We are designed for community.
It is intrinsic of our human nature to exist in relationships. Science has proven that people are happier, more successful, and all around at their best when they are embedded into a community of significant & meaningful friendships that push them to become the best version of themselves they can be.
Friendship is truly one of the greatest gifts we could ever have.
Yet studies have shown that Americans are ranked amongst the loneliest people in the entire world. A quick look at our country’s “values” reveals that our culture naturally steeps a lifestyle of isolation, robbing people of the significant connections that coincide with their God-given design.
Thankfully, there is a cure for this loneliness epidemic, and it lies in the Church resurrecting the lost Christian doctrine of Spiritual Friendship.
Climaxing in the late 1100s in the ancient monastic community of Rieveulx, a simple abbot named St. Aelred painted one of the most stunning and rich depictions for what friendship can be when it is founded on a shared love for & faith in Jesus Christ. The friendships that derive from such a commonality surpass everything about our modern understanding of friendship.
The BFFs Church, then, is a vision for who the Church can be when it fully embraces Spiritual Friendship, because it is through the Church where friendships are truly the best, and literally last forever.
This blog is designed to wrestle with American culture and the loneliness epidemic at hand, dream about what this radical form of friendship can do for the Christian life, and inspire a new means for living on mission to remedy a lonely America through the simple power of our friendship.
1 comment