture

Hi, welcome to Where Life & Scripture Meet, a podcast of CCEF. At CCEF, we seek to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. My name is Alasdair Groves. I will be your host today along with my friends Gunner and Darby and Esther. We've got the full crew here and we'll begin the episode here in a minute. But I wanted to make you aware of an opportunity that is incredibly sweet to us to know about and wanted to let you know as well, which is that we have been given an incredibly gracious matching donation opportunity in the month of May. Specifically, we've had some donors commit to covering up to $300,000 in a dollar-for-dollar match. So if you are able to give, if you would consider matching your funds by donating to CCEF in the month of May, that would be a huge, huge blessing. I remember our dear friend and former colleague David Powlison one time saying that to be in biblical counseling, to be a Christian in the church who's seeking to shepherd and help people in dark places, is kind of like being a three-watt night bulb, a nightlight bulb, where it's this tiny little glow, and yet in a dark room, a tiny little glow can make such a huge difference to your experience of being in the darkness and even of being and feeling alone. And the reason it makes such a difference for us to enter into situations that way is because Christ is like the shining sun that just blazes away all possibility of darkness. And we get to be this little reflection of that. And so in our heart at CCEF, what we're after is being for ourselves and helping others grow and being a little three watt nightlight in the midst of dark situations and walking into the darkest situations knowing that the light of Christ will make a profound difference. We would appreciate your help very much in pursuing this if you are able to give. Thank you.

All right, guys. Well, speaking of entering into challenging situations, we had talked a bit about church relationships, and in particular talked about the topic of how church relationships can be hard. There can actually be unique particular ways that relationships and friendships at churches can get complicated. So I'd love to spend a little bit of time just off the bat. Why is that? Why is it that church relationships can be complicated? And then of course on some level, and what do we about that? How can we lean into this thing that we know to be good, but we also know to be hard and complicated?

I could probably speak personally. When I go to church, I'm kind of all in. I'm really invested. I want to be connecting with people. I want to be known. I want to be helpful. I want to be cared for. I want people to know what's on my heart, what my struggles are. I need prayer, right? I need reinforcements. I need the community. And so it's just even just recognizing I'm probably more invested there than I am in other places, emotionally and spiritually. But I also bring all the messiness of myself with me to church. My sin, my defensiveness, my expectations. And so I just think that intensity that some of us have or that I have or the expectations for what I want a friendship to look like, a good spiritual friendship to look like, I think just puts pressure on relationships and creates all sorts of misunderstandings.

Darby, I know others have thoughts they're going to jump into here in a second, but will you just say a little bit more about misunderstandings? I was very struck by that word in your last sentence there. What kinds of misunderstandings do you feel like most often you watch pop up, whether for you or for others?

Yeah, I think it's even approaching someone and sharing with them what's on my heart. People could think, oh boy, you're a little too open. Why are you telling me this? Are you entrusting me with this, but I don't feel that close to you? Or it could be I say something, but they actually just misinterpret what I'm actually trying to say. And they make an assessment about my heart or where I am spiritually. I might say I'm struggling with this and they might actually take that as to mean I have weak faith versus that I have faith, that I'm asking for help and that's why I'm asking. So I think it's just really, you know, we don't always have hour-long conversations in the context of a Sunday morning, we communicate more in these little sound bites. And so I know when people are talking to me, I tend to fill in the gaps of what I've already assessed about this person, what I'm thinking about them. And it's really hard to actually take the time in a broader community and actually be curious and know someone versus think you know them and what's really on their heart.

Yeah, Darby, I think the expectations piece that you mentioned earlier, I can definitely personally relate to that. But I know, yeah, when you go into church and you consider friendships and community there, I think a lot of people can have the expectation of “This is where I'm going to find my deepest connections, where I can go deep and share and be prayed for and I can pray for them.” We can have all these conceptions and hopes of what we would want church community to be. And so often, reality doesn't necessarily measure up to what those hopes and expectations might be. And I think that can be a really painful dissonance because we know from Scripture that it's so important and we know that it's such a gift when friendships are operating the way that they should. But the messiness of life, the messiness of relationship, the messiness of ourselves gets brought into it. And it just leads to a lot of potential disappointment to navigate, I think.

