How We Become Friends

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At River City Church, we want every person to grow as patient pursuers of one another, which means we will grow in our ability to know others and be known by them. At first, this seems like such a simple skill. We might ask, how hard is it to know and be known? However, when we consider the epidemic of loneliness in our nation, we begin to realize what a unique gift it is to be known by others.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the experience of human isolation is one of the first consequences of the fall. It is clear from the progression that occurs between the last line in Genesis 2 (before the fall) and the interaction between God and Adam after the fall. In Genesis 2:25 it says that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” This is more than simply physical nakedness - it is a statement about complete vulnerability and openness. They were fully known and fully loved by God and one another. No shame. No hiding. No isolation.

There is a significant shift after sin enters the world. In Genesis 3, after the fall, it says that their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked, and they covered themselves up (Gen 3:7). Their ability to be known by one another without fear, shame, or hiding was interrupted by sin, and our tendency toward isolation began.

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‍The Need for Relationships

According to a report released by Dr. Vivek Murthy, a former US Surgeon General, “the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” When we consider the reality that over half of the people in our nation report experiencing loneliness, and combine that with the profound consequence of loneliness and isolation, the ability to know others and be known by them is more like a superpower than a simple skill.

We recently finished a preaching series on the spiritual practice of relationships. We believe God has made us for people, and that requires intentional investment in others. In the creation narrative, one of the repeated phrases from God is that he looked at his creation and declared that it was good. The first time God noticed that something was not good came before sin entered the world. It happened because of Adam’s initial isolation when God said “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him (Gen 2:18).” Our need for other human relationships is part of the way God made us - before the fall. We were made to know and be known.

Part of Christian discipleship is the recovery of what was lost at the fall. We were made for people, and we want to make a meaningful investment in our relationships with one another. If you missed the January series on relationships, we encourage you to go back and listen to the sermons on the family of God, friendship, hospitality, and loving your enemy. If you have time to keep reading right now, I want to give you two simple ingredients to the formula of developing friendships.

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‍The First Ingredient to Friendship: Time

There is no replacement for time together if you want to develop friendships. According to a study by sociologist Jeffrey Hall, there is a direct correlation between the amount of time we spend with someone and the development of a friendship. Hall found that it takes about 50 hours to go from being an acquaintance to a casual friend, about 90 hours to go from being a casual friend to a close friend, and about 200 hours to go from being a friend to a close friend. As people get older and add more responsibilities (ie. houses, families, jobs, community organizations, etc.) they have less dispensable time and it can take even longer to form new friendships.

Here is what this means for us at River City. If we want to be patient pursuers who truly know others and are truly known by them, we need to be intentional about the time we spend with others. We need to initiate time with others and we need to say, “Yes,” when others initiate with us. Friendships require us to be proactive and patient. We need to be proactive because we need to make sure we are putting in the time. We need to be patient, because we have an awareness that it takes perseverance over time in order to develop the sort of meaningful relationships we desire.

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‍The Second Ingredient to Friendship: Transparency

There is no replacement for time together, but there is one way to accelerate the formation of friendships. I am going to call it transparency, but it takes on many forms. You might think of it as trust, vulnerability, or shared experiences. It is not just about the amount of time, but the quality of the time that makes a difference. If you have ever been on a retreat, mission trip, vacation, or service project with someone who became a friend then you may have experienced this aspect of relationships. When we spend time together in a way that gets beneath the surface, friendships form at a higher rate.

Arthur Aron and his colleagues published a study in 1997 which focused on creating closeness between strangers by having them ask each other a series of increasingly personal and thoughtful questions over the course of 45 minutes. The study was called The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness and is more popularly known as the “36 Questions to Fall in Love” because of a NY Times article published about these questions that led to its author getting married.

The idea of the original study was to build intimacy through vulnerability and self-disclosure. Participants reported feeling a strong sense of connection after completing the exercise, even though they had never met before they were put in a room together. The study found that asking intentional and progressively deeper questions accelerates feelings of closeness and emotional bonding between people.

Here is the secret ingredient to transparency: ask good questions. Obviously the depth of the question needs to be appropriate for the current state of the friendship, but if you equip yourself with a few good questions, you will grow in your ability to form friendships.

This is one of the reasons we created decks of connection cards at River City (shout out to Luke Niemeyer for making them). In each deck there are 70+ questions categorized as deep, deeper, and deepest. You can pick up a pack on Sundays at the resource table. If you want to grow as a patient pursuer of others, then we encourage you to grab a deck and start using the questions to help you know others and let yourself be known by them.

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The Combination of Time and Transparency

Together the combination of time and transparency are a potent formula for developing friendships. If you only have time and no transparency, you will end up with superficial friendships. If you have transparency and shared experiences, but no enduring time together, then you will have a special moment to remember, but not the type of friendship that will impact loneliness or discipleship. If you have neither time nor transparency, then you will naturally feel like a stranger. However, if you learn how to integrate the two and are patient in your pursuit of others, you will find that you end up with a true friend.

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The reason that we can pursue true friendship is because we have a true friend in Jesus. It is a remarkable thing that Jesus is willing to call his disciples his friends (John 15:15). Out of the security of friendship with Jesus we can risk the vulnerability and transparency required to find a true friend in others. Why? Because Jesus became vulnerable for us. He endured all the shame of our failures so that we can be fully approved by the Father and step into relationships without fear. The isolation that began when Adam and Eve experienced the shame of their nakedness was undone when Jesus took on our shame and nakedness at the cross, so that we could be fully known and truly accepted by the Father.

Jesus also made himself available to his disciples by spending significant time with them. Even now, he is at the Father’s right hand as an advocate for us. He has given us his Spirit, so we can have unlimited time with our God. The strength of our friendships comes from the gift of friendship that Jesus has given to us.

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The Gift We Can Offer to the World

In a culture where such a significant number of people experience loneliness, our unique ability to develop friendships out of the strength of our friendship with Christ might just be one of our greatest contributions to our city over the next ten years.

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I want to leave you with a question to ponder: In the next year, what do I want to be more or less true of my friendships? How is God calling me to take a step toward seeing that hope realized?

Not sure if you noticed it, but I just equipped you with a new question you can ask one another. If you want to invest in a relationship at River City, then you might want to start by asking someone else the question I just asked you. Forming friendships is not glamorous, and it shouldn’t be so profound, but it might just be a simple formula (time + transparency) that changes the complexion of our lives and our city.

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