Join The (church) Fraternity

“No one really knows me.” Two-thirds of American men aged 18–23 agreed with this statement in a 2023 report titled “State of American Men.”

The male loneliness epidemic has been written about almost ad nauseam, and for good reason: “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” wrote the U.S. surgeon general in 2023.

Is the church helping or hurting this trend? Samuel James recently observed that evangelical women’s groups tend to be described with words like “encouragement” and “fellowship” while men’s groups are often described with words like “accountability” and “sharpening.” The implicit assumption: Women need friends, but men need monitoring and correction. Sounds fun.

Is male connection only a means or an end? Is friendship for men merely instrumental? Or is it something good to be enjoyed in and of itself?

Do Men Need Friends?

C. S. Lewis once said, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

Friendship certainly gives value to survival. But I’d argue it also gives survival. Frodo doesn’t make it to Mordor without Sam. David doesn’t survive Saul without Jonathan.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow” (Eccl. 4:9–10). “Fellow” here means a companion—someone who’s good company, someone with whom (com) you break bread (pan). As Jesus calls his disciples friends (John 15:15) because they know what he’s doing, so also his disciples are to be friends with one another (the word for friend here, philos, means kindly disposed, beloved, devoted). They’re to both know and appreciate what each other is up to, and that kind of awareness and involvement in each other’s lives can usually only happen with regular, meaningful, and joyful time spent together.

Against the Black Hole of Networking

Men need friends, and they need to enjoy them; otherwise, people become just a network of contacts and types of colleagues: work-colleagues, church-colleagues, neighborhood-colleagues.

If every relationship is “useful” or “productive,” we network ourselves to death and function like termites partnering to build our mound rather than humans made in the image of a loving God and inhabiting the relational creation. In a culture obsessed with efficiency and optimization, we don’t love people; we use them. We don’t enjoy people; we diversify our relational investments.

In a culture obsessed with efficiency and optimization, we don’t love people; we use them.

When networking replaces friendship, we dehumanize ourselves, not just others. We brand and market ourselves as an “asset” more than a companion. We curate our personality such that our liabilities are hidden and our value-add is clear. We lean into what demand we fill or what we have to “offer,” but this networking mode isn’t friendship. The LinkedIn-ification of male connection causes us to never truly know a person, as we present our résumés instead of our souls as bids for connection.

Fraternal Covenant

Brotherly affection is dangerous in this marketplace of relationships. Truly caring for a friend makes you woundable. Getting invested in the inevitably messy ups and downs of another life will not leave you unscathed.

Not only that, but amid our hypersexual culture, a real, platonic friendship attraction will code to a young man as “gay” or at least “confusing.” Consider what liberal theologians have done to the friendship of David and Jonathan, projecting onto the biblical text the spirit of the age—making them into fornicators and not friends. The sexual revolution hasn’t just wounded our sexuality; it’s wounded our friendships.

Can men speak of their best friends like David spoke of Jonathan without being assumed gay?

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
very pleasant have you been to me;
your love to me was extraordinary,
surpassing the love of women. (2 Sam. 1:26)

Can men today be such friends that it’s covenantal in the way the Bible describes the bond between Jonathan and David (1 Sam. 18:1–3)?

I once met a group of three men in their 60s who’d been friends for 40-plus years. They’d vacationed together, started and ended businesses together, raised their children together, launched churches together, and given away (lots of) money together. And through it all, they still really liked each other. How? I asked.

One of the gents answered, “We sometimes think the only covenant we’re allowed to make is with our wives and the Lord. That isn’t true. We made a covenant together 40 years ago. That we’d be friends for life. David and Jonathan did it. Why couldn’t we?”

Most men in our churches have already missed the boat on lifelong friendships. Yet the pursuit of “rest of life” friendships would still be a worthwhile endeavor.

You Don’t Need a ‘Best’ Friend. You Need Several Great Friends.

The concept of having a best friend is foreign to me; ranking friends feels awkward. I have a handful of great, high-quality men in my life who each bring out different “bests” in me. Lewis also wrote about this dynamic in Four Loves:

If, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.

Like the ingredients in a cake, a group of great friends brings out each other’s flavors: the unique aspects of each yielding to a textured, balanced whole.

Release yourself from the pressure to find a single, hyperintimate friendship built on dozens of points of natural overlap. We ought to instead look for qualities we appreciate in other men, enjoy them, and be happy that we get to enjoy aspects of one another. One friend might be the guy you talk politics with, another you talk sports with, another you go fishing with, and another you send theology memes to on your lunch break.

Release yourself from the pressure to find a single, hyperintimate friendship built on dozens of points of natural overlap.

The friendship web of your local church can serve as a launch point into connections that enrich your life and expand your soul. Seeds planted at a men’s breakfast might grow into a monthly lunch, a weekly gym sesh, coaching youth sports together, a quarterly hike, or a burgeoning group chat. The key is adding rhythm and intentionality where your season and schedule allow.

Christian men should pursue fraternal brotherhood with one another. Yes, this involves inspiring each other unto holiness. But it also involves enjoying the image of God in the Other and appreciating him both as he is and for who he’s becoming. Friendship is a creational good. Its goodness can be playful, serious, sharpening, sweet, inspiring, fun, challenging, and more. Most of us men need more of this multifaceted friendship in our lives. Pursue it. Pray for it. Value it. The return is worth the investment.