Billy No Mates (Leadership Article)
A friend is someone who knows you as you are, understands where you’ve been, accepts who you’ve become, and still invites you to grow. Stu Weber, Locking Arms
It’s the classic playground taunt. “Hey look, there’s Billy no mates!� We’ve probably all had it said to us at one time or another and felt the pain of the stigma associated with having no friends. Ironically, it actually conveys an important truth: not having friends is abnormal! We are meant to have friends; we were designed to be in relationships with one another. It is not surprising that the biggest sit-com of the last decade was entitled Friends. It captured the longing in countless people’s hearts for real relationships with the people we share our lives with. Not only this, it highlighted the truth that many (most?) of us are longing for genuine friendships but do in fact spend much of our lives feeling an awful lot like Billy no mates. No more is this the case than amongst leaders. We have a false belief that if we open up and “get real� with people, they won’t want to follow our leadership. Sadly, we end up leaving those we lead with a false picture of who we are not realising that sometimes it’s our struggles rather than our successes that provide greater encouragement for people’s journeys.
It is perhaps fair to say that building friendships is one of the trickiest assignments that leaders have to embrace. And by friendship, I don’t mean acquaintances. I mean real, transparent, genuine, and intimate friendships. It’s worth emphasising too that this really is a leadership assignment. As leaders we need to be developing quality relationships with a core of people who can be there for us and us for them; people who know our strengths and weaknesses. In a slight variation of the quote by Stu Weber above, I once heard it said that a friend is someone who knows you as you are and still likes you! We need to have people around us who truly know and understand us. People who love us unconditionally. People we can call night or day and know that they won’t mind. Friendship should be the fuel that enables us to fulfil the journey that God has called each of us to take. They are not to replace our dependence upon God, but we must see them as a gift from God to help us is the race we are to run.
But how many of us can honestly say we have even one friendship like I’ve been describing above? It is sad but true that something like seventy percent of church leaders confess to being lonely. This shouldn’t be so. We must see this for what it is: an attack from the enemy. Satan’s method is always isolation. If he can get us on our own he can take us out. When we have friends around us though, who are in the fight with us, his power over us is severely limited. We must see building friendships as a major priority in our lives. And let’s be honest, what was the first thing Jesus did when He launched His ministry? He gathered some guys around Him who He’d share His journey with. I’m not saying that this was Jesus’ only reason for choosing the twelve disciples, but I am saying that I sincerely believe that friendship was a big part of it. Jesus knew that He need a team of people around Him and they were important for His journey in the same way that He was for theirs.
We can see from Jesus’ life that gathering a “team� of friends is vital to success as a leader. There is still more that we can learn from Jesus about the importance of close friends though. You see, whilst Jesus had the twelve, He also had three of those twelve who He was especially close with. All of us who are familiar with the Gospels will be aware that many of Jesus’ most precious experiences were reserved for just Peter, James and John. Jesus knew that there are some things in life that even being part of a group of twelve is not intimate enough. Whilst there is less room for hiding and not being transparent in a small group, it is still possible. So Jesus had special relationships within the twelve. These were His friends who got to see even more of Him than the rest did. They got to see Him when He was most vulnerable. We too need friends like these who we are comfortable enough with to be vulnerable and for them to see our weaknesses.
Let me take a short aside here and ask a couple of questions. The first question I want to ask you is this: are you aware of your weaknesses? This, you see, is the first stage in having transparent relationships. Some people never get even this far, but thankfully most people are at least able to admit – if only to themselves – that they do have weaknesses. It is here though that we need to address the second question. How many people – if any – know about your weaknesses? I am not saying that we should broadcast to every man and his dog our struggles, but I am saying that we need to have a few friends who truly know us as we really are and not as we might like people to think we are. Like Jesus we need a couple of guys around us who get to see us – all of us. And the truth is that having such people could end up saving your life. How much easier will our battles with the temptations of money, sex, and power be if we had a few people fighting these battles with us?
Friendship is always an investment. And, as with all relationships, there is always risk involved. When we open up to people, we open the door to the possibility of being hurt. This is why most people avoid getting too close to people. They have been hurt in the past and are afraid to put their hearts at risk again. Let’s look at Jesus again though. Boy did He risk! He picked a seeming rabble of men to take His journey with. If all friendships are a risk then Jesus really upped the odds by choosing that lot! Jesus took a risk, and you know what, He got hurt too. Every single one of them abandoned Him at His hour of need. He knew all along that He would get hurt, but it didn’t stop Him building those friendships. He knew that the benefits of having quality friends far outweighed the risks of being hurt. We need to have the same attitude. We need friends. We need to be part of a small platoon of believers who are fighting for each other and watching each others’ back. And it is we who are in leadership who need this more than anyone.