Yeah, Esther, if I can piggyback on that, I think for me, when I think about it personally, just where what's been my own experience of what complicates relationships through church, it is a disappointment. The fear of being a disappointment would be high on the list for me of what complicates things. And in particular, I so want people to come to the body of Christ and to have a good experience. I want people to feel welcomed. I want people to feel known. I want them to feel appreciated and enjoyed and pursued. I want people to walk out and say, you know, wow, these Christians, there's something about them. You know, like I want people to have a really positive, attractive experience of being in a place where the body of Christ was gathered. And so what, sadly, I've somehow managed to translate that into in a lot of situations is a sense of pressure or obligation and did I spend long enough talking to that person? Did they feel welcomed enough? There were three new people and I was only able to talk to one of them. I've actually in my own experience in the past probably year and a half to two years, I've had to actually literally consciously say to myself, you know, it is actually okay to speak to your friends at church. You don't have to just be talking to the new person. You don't have to just be pursuing someone who you don't recognize or might be feeling a little outside the social comfort zone. And that's been helpful to me. But there's a lot of, I feel a lot of pressure not to be a disappointment to people in a lot of those situations. So I'm thinking obviously mainly Sunday mornings there, but it's true at community group on a Thursday night too of, did I give enough of an experience of welcome? Was that a good level in which to invite a conversation?

Because I want to be talking about the things that really matter, I want there to be a place that people experience of having the opportunity to speak about what's most on their hearts, and, you know, as you put it Darby, it's pretty unusual that you would have an uninterrupted hour after church to talk to somebody; it tends to be as much smaller snippets. And so you start to get into things and then you're asking should I even be getting into this now or not? Is this the right context? So for me, it's just that swirl of questions around, am I, yeah, are people going to feel pushed away or like I invite, I opened up a space for them to talk about something important, but then I didn't actually give the time that was needed to stay in the zone on that. So for me, it's a lot of that fear of disappointing, fear of people having a bad experience of Christian community and pressure and sense of obligation to help people come in and come in well. And it's a good desire, but I can see, I can hear the way I'm saying it, there's something that's not great about the way that I'm processing that in my instinctive approach.

When I was a pastor, I definitely felt this question in some particular ways, and I think as a pastor or a ministry leader, or a leader really in any setting, the relationships do get shaped by that position. And I know for me, it could be difficult to navigate the pastoral responsibilities in combination with the personal friendships. And so I would often realize that I was trying to make decisions on a Sunday morning, for example, where I'm getting into a conversation with a good friend who I also spend quite a bit of time with in a friendship way outside of church. But there's also this unique opportunity on a Sunday morning to see people that I only see on Sunday, and I only see in a church gathering context, and really wanting to maximize that and to really care for them. And I instinctively would go towards seeking to connect with the broader church body, knowing that there's other opportunities for friends, but I also needed to make sure that I talked with those that were closer and not just kind of ignore them on a Sunday. I think another dynamic was when I first became a pastor, my predecessor told me, he said, “Gunner, people are going to feel like they know you sooner and deeper than you'll feel like you know them.” And part of that that he was highlighting was the preaching dynamic. And he said, when you're preaching regularly, and you're upfront regularly, people do have access to your personality and they get used to your communication style. They might hear personal stories or family illustrations as you try to unpack the Scriptures and illustrate those things. And that can lead to a sense of them knowing you. But at the same time, you're looking at a much larger group perhaps and realizing that your relationships are different perhaps with them, even though there's a genuine care that's there.

And so that's something I know that pastors can really have to navigate, especially in the early years when there has not been as much time to develop a kind of bond across the church body. And one of the pieces of advice I've really found helpful was, our church numbered in the hundreds, but I heard it from someone whose church numbered in the thousands, and they just said, do for one what you wish you could do for all. And I found that really encouraging. I might have a touchpoint with somebody, I could be a brief encouragement to them and I could look at all the people passing by, heading out the doors that I'm not able to talk to or I can't catch up with. But if I could be a blessing to that one person, to trust the Lord to bring blessing to the rest of the body through other people.

I think that's a really important insight, Gunner. As a pastor you faced certain challenges, but I think just being aware of your role, whether you're a church counselor, women's ministry director and children's ministry, right? Being the one who always has to be recruiting volunteers, like your role is definitely going to shape how people anticipate you or interact with you. And I think just even having an awareness of what are the challenges and blessings of that just can really, yeah, being aware of how they impact friendships and potential friendships is just a really wise step.

