My conference trip “unofficially” began this afternoon when my wife and kids dropped me off at my friend Frank’s house so I could stay her over-night (Frank offered because he knows that getting up at 4 AM and having your wife drive both you and your two school-age Children to either the airport or a distant carpool location is bad for relationships.  I hope his wife is OK with it, in retrospect I need to get her a gift as a thank you for taking us bums over the river into Philly).

I like Frank, he’s my friend.  That might seem like an absurd and childish statement, but it really isn’t.  In all the various incarnations of my blog I keep coming back to this point that friends are important.  In fact, I often don’t feel that I have enough friends within close ear-shot for my liking.  Why do I say this?  Because every pastor I’ve ever known who has completely “lost it” either through submissive burn-out or by a “burn down the house” explosion has had one thing in common – they have no friends.  This isn’t entirely their fault, for years pastors were actually trained to not have friends within the congregation (as though boundaries were were either all on or all off), and so pastors didn’t make friends within their congregations.  The problem was, pastors also tend to be terribly competitive when it comes to be around other pastors – so these pastors ended up having no one with which to shoulder their burdens (unless they over-burdened their wives).

Let’s be honest, a lot of ministry is spent walking along that knife-edge between depression/explosion and stretching one’s own faith and that of the congregation.  If a pastor doesn’t have friends walking with you, is it any shock that they are going to end up getting emotionally impaling as they walk?  Pastoring is one of the most stressful callings I can think of, without friends – you’re toast.  End of story, bye-bye.

So, Frank is my friend.  We share the burden of ministry together – and stretch one another as we travel this mine-field we call vocational ministry.  I have other friends to (including my wife who is a huge help to me), and they are all important to my continued pursuit of Jesus.  I thank God for all of them, because without them I’d be in serious trouble.

And, yes, some of my friends are members of my congregation – seminary education borked that one big time.