Okay, so you're saying, and I'd love for you to walk through those five levels of friendship briefly, but I think I'm understanding you saying it can start surface at pickleball, and maybe it will go deeper.

Correct.

And so really quickly, and we can delve into this later in the conversation, I think that there's five levels of friendship.

I kind of took this rubric from what I saw in scripture and applied it with more of a modern lens that I hope is sticky for people.

And at my website, showmemyfriends.com, if you want to put that in the show notes, there's actually an assessment tool that we made, sort of similar to Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, all these disc profiles, where you can learn your natural propensity toward these five levels.

The first level is a sunbather.

A sunbather is a person that you just casually meet up with at the bus stop.

Yeah.

And so as I hear you describe that, and we're going to get a little more into the nitty gritty of literally doing friendship, but I'm curious about just theoretically, is it our safety in God? our security and identity in Him that kind of sets us up for success in this area? What is it theoretically on the more global scheme that allows us to take that vulnerable next step?

I actually think that's a really great question, Jennifer.

I think that is a theological framework that we have to kind of wrestle with.

Because if we look at the writings of the Apostle Paul, who I think is one of the most vulnerable leaders of all time, particularly in the New Testament, He's kind of like, yeah, I used to be this real bad guy.

I persecuted the church.

He was so aware and self-aware of allowing himself to be vulnerable.

Think about how he wrestles publicly with people throughout millennia to say, hey, the good that I would do, I don't do it because evil presents itself.

Show us the different types of relationships based on this paradigm you created, this framework.

But what about them developing friendships? And if you think about just 10 years ago, so kind of the early teenage years, like what are some ways we can help our kids grow friendships?

Yeah, that's really good.

I think, number one, model the type of friendships that you want your kids to have.

Do your kids actually see life-giving friendships and what your friends might do for each other and what you do for them? told my kids and show my kids that handwriting letters and cards are one of the best ways to stay connected with people.

It shows a culture of hospitality, gift giving.

Why are you buying that extra shirt, dad? I'm going to send this over to Jonathan, man.

I love this t-shirt and I'm just getting my boy one.

I'm curious of your six pack, how many of their spouse, their wives are close friends with your wife or how many of their kids are friends with your kids? Does it tend to be separate friendships or do you find they're kind of the same, that family is friends with our family?

How would you tell people to go about doing that? Because the people do live really homogenous lives right now, you know?

For those of us, there's not a lot of places.

This is one of the beauties of the church, right? Because there's not a lot of places where anybody can meet people anymore.

You don't meet people at country clubs per se.

You don't meet people at the bar or the club per se, right? But the church has a built-in set of community that you can literally meet.

Take advantage of every week.

So if you're attending a local church, I think that one of the things that you should do is either try to sign up for a group that has the kind of demography that you're looking for or to just be intentional to start trying to move into somebody's – like here's the thing.

But is there any kind of person that we shouldn't be friends with?

For more content or to learn more, you can always check out mosaicchristian.org.

I'm so glad to be here with all of you.

And so why don't we get into God's word today? Now, I was traveling back from Santiago a couple of months ago.

Our church has multiple locations all around the world, and we have a location in Santiago de Chile.

And I was with my wife there as we were hosting a conference with my pastors.

And it's a long flight from JFK to Santiago.

It takes about nine hours, and I depend on upgrades to go to places internationally because I need more leg room.

After I paid $99!