3 Reasons Why Friendship Is Imperative for Neighborhood Missional Living

You feel your palms getting clammy and your heartbeat sounds loud enough to be overheard by the rest squishing cross-legged into a giant circle. You know this matters when you, the one who’s perhaps the quietest, can’t stay quiet. You raise your hand, start tentatively when you’re nodded an OK to begin.

There’s a way to share Jesus that looks like overlapping circles. You swallow hard. It’s my story entwining with your story, and because Jesus is part of my story, I talk naturally about Him as I’m getting to know you. Friendship and faith-sharing walk hand-in-hand, like two friends.

And yet, how quick we are to push our words, our rightness, our world-view ahead of relationship-building? I’ve been guilty too. I sometimes forget that inseparable from the good news of the gospel is God’s relentless desire to be in relationship with us.

Jesus spent time with people—getting to know people, joining people in the everyday rhythms of life, befriending people. He oriented his ministry around relationships, staying tethered to His Father and always drawing, including, inviting.

Jesus’s mission wasn’t to prove that He was right but to welcome all in right next to Him. Because it was and still is here, near Him, where we lose our nearsightedness and begin to see rightly who God is and who we are.

Ann Voskamp says it this way in Waymaker:

Change happens when identity changes and our identity is attached to whom we are attached, and how they see us, treat us, act toward us. Our God is the God who stays with us, exactly so we can see ourselves the way He sees us—beloved, cherished, wanted, chosen—because this is what changes our identity, and it’s changing our identity that changes the whole of life.
p. 290

Life change always begins with relationship. Our relationship to God is what defines us, identifies us, determines our trajectory. And it’s through our relationships with those all around us that discipleship takes place.

In the words of Jennie Allen, “True discipleship isn’t something you do once a week. It’s what you do every day because that’s when you get to know people” (Find Your People, p. 154). It’s through relationships that we invite others “to taste and see what life is like in the family of God,” as Caesar Kalinowski says in Small is Big, Slow is Fast (p. 81).

Neighborhood living is chock-full of opportunity to rub elbows, share meals, help each other, and let God’s story seep into ours so as we grow friendships, we grow closer to Christ together. We journey together. We encourage one another. We be Christ to each other. And we stay closely connected to Jesus so others can “imitate [us] as [we] imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).

When we don’t make room for relationships, don’t work at getting to know people, we come off as judgmental, defensive, prideful. We push people away from God rather than pulling them gently towards Him. That’s why friendship is an integral component of neighborhood missional living.

Friendship is imperative for neighborhood missional living

1. Friendship meets us in our longing to be known

Friendship has a way of pulling us out of our aloneness and into known-ness. We’re wired to connect and long to be seen, known, accepted. That’s why going deep with a good friend feels like a coming home.

Twyla Franz friendship quote for The Uncommon Normal

When we feel known, we’re more receptive to listen, to love deeply, to grow deeper roots. When we’re seen and understood, we drop our impulse to prove, please, pretend.

Friendship breaks down walls we’ve thrown up with our pride, our fear, our failings. It invites us to come, as we are, before a God who loves us as we are, loves us too much to leave us as we are.

True friendship reflects the way God stays with us, fight for us, calls us to wholeness. And when we “be Jesus” in this way to our neighbors, we partner with Jesus in his mission as outlined in Isaiah 61:1-3:

The mighty Spirit of Lord Yahweh is wrapped around me
because Yahweh has anointed me, as a messenger to preach good news to the poor.
He sent me to heal the wounds of the brokenhearted,
to tell captives, “You are free,” and to tell prisoners, “Be free from your darkness.”

I am sent to announce a new season of Yahweh’s grace
and a time of God’s recompense on his enemies, to comfort all who are in sorrow,
to strengthen those crushed by despair who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful bouquet in the place of ashes,
the oil of bliss instead of tears, and the mantle of joyous praise instead of the spirit of heaviness.
Because of this, they will be known as Mighty Oaks of Righteousness,
planted by Yahweh as a living display of his glory.
The Passion Translation

2. Friendship makes us a part of each other’s stories

In friendship, I share my story, and you share yours. As we clock hours getting to know each other, doing every day and sometimes distinctly memorable things together, pieces of our stories intertwine. The more we share our stories with each other, the more we create a shared story. Friendship makes us a part of each other’s stories.

And when we’re part of each other’s stories we each influence what’s written next—what comes next after we have that fight, lose that thing, walk that hard road. Friendship has the power to shift our trajectory—toward or away from God.

Friendship invites us to walk beside the people near us. Walk them home when the road is long, bumpy, dark. Walk them into the arms of Jesus. Over and over again.

3. Friendship gives weight to our words

Our caring and our connection give credence to our words because what we do always speaks loudest. Share Jesus in words alone and you’ll find that words don’t work well when pushed ahead of relationships. It makes us unapproachable. And it can send a million wrong messages.

what we do always speaks loudest quote by Twyla Franz

The friendship way is the Jesus way. Many times in Scripture we see Jesus eating with people, entering their homes, walking and talking with them. He made people feel seen and valued—not like projects or accolades.

He paused often to give someone His full attention. He called many by name. He asked where they were and what they needed. He showed us what it looks like to be a friend—and how essential friendship is to missional living.

How about you? How might you prioritize friendship-building as you endeavor to live on mission in your neighborhood?

Here’s a blessing I’m praying over you as you lean into this missional life:

May you know Jesus as your closest, truest, deepest Friend.

May you learn His rhythms, adopt His heart for people.

May you imitate the way He includes, invites, befriends.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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