Woodspring Community Church

A family-friendly church in Weston-super-Mare

Friends 1

A conversation about Friends and Friendship

How many friends do you have?

1 -5

6-10

11-20

20 – 50

Moe than 50

What is a friend? – your 21C definition.

“Someone you can confide in”

Friends reunited?

Facebook?

People you do stuff with

Are their different sorts/categories of friend?

– Do we use the same word to describe different types of relationship?

We have friends in different social spaces –

Public – eg football supporters, Stereotypical Church of England/Catholic churchgoer, Political Party Supporter, Supermarket shopper –

A bunch of people who meet up because of an outside influence or attraction, or activity

Woodspring – Some who just come to our open events – perhaps attend on a Sunday but keep themselves to themselves

Jesus and the Centurian or Jesus and the multitude

Social

Football supports club – travel to matches together, eat together – share some information about each other

Woodspring – attend regularly, freely chat with people and share some snippets of information about themselves

Jesus and the larger group of disciples (72 plus)

Personal

Football club – a few mates who go to matches, are in the supporters club but also meet up as families – may even go on holiday together

Woodspring – participate in midweek groups – share some personal, but not intimate information in the group

Jesus – 12 disciples

Intimate

Would be inappropriate to find that level of relationship based on football!

Husband-Wife relationship

Best friend type relationship sometimes

Jesus – Peter, James, John (and maybe the Marys and Lazarus)

Woodspring – a small group of, one, two or three people – who give access to each other’s lives. Who can support, encourage, correct one another in all or nearly all aspects of life.

Which of these types of friend is most important?

For a healthy social life and mission we need all four in proper proportion.

Do we need to give attention to one or more of these social groups in our lives?

What about friendships with not-yet christians?

We need to have friends who are not yet christians in the first three groups.

We will relate differently to not yet christians in each of these groups, judging appropriately how to share the gospel.

How do we find appropriate settings for each of these friendships?

EG. Woodpsring Church's public setting of the Campus coffee mornings

How could we develop more opportunities for people to come together and develop friendships in each of these settings;

Public
Social
Personal

Office Address:

0845 519 3873