Friendship

 October 17, 2023

Pastors are often lonely people. When I started out over fifty years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that pastors can’t have friends in their congregations. I decided I didn’t want to live that way, and proceeded to try to prove them wrong. I’m not sure I succeeded. 

Having come from an independent Baptist tradition, I was enthralled with the cameraderie I found in the old Erie Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. The entire Conference was smaller than today’s Districts, and the pastors who served were a tight-knit group. That fellowship of men and their wives was the stabilizing factor in their lives as they were moved from church to church. Annual Conference was but one of the times they would get together to fellowship, worship, and commiserate. I was hooked!

The third year of my association with them, everything changed. We had merged with the Methodists to become United Methodists. Annual Conference was more than double the size, and the close-knit fellowship was suddenly watered down. The old Erie Conference was split in two along state lines, and half of the old connections simply disappeared. Eventually I made peace with it, and enjoyed many years with the pastors of the old Western New York Conference. Friendships were formed, but it was not to last. Declining members and attendance meant that we merged with two other annual conferences to become Upper New York. Suddenly there were more people I didn’t know than those I did. At this writing, I know more dead United Methodist pastors than live ones, and along the way, the sense of belonging simply dried up.

This morning at our local pastors prayer group, we were challenged by a layman who is my son’s prayer partner. “How many of you have a friend who you could call any time night or day to pray with you or listen to you? Someone who would come over in the middle of the night if you needed?” I looked around the room at a small sea of blank faces. If anyone was looking at me, he would have seen the same.

I’ve had good friends, but my generation of pastors were pretty much raised as Lone Rangers, even if we had a fellowship or connection with others. Sad to say, many relationships never got off the ground due to the inherent competition and often downright jealousy between pastors who believed they got passed over for that “plum” appointment. And in the church, change is always inevitable, and when it comes, old connections can feel like they’re beginning to unravel. Maybe it’s a casualty of retirement, but something is different in me, and I haven’t yet sorted it all out.

So I am writing tonight somewhat cathartically, wondering where to take this, knowing there are many pastors who feel they’ve been hung out to dry, or that they like Elijah, are the only ones left. I am fortunate to have a great family and many friends both inside and outside the church, but am feeling the need to go deeper in friendship than I have yet been. I’m guessing I’m not alone.