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Emerging Leadership and Cross-Gender Friendships

Posted Aug 16, 04:56 PM | 6 comments | by Editor | Link

By Dan Brennan, re-posted from Faith Dance:

Almost exactly two years ago, Sheila and I began attending an emerging community. We felt that support from a church was important as I wrote a book on cross-gender friendship (cgf). We had no idea when we came to Life on the Vine what that would look like. We were hoping leaders would at least be “open” to rethinking traditional evangelical social constructs of male-female relationships. More and more Christians are doing so. During a recent stop in Seattle, Brian McLaren specifically encouraged local Christian leaders to pursue close friendships with the other gender in their community, according to my friend Jennifer’s first-hand report. However, this is not a post about the most popular voices in the emerging movement, but a reflection on the local community. It is to be expected, because of the diversity within the emerging conversation, that there would be diverse reactions on cross-gender friendship in local communities.

After two years in an emerging community, I share some thoughts …

I don’t think I would be where I am today without the rich encouragement of the leadership in my local community. I am quite sure, out of all the stories David Fitch has heard from newcomers checking out a church, I hold the unique distinction of being the first person to probe David for a sense of where he stood on the issue of cross-gender friendships before I even started attending. It could be one of the rare times such a thing has ever happened, but, as my regular blog readers know, Sheila and I were looking for a community that could support my desire to write a provocative book on cgfs. Since David had just finished writing his own provocative critique on evangelicalism, I figured I had a halfway decent chance of at least getting an open ear.

I expected some serious pushback from him initially—and he didn’t disappoint me. :-) The pushback started coming when he began to understand that I wasn’t intending to write a generic book on men and women getting along in cordial friendliness. This was the first time we had ever talked, and I am sure the conversation had David processing things like he had never processed before. But Sheila and I didn’t want to begin to sink roots into a community, and get deep into the book, only to find leadership drawing conventional sex-segregated lines like what had just happened to us. So I expected David to pepper me with questions once it started to sink in, and he did! I could tell he was able to get some inkling of what I wanted to write about by the nature of his questions towards me. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised by my reactions, but I sensed that he knew I had given serious thought and attention to the subject. I thought we had a good conversation. Toward the end, it seemed like he was cautiously open. Even though it was a brief prayer, David offered to pray for me at the end of the conversation, and he prayed a prayer of blessing for me, Sheila, and my book aspirations! I can’t tell you how much this ministered to me after having had this conversation six weeks earlier.

It touched my soul and gave me renewed hope that emerging leadership at a local level could do something much deeper in drawing men and women together than just focusing on equality and justice—even though those are two big issues in the contemporary conversation between the sexes.

Emerging leaders (I am speaking of men here) cannot move the conversation forward if they see women as “dangerous” or “inferior.” Furthermore, they will not be able to advance healing if they themselves are afraid of getting close to women in ministry and friendship. Again, it’s one thing to be friends with a woman blogger who lives 300 or 1,000 miles away from you. Blogging friendships at the grassroots level among emerging Christians are great and much needed, but it’s a whole different animal if you are talking about practicing close cross-gender friendships in a local community.

Within a few weeks of our attending LOTV, once the leaders saw Sheila’s enthusiastic support of my book and my friendships, they have never looked back. They have welcomed me with open arms and have prayed with me and for me. They have encouraged me in my aspirations to get this book published. And, with their encouragement, I’ve had the opportunities to begin forming friendships with men and women in the local community.

One thing I have seen emerging leaders embrace at the grassroots level in local community is organic movement and direction of love, ministry, justice, and reconciliation among “neighbors.” All of that happens when men and women begin to form and sustain trusting friendships of missional and transformational depth.

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Dan Brennan has been happily married to his wife, Sheila, for 27 years. He is in management in a Chicago area limousine company and is writing a book on cross-gender friendships.

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