During our recent Clergywomen’s Roundtable – the preaching group I’ve been a part of for over a decade – we talked about finding friends. One clergy sister talked about trying to find a friend in her new position in a new town – someone with whom she can totally be herself. She literally said to a fun person in town, “I need a friend.” This worked, but it doesn’t always work.
(In the third grade PM awkwardly came up to me and announced that we would be Best Friends. It was weird.)
Here’s what I’ve found about friends as a clergywoman:
– It’s hard to be friends with parishioners. Yes, I’ve had parishioners who were friends in a real way, but the truth is that I am always their pastor. I’ve found that they really don’t want to hear about the pastor’s burdens. I’ve also found that on my day off, I can’t hang out with parishioners with whom I am friendly because we always end up talking about church.
– It’s hard to be friends as The Pastor’s Wife. With my real friends, I can share pretty much everything, but if I might be – in any way – disclosing information about my family (the pastor’s family) that feels private . . . well, I just can’t. My spouse is still their pastor.
I can be friends with other clergy because we share a similar pastoral wavelength. Someone can say, “angry elder” and the rest of us nod. We’ve all been there. Especially with clergywomen, we’ve had similar experiences in terms of comments on our hair and shoes, dating issues (when we were single), funeral directors who are Dirty Old Men, etc.
I can also be friends with non-church people who find the whole church thing to be an anthropological curiosity. I treasure my friend LB with whom I’ve shared many clergy mistakes and stories I can’t tell anyone else. Our commonality is our daughters rather than church. It’s a tremendous blessing.
So, here I am in a new place and I miss the friends I knew after 22 years in DC. The Divas. The Lex Girls. The Busboys Crowd. I miss the HGers (okay – they were part of my church, but not in any traditional way.) I miss yoga with S and S – followed by frozen yogurt in Georgetown. I miss the soccer moms and dads.
New friends will be made here in The Prairie State. But it takes time.
A Church for Starving Artists 
it sure does take time….still working on it and it is 5+ years. Grateful for a colleague from seminary who is in the area. why aren’t CLE and CHI closer?
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It does take time. I’ve been lamenting to M lately that my best friends are in Ohio, Florida, Californial, Indiana, and North Carolina and I am in none of those states. It can feel very lonely. I’ve also been in my current state for 5+ years…
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In my last youth ministry position, I was told on day one that I wasn’t allowed to socialize with any members of the church, whether or not they currently had junior/senior high children. I was the only staff member given that restriction.
I moved 1200 miles away to a city where I knew no one, worked 50-60 hours a week, and I wasn’t allowed to be friends with the only people I really ever saw. I should have realized that would be a warning sign of how things would go there from the start, but I didn’t catch on until a year later.
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