Can we dive in on that piece for a minute in particular? The four of us are counselors, and Gunner, obviously even in your role as a pastor, you're not only being known through preaching, you're actually also sometimes interacting with folks where you just had a pretty intensive conversation that week about things and now they're hearing your sermon or seeing you on a given Sunday morning, for those of us who aren't preaching regularly. Any thoughts on engaging the complexity of knowing somebody very intensively in one context, like a counseling conversation, or even just, there may not be a specific formal counseling role, but oftentimes you're like, wow, I just spent a ton of time this week or this person's life was in crisis and we brought three meals and I had a chance to interact. And last time I saw them, they were weeping in their living room. And now here we are at church on Sunday morning and just the complexities of engaging where you have a certain access to some very vulnerable things in someone's life and now you're interacting with them in a context where there's at least a big question mark as to whether or not we want to make any reference to that at all. I've certainly experienced that many times over the years where it's like, okay, the last conversation we had on Wednesday was very intense and deep and now here we are on Sunday morning and it's three minutes and we're sort of walking together towards the childcare wing. How do you guys navigate that, or thoughts on that, or encouragement that you've given to others, things you found helpful?

I think when people invest in us and they, by telling us the hardest things in their lives, it's on us to bring it up again, because they're going to assume a certain level. It's just, there's a shame that comes from being so needy and so vulnerable or so broken or in so much despair. And we, as the caregivers, often feel the burden of, I don't want to bring this up here, because we're on the way to the childcare wing and I don't know if that's going to make you upset. So I think even just acknowledging with people on a Wednesday night and saying, “Hey, we just spent an hour talking about this when I see you on Sunday, I'm going to greet you. I'm going be excited to see you, and you're free to bring up what you want to talk about with me. But I will never surprise you in public by asking you a question about that.” But then it's incumbent on us to follow up outside those public times. I just think it's just being aware of where we're trying to be protective of someone's story, but they might actually experience that as rejection or withdrawal. And so we just have to be clear however we are going to operate with them. But I think the guiding principle for me is, I even think about this Sunday, someone shared she was grieving her husband and this guilt that she was having about wanting to see him in heaven more than Jesus at times. Even she's like, I really do want to see Jesus more. But there was just so much guilt that she was carrying. And so I have to know the next time I circle back to her, that I need to address that by approaching her with joy to see her and making a comment about her grief.

I think clear communication, like you said Darby, that just feels so important. Giving them the grace, the way that you just outlined it. That's so valuable because I can imagine so many scenarios where someone shared, whether it's because they knew we're counselors or just in general as a friend or a church member, that they share something really vulnerable and the pain of not being followed up with or not quickly enough or you're not entirely sure what they did with that information. Maybe they will follow up later, but there's just so many ways to fill in the blanks when there is a lack of communication around that, that it's such a gift when I imagine that what you just said, that would be such a gift to be a recipient of that, to be like, okay, she didn't forget about what I shared. She didn't just do away with it. She truly heard me and she communicated like, this is what I want to do with it. I will follow up, but maybe not the next time I see you on the way to the childcare wing. But I think like you said, there's so much room for misunderstanding that the clearer we can communicate our hearts and what's on our mind. Some of the scenario comes up in places where sometimes friendships can feel hard because you don't know how to fully support someone who's hurting. And kind of that experience of I froze and I didn't know what to say in response, so I just opted to not say anything at all, or I ended up awkwardly avoiding this person who really needs friends right now because I feel like I have nothing helpful to say to address their guilt or their pain or distress. And so the more we can communicate and have open communication of where we stand and be willing to have those conversations so people aren't filling in the blanks of I've been rejected. They've forgotten what I've shared. They've forgotten about me. My issues aren't important. The more those conversations can happen, I think that's just a beautiful thing to foster friendships as imperfectly as we can.

