Spiritual Friendship - with Jess Avery
In episode 3 of our series on Friendship, we speak to Jess Avery about spiritual friendship, shared life and creating churches where everyone can experience genuine belonging.
What if friendship wasn’t just a nice extra, but an essential part of following Jesus?
In this episode, our Digital Content Manager Sarah chats with Jess Avery, Executive Director of Awakening Project. Jess shares powerful stories and practical wisdom on building friendships that can hold both joy and gried, sustaining relationships through life’s changing seasons, and creating community where faith is lived out together.
We discuss spiritual friendship, shared life and creating churches where everyone, especially single people, can find and build communities where they truly belong.
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What is spiritual friendship? And how is it different from simply having friends who are Christians?
Jess Avery, Single Friendly Church Podcast, Friendship Series episode 3
“This is a great question and I really believe it's just a discipleship question. In many ways the depth of our friendships has everything to do with the depth of our transformation. If we attach to the church casually, we tend to be transformed casually or slowly.
Jesus actually makes a whole lot of the depth and the quality of our relationships. In fact, he says to someone, if you're on the way to the altar to make a sacrifice and you realise that someone has an offence against you, you might as well just put that thing on down and go and fix those relationships, and then come back and do your spiritual act of worship.
Relationships are spiritual
We tend to sort of want to divorce and pull those things apart – that you have your spiritual things that you do, and then you have your friendships. But relationships are inherently spiritual. I mean, we have a Trinitarian God. So everything that we do in relationship, the way that we operate in the community around us, everything that Jesus says, everything the Bible says about calling us to love and that being a measure and a marker of our faith, it all points to relationship. We really can't get away from it. It really is core to what it means to follow Jesus and to follow him together.
Spiritual friendship is gathering in Jesus’ name
So the way that I've watched this actually play out in friendship. You know, Jesus says that when we gather in his name that he's with us. He doesn’t just say “when you gather”. So what does it mean to gather in his name? I think that's what spiritual friendship is. That's a difference in between just normative friendship or worldly friendship.
If we gather in the name of Jesus, it generally means that his name will come up. Our conversations are going to point to him. He will come up in conversation as casually as talking about the last conversation with your sister, or with your mother, or with another friend who's part of your friend group. Spiritual friendship will just include lifting up the name of Jesus and will help our friends to actually become more like him. The depth of transformation that Jesus is after in our lives will often come when our friendships do have this spiritual quality to them.”
About Jess Avery
Jess Avery is the executive director of Awakening Project, a growing network helping young leaders gain the vision, friendships, and tools they need to lead their generation towards spiritual awakening. She is also an Elder at Arise Church in Kentucky.
In this episode Jess talks about Discipleship Bands as a way to build spiritual friendships and strengthen community life - find out more here.