Pastors and Their Friends

For many of us the quality of our lives are in some measure determined by the kinds of friends that we have. Friends can share many different facets of life: travel, vacations, work, times of stress and difficulty and times of joy and celebration (birth of children, marriage, promotion at work, sports teams winning championships). Life without friends can be difficult.

From a survey of thousands of pastors done by the Barna Group and the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary,t was discovered that 70% of pastors did not have a close friend, mentor or confidant. Why is this, you might ask? Here are a few reasons that I believe contribute to this disturbing statistic:

Many pastors work such long hours they actually don't have the time to develop friendships.

Think about the places you develop friendships: work, church, school or college. Let's think about these in relation to pastors:

Work-Pastors work at churches. It's very difficult to make friends with people that you lead, people who look at you as set apart to do something for God.

Church-Pastors find it difficult to make friends with other men at church because some pastors

feel they cannot show their "human" side to other men because the expectation is that the pastor is much more "spiritual" than everyone else. If he admits to the weaknesses and

temptations that are common to everyone else, it may cause some men to lower their

opinion of him (so sad!).

College or Seminary-Most pastors who go to College or Seminary and develop friends there become separated from them once they get involved in ministry.

The solution that we at Foundations Global propose when we work pastors in our training centers is for pastors to find other pastors with whom they can develop a mutually encouraging and supportive relationship. Without a close friend, confidant or mentor, many pastors will keep all of their hurts, disappointments and trials hidden.