Recently a group of high school students from Kinston, Alabama were in the Cleveland area on a misson trip to help us survey Perry, OH for a new church that my wife and I are launching. As they went around neighborhoods asking questions like “what type of music do you listen to” and “what do you think is the greatest need in your community.” I was surprised that one of the top answers to the needs question was the need for friendships. People shared that they didn’t have friendships from within their neighborhood and there was a sense of a lack of community. Perry is a bedroom community in Lake County to the east of Cleveland that is in a fast growing area, but is a village.

I was amazed at that answer and began to ask myself what does it take to develop a strong friendship? The friendships that most of us over the age of twenty five enjoyed as children or teenagers are long gone. We rarely keep in touch with our high school buddies and we will only see them at the class reunions. Friendships are a strange commodity. One day they can seemingly be strong and solid and within weeks they are gone. I guess it happens that way because people are involved and we move from on thing to another, in this case friendships.

There are several elements that go into making a friendship that will develop and last. From what I can remember nobody ever taught us how to build good relationships. You certainly didn’t learn it in school. So most of us really aren’t that good at it. We just kind of stumble into relationship building.

I believe that we need to be proactive, take the initiative. In order to build friendships today, you have to meet people more than half way. Second, you have to refuse to wear a mask and be authentic. You don’t have to be perfect to build a bridge to people. In fact, being vulnerable is how you do it. Third, identify some commond ground or interests that you have with each other. Once you’ve identified that common ground, then you need to use it to build that bridge, to strengthen that relationship, to establish that friendship. Last of all, expect God to use you as you work to build friendships. You make yourself available. Say, “God, use me. I don’t know what to say but I’m willing to be used by You for the people You’ve put around my life to build a bridge.”

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 18:24, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

Will you go out ouf your way to make a new friend? God is counting on it.