If you’ve been following the blog the last two weeks, you know we’ve been discussing the topic of team friendships, particularly between the wives. It’s been great, and Kimm asked me to share my thoughts on how to implement those principles when you don’t have a pastoral team at your church yet, which I’m happy to do.
I’ll start by giving a quick background. My husband, CB, and I were members at Covenant Fellowship church as singles. CB went to the Pastor’s College in 1997 and we were married July of 1998, about a month after he began an internship at Cherry Hill, NJ. We were there for 3 years before we planted a church near Reading, PA. During those years, I heard wonderful teaching on team building and biblical friendships. We had a small (but mighty) church planting team. We barely knew most of the people on our team. Some we didn’t know at all. Questions flooded my head anytime team building was discussed. What are we supposed to do—we are all alone! Are we ever going to have close friends again? CB and I prayed and talked a lot about this area. God has been very kind to guide us over the years. We have definitely not arrived in this area…in fact we are still learning. I do not have a formula that will miraculously fill the pastoral team void, but I can share some things that God showed CB and me through prayer and counsel form other seasoned church planters.
1. Vision to Build Locally
One of the biggest things God did was in our hearts. He gave us a vision to build biblical friendships locally. We are blessed to be within 1.5 driving hours of a few Sovereign Grace Churches. There was a temptation to fill the pastoral team void with other pastors and their wives from these churches. We did get together with them occasionally. However, God placed a heavy burden on our hearts that we needed to have biblical fellowship as a priority for the church as a whole and we needed to build with the precious people God sovereignly placed alongside us locally.
2. Initiate, Initiate, Initiate
Before we could ever build with a pastoral team, biblical fellowship had to be built into the church as a whole. And if all that we were taught was ever going to happen it had to begin with us. God helped our focus to be on reaching out and initiating fellowship. For us, CB began building with a few couples who eventually became our care group leaders. Most of these men were on an advisory team that helped CB with things like the church budget. We met monthly as couples. CB also had a monthly discipleship groups with new couples coming into the church. This was another way we got to know people. It eventually became clear that we also needed to initiate deeper friendships—especially me. CB had more opportunity to meet with men one on one and he wanted to clear the way for me to begin building “team-like friendships”. We prayed for direction and God brought 3 ladies to mind that CB thought it would be wonderful for me to go deeper with. One of the ladies was a care group leader’s wife and the other two were from the discipleship group. CB sets aside evenings for me to get one on one time with these ladies as our schedules allowed.
3. Model “Soul Bearing”
Not only did we need to be persistent in reaching out to others, God also helped CB and I to see that we needed to be an example of the friendships we were longing to have. CB had a burden for us as a couple. He wanted us to lead the way in taking conversations to a deeper level. Most of the people on our church planting team were in new waters when it came to biblical fellowship. Along with going through various materials in our meetings, CB and I would regularly seek to confess sin and talk about the work our precious Jesus was doing in our lives. This was not always easy. We have many funny stories related to this where we felt like we laid our souls bare and confessed sin only to have a group of people staring at us like we had six heads, not quite sure what to make of us. Biblical care was not reciprocated for quite some time. We had moments of loneliness wondering if we were ever going to have close friends again. I wanted to throw the towel in a few times and just keep conversations easy and fun. Building a foundation like this is important to God, so it needs to be important to me no matter how hard. God gives the grace to persevere.
4. Patience
This leads me to the last thing that God in his kindness helped CB and I with: patience. All of us are in a process. We might not be in our ideal situation (do they even exist?). There may not be a pastoral team to build with yet, but there are godly ladies in our churches that God placed there for us to build with. Lord willing, there will be a pastoral team. God will be faithful to provide whatever it is we need. We are not in a holding pattern until a pastor’s wife comes alongside of us. We can have rich biblical fellowship in our local churches.
In 2008, we became a team after six years of being alone. Kelly and I have a monthly breakfast meeting together. We haven’t done anything really structured yet. I eat my bagel and she eats her power breakfast sandwich (still not quite sure what that is) and we share our souls with one another. We laugh and sometimes cry. We confess sin. We laugh some more. We marvel together that Jesus died to save us. She helps me see life differently. She helps me see sin in my heart. She points me to God when I am struggling with being distracted by other things. In many ways it feels like a continuation of what was already being built at the very beginning of the church. God has been so kind and merciful to me, and he promises to be that for you as well!
