The love of friendship has, at the least, established its place as a necessary model of love in Christian tradition. This study shows the deep roots it has in Christian thought, among both ancient and modern writers, and is intended to facilitate further reflection on and exploration of its creative potential now and for the future.

This book examines the pastor's friendships as they impact a pastor's effectiveness in ministry and his or her personal well-being. Because friendships require high levels of self-disclosure, friendships introduce potential conflict for the pastor as personal self-disclosure may conflict with the pastor's expected role. Taking a qualitative approach, this study looks at how pastors navigate the areas of friendship both inside and outside their congregations. The research involved interviews with ten congregational pastors and reports themes that emerged from the interviews. The researcher developed four friendship types that assist the pastor in balancing pastoral role expectation with expression of vulnerability.

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Is the Church a community of friends? Steve Summers explores the significance of friendship for our understanding of the church today. Since Jesus' statement in St John's gospel "I call you friends" the concept of friendship has had a huge influence on the Christian understanding of community. But is the historical understanding of friendship enough to serve the needs of the church in a post-modern age? Steve Summers explores the limits of the concept as well as it's possible use in contemporary ecclesiology.

Understanding Friendship illustrates friendship as an expression of Christian love that can enrich one's life and be socially, culturally, and politically significant. The book examines what friendship is, how its distinctive moral status can be supported by multiple approaches to Christian ethics, and its part in Christian spirituality.

Multireligious Reflections on Friendship: Becoming Ourselves in Community presents a multi-religious discussion of spiritual and ethical formation through friendship. Contributors discuss the positive effects of friendship and some of the culturally diverse ways that friendships develop. Friends help us co-exist in diverse societies, live sustainably in our ecosystems, heal from trauma, develop inner virtues, engage wisely in social action, and connect with the divine. While friendship is a core human value, cultural traditions have used different tools to build friendships. For example, Indigenous communities emphasize reciprocity on the land; Jewish traditions encourage respect for study partners; Buddhist teachers suggest discernment in befriending; Christian texts speak of bringing God’s love into community. The fifteen scholars contributing to this book draw on the teachings of six different global traditions: Indigenous, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, and Christian. Each scholar applies the tools of their tradition—reciprocity, respect, discernment, love, and more—to discuss how we might become our best selves in community.

Lovescapes introduces the reader to the various meanings and manifestations of love and its many cognates such as compassion, caring, altruism, empathy, and forgiveness. It addresses how love and compassion have been understood in history and the religions of the world. It goes on to explore the ways that our environments and heredity influence our capacity to love and suggests ways to cultivate love and compassion in one's life. The book shows how the values of love and compassion are integral to finding humane solutions to the daunting problems we face as individuals, as a human family, and as an earth community--a world in crisis. Lovescapes has the following features: -Describing how love is the essence of the divine, and therefore the ground of reality -Understanding the meaning of love and its place in our lives -Learning how love and compassion have been understood across history, culture, and tradition -Gaining insight about how to increase our capacity to love and show compassion -Discerning how love and compassion can be applied in all aspects of our lives, in the regions where we live, and in our global setting.