I think that's very wise, Esther. Because we're interpreting beings, we're always seeking to make meaning out of the things we're observing and that we're taking in with our senses. And when those things are confusing or when we've shared something very delicate, we wonder what that means for the relationship. And I remember a very wise woman that was a mentor in college ministry when I was much younger, just saying to a group of us that whenever you've had a hard conversation with someone, there is an opportunity the next time you see them to interact like normal, wherever that's possible. And I think when that's possible in those relationships, it's really meaningful. And certainly if someone has opened up to you about very delicate things and they're seeking help, I think, as Darby said, interpreting your own move toward them, I think can be so helpful. I found this maybe the hard way, I don't know when it was, but as a pastor, there was just a question I would ask people sometimes where I would just say, and it just kind of came out of me instinctively, I would see somebody that I hadn't seen for a little bit, and as a way of expressing my excitement about seeing them, I would say, “Oh, it's great to see you, it's been a little while.” And what I found was that people would interpret that from the pastor as saying, have you been coming to church recently? And I had to step back and realize that wasn't a question that was helpful to people to ask because they interpret it as though I was monitoring their church attendance and I was seeing them not there. Now, as a shepherd, I do want to be attentive to who's there and not there and following up with those who I might not be seeing, but that's not what I was thinking at all, but it's what my position communicated. And so I had to find different ways to communicate my happiness to see them, my desire to just catch up and hear what might be going on in their lives. And to me that highlights this principle of, I just think like mature love is this blend of self-aware and self-forgetful. And I think it needs to be a selfless self-awareness, because I know there's a way to be self-aware in a self-centered way and a self-focused way, but I needed to be aware of how my communication was coming toward people. And I could play that out in a number of different areas of relationship where I just wanted to be thoughtful. Same thing might happen if I would walk down the hallway to the children's area and touch base with our children's staff. And I just wanted to support them and be there for them. It could seem to them like the lead pastor's coming over to check how things are going as an accountability check-up. And I just wanted to make sure that I was clear about what I was doing. Both of those things can be appropriate, but it was important for me to have an others-centered self-awareness, if you will.

I think what you're saying about we are people who are interpreting is just so key there. We're talking about how other people might interpret us. And I think the flip side of that is equally true in friendships. It's what assumptions am I making about this person? How am I interpreting them? And that, think, as you're talking, Gunner, just makes me aware of, yeah, how am I doing that in relationships that I have that I'm misinterpreting them? That if I gave them more of a benefit of the doubt or if I interpreted them more favorably that they still have an affection for me, how much easier it would be to move towards them. But when I'm assuming or I'm interpreting them to not like me, I'm going to kind of withdraw a little bit more. So I think even that's just a really good question for that self-awareness piece that you're talking about is, yeah, what am I observing and how did I interpret it? And just being aware of how then we're internalizing that and our ability to move towards people I think is really helpful.

Jumping back one sec. I'm really struck, really by what all three of you are saying. Esther and Darby, you guys are naming it more explicitly, which is the importance of clear communication and I hear in that not only clear but you guys are both just speaking a very proactive language as well of, hey, on Wednesday you say when I next see you, here's what I'm thinking or here's what I will do or here's how to, I'm not gonna surprise you and so on. And let's just say I can point to plenty of times where I haven't taken that level of proactive communication and then suddenly there I am on Sunday morning, I'm like, I should probably say something. Should I? I don't know. And I will just say two questions that have been helpful to me in the moment, especially if there hasn't necessarily been as clear of a communication ahead of time. One would be really any version of the question of like hey, are you hanging in there? Which is a little bit different than hey, how are you doing. It acknowledges, I'm aware that you have good reason to not necessarily be hanging in there. But it's a very generic, very open-ended question that's not like, so, you know, was it as bad this morning as it was Thursday night? Like you're, giving them the opportunity to either take the direction of like, yeah, yeah, I'm hanging in. Okay, great, well, glad to hear it. So how about those Phillies? Or for them to be like, ah, you know, kinda. And if you'd be like, ah, really, fill me in. So, gauging that, sort of opening a door for them to say, there's more I'd like to talk about right now, or, yeah, I'm good, there's 18 people around, I think we can probably keep this, keep it light. And being happy to accept either answer, knowing I'll have other opportunities to engage. So that's one piece that's been helpful to me. And I know I said I had two questions, but the first one was so good that it completely drove the second one out of my mind. So if it comes back to me, I'll jump back to it.

I've just become aware over time through personal experience, through ministry with people in community, that people just have very different experiences and histories when it comes to relationships and church relationships. And those different histories and experiences really do impact and shape the way that they perceive relationships, the way that they interact in a new place or community, the way they receive pursuit from others or questions or interactions, invitations, and the way they pursue those things or sometimes hold back from those things.

And that's been really important for me. And I think one piece of wisdom I remember hearing is that people are a video as their life unfolds, not just a still shot. And it's really easy to take one still shot of somebody, one particular interaction and think, oh, I moved toward them; that seemed really awkward, so I won't do that again. Instead of recognizing that any number of things could have been going on that day. Particularly if it's a new relationship, I can't really have any gauge at all really of what this person is like just by one passing interaction. And just to give those things time, to let the video play out and to let people be people whose lives are unfolding on a journey and in a process. And that really helps me. And that's certainly what I hope would be the way people treat me. I would love to not just be ID'd by one particular moment that I don't even know they captured and then they overinterpreted and said, oh, that's who he is. But rather to view me as a whole in a process of growing in the Lord and seeking to love and be loved and I hope practice the one-anothers.

