There is a huge benefit of being in a formal church leadership role that rarely gets mentioned.

It’s simply this…

Friendships

Brotherhood

Sisterhood

Community

A decade of my life was spent in bishoprics and a stake presidency, and it was an amazing way to be in a friend group.

The brotherhood I felt by having a regularly scheduled weekly meeting where we would come together in prayer and seek to improve our local religious community is hard to beat.

It was awesome!

I sincerely miss it.

With hindsight, I have both appreciated the friendship that came from leadership and become more aware of some negative results from this dynamic as time goes on.

First, church leadership provided automatic friendship for me but not so much for my spouse.

I ran off to meetings and benefited from this friendship while my wife had no regularly scheduled friendship meeting on her schedule.

Second, more demanding callings naturally make you feel more connected to the ward as a community when this isn’t the case for many others in the ward.

This often skewed my perspective that our ward community was friendly, connected, and supportive.

Third, after these callings ended so did the benefit of these friendships.

Sure, I am still “friends” with those I served with, but we lost the need to have a regularly scheduled connection each week.

The solution to this friendship dynamic could be discussed in many future newsletter messages, but in short, this is what I have learned:

Friendship doesn’t randomly happen on a deeper level.

Friendship and connection must be intentional and work best if they are built around a specific routine.

Leaders can be intentional in making sure many (even those who don’t fit the mold) have opportunities to serve in more demanding callings so that they benefit from the automatic friendships that these callings provide.

There isn’t a season in your life when you don’t need friendship.

Don’t sit in a silo thinking social media is actually connecting you to anyone.

Maybe you have been spoiled in the past with automatic calling friendships.

But you still need a friend today.

Sincerely,

Kurt Francom
Executive Director
Leading Saints

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