Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

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Spiritual Friendship

I grew up in a wonderful church, but I had no idea these books still existed. Looking over them, I came across one written for pastors by an early church leader named Ambrose (d. 397). Ambrose mentored many younger church leaders, including an African pastor named Augustine (d. 430) who would become one of the most influential teachers in the history of the church. Later I would learn that Ambrose’s book for pastors has been read and studied by those in spiritual leadership for more than sixteen hundred years; generations have found it helpful for understanding pastoral work. At the time I stumbled across Ambrose’s book, however, I had no idea of its importance, but I was curious. What caught my attention was the final chapter—a chapter on friendship. I still remember my surprise. “Why would somebody spend a whole chapter on friendship in a book for young pastors? And if you were going to spend a whole chapter on friendship, why would you put it as the final chapter in your book—as if encouraging pastors to invest in friendship was so important that you wanted this emphasis to be the final word in your book?” I had no idea why Ambrose included this chapter in his book, but it did raise the question: “Is friendship really vitally important for those called to spiritual leadership within the church?” It took twenty years before I could explore the question more seriously. During that time I worked as a teacher, a church planter, a missionary, and a professor at The Urban Ministry Institute. I experienced the joys of friendship, the camaraderie of working with amazing women and men on the front lines of urban ministry. Many of these