Interestingly, the word coming to my mind as I hear you all share is not a word that I expected to think during, you know, as we're recording this, having this conversation. And it's the word compassion. And I think Gunner, you bringing in the categories of, you know, everyone comes in with different life experiences, different relational paths, different church friendship experiences, all these different upbringings. And then how easy it is to interpret people a certain way and see something or observe something or have a particular interaction and draw conclusions from it. And yet Darby, what you were saying earlier about like, we are interpreters and part of our job is to maybe sometimes slow that down or give the benefit of the doubt sometimes. I think, you know, merging those two thoughts together, I realized that I might be quick to assess someone based off of my observations, whether that be just what I see at face value. And yet the invitation to slow down and to not become so firm on my interpretations and assumptions and realize that everyone is so different, and how can I leave space for that? How can I acknowledge that? How can I love someone in that? And so I even think my own experiences with difficulties of church friendships. Some of that has been differences in personality. There are just some people I don't necessarily click with as well, or I tend to be someone who likes to go deep. Not everyone is necessarily like that, and they would rather do an activity together or something else. And I'm like, let's just have like a five-hour conversation and share all of our lives and get to know, but I needed to realize that's not everyone's style necessarily. But I could interpret that as, I can make so many assumptions about that and even create a negative assessment about that person based off of that. But really it's a beautiful difference that we can appreciate and embrace and not over-interpret and love someone in that and move towards them in love in that. That just becomes a great opportunity to leave my own comfort zone and move towards in a small way by not being too quick to interpret differences as flaws or disqualifiers to friendship.

Gunner and Darby, the obvious implication here for us is that I know we only set aside, you know 20–30 minutes for these podcasts, but Esther just said she's really excited about five-hour deep conversations. So let's all just text our families real quick and let them know we're gonna be a bit late getting home tonight, and Esther, four-and-a-half hours to go. We are doing this. We're with you. We love you. We want this for you.

I retract my statement.

Esther, you reminded me that my father-in-law who had a nice home office as a pastor and a lot of books in that office, also put a billiards table in that office. And he said, there are some men that just open up over a game of billiards that don't open up over a face-to-face coffee. And it was just one of his recognitions that there are shoulder-to-shoulder people and there are face-to-face people and anything and everything in between. And his recognition of that I thought was very wise as he sought to get into the grit of people's lives and connect with them in meaningful ways and found that certain environments were more conducive to that than others.

The other thing I want to say though is when I was younger, I had an important mentor whose emphasis was on our shared position in Christ that leads to our practice in community. And one of the things he would consistently say, his name was Kent, was that we are more alike than we are different as believers. And that's been a consistent call to my heart when I start feeling like the differences outweigh the similarities. And it really does start with being image-bearers and then being sinners and being sufferers, as our colleague Mike Emlet has pointed out. But as saints, we are more alike than we are different and we have more in common than what separates us. And so despite all the conversation that I want to have and that helps me when it comes to differences and personalities and the things that we've shared about really appropriately, I know I always need the Lord to call my heart back to when I walk into a gathering of the Lord's church or interact with a fellow believer. I am united to them already positionally because I'm united to Christ and they are too. And that to me is such a helpful starting point and it does keep me motivated and it pushes me forward toward them, even when many other instincts in me, including genuine hurts or hardships or fears I might have, might keep me holding back. And I need that continually, that fuel line of our shared union with Christ, to be driving me forward like we see in Ephesians or as we see in Galatians 5 or in other places to show the fruit of the Spirit.

That's a wonderful picture and I think it just allows us to enjoy the people that God put next to us in church, because we are entrusting them to him. I often try to envision we're all going to the same place, and we're all going to be one day made perfect. And the things I'm worried about in someone else aren't going to be there anymore. They're going to be sanctified. And to get to watch part of that journey on earth is wonderful, but to know where he's taking us all and what our fellowship will one day be like, just helps me enjoy relationships here because they can be imperfect, because there's still something beautiful happening in them.

I think for me, one of the things that's been most powerful along these kinds of lines that you guys are saying is, I remember I was doing a little workbook actually, was by, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the names. The guys who did the Trellis and the Vine and the Vine Project, Payne and Marshall maybe, I could have that, okay. But they did this little workbook, it's sort of like, Growing and Loving Your Church, or some title along those lines. And I remember the first week, the first set of questions, I think question number one was basically some version of, how do you feel about church when you go to church? What are you feeling? What are you thinking as you're walking into church on a Sunday morning? And so I spent some time writing some things down and it sounded not unlike what I said a few minutes ago of like, I feel this pressure or I feel like I need to do this or I want people to feel welcomed. it was a bit of capturing of just the kind of the swirl of pressures and usually some sense of I'm kind of stumbling in from having to try to get the kids out the door and so on and so forth. And then the second question was, how does God feel as his people gather, as he's watching the same scene that you're watching? He's experiencing the same thing you are, the same moment that you are. What are his experiences of watching the people gather? And it was such a stop-me-in-my-tracks moment to think about what God was watching as he watched this group of beloved, precious children filing in, knowing the aches and the heartaches for each person, knowing the challenges and the places and the struggles and the confusions and just, Esther to use your word, compassion. I felt my heart flip in a moment, in a second to just, oh wow, that's the view of my church I would like to have not just on a Sunday morning, but in general. And it was just really, really helpful to me. It was so reorienting to say, what is the Lord seeing as he watches me in this conversation after church? What's he feeling as he sees us engage in our community group discussion? What's he seeing as he watches somebody have courage and vulnerably put something out there? That has been a very helpful mindset shift for me, and I think I hear each of us putting out different ways where, this is what galvanizes me towards the hard work of places where relationships at church are tricky, where they are complicated, where they can be harder because church is at the center of our connection point. And so I just, yeah, I'm just appreciating gleaning from what each of you guys are saying. What are those things that just spur us on to press into the good of relationships, even when the hard becomes more evident? Anybody else have any other of those just kind of sweet spots for our mind and heart that have been helpful?

I love the redemption story of Judah and of Joseph's brothers when you talked about the Lord seeing us interact in kind and merciful ways and engaging with one another. I think of those really precious scenes near the end of Genesis where finally this family that's been so fractured by so many different relationships and the betrayal certainly of Joseph early on becomes this group seated at a table, and Joseph can't even compose himself as one of the younger ones in the group who's now become the ruler. And as he looks out on this family, he has to leave the room at points because of how overwhelmed he is before he's revealed himself to them. And that to me shows just a great story and I think type, looking forward to the meals of the church and the interactions of those who are being reconciled through grace and coming together and sharing in that fellowship and the sweetness of that experience. Well, Darby, you said accurately the fullness of that is something I can't imagine, we can't imagine, and it does come in the future, not just in the present. I know there is a sense in which we can enjoy maybe the appetizer of that meal for the future as we look forward to it by some of the fellowship we do pursue now. 

It's also really sweet to know that the Lord, he knows the future and where we're headed. And he also knows the places where we very much today bear the heartaches of either strained or broken or not-happening friendships. And to know his presence and that he is with us in those struggles and heartaches, to know that even some who may feel alone are not actually alone, to know that, yeah, Alasdair what you were saying, even our clunky, messy, awkward attempts to build connection that doesn't lead to the outcome we might hope for, that the Lord still takes pleasure in those things. Just the with-ness of God in the midst of the joys, the incompleteness, the imperfections of church friendship. Just find myself very comforted by that, knowing that there is hope for the heartaches of church friendship and that he is near in it.

I think that as you guys are talking and I'm reflecting on compassion and how Jesus is shaping us as a church and rejoicing in us, seeing us together, I think it's just remembering Jesus' friendship to us here. He is that constant; his love for us is sweet. He delights in seeing his people. And so I think when I'm tempted to withdraw or I'm afraid to move towards or I'm unfavorably interpreting someone else or I'm fearing they're unfavorably interpreting me, there's just such comfort in knowing that Jesus is that friend that just sticks closer than a brother. And there is a place that I can, there is a friendship where I can be at complete rest and be my complete self and entrust myself to. I just think that's, yeah, all those qualities that you guys are describing are so true of who he is, just that faithful friend. And that's just encouraging to me.

Well, amen to that, Darby. What a perfect place to leave it. We get to rest in the friendship of Jesus. Thanks for the conversation, guys, and thanks to all of you for listening. See you next time.