What female friendship really needs

I love Moorewomen Talks, and I try to go as often as I can. It’s like going out for dinner with friends: free from the distractions of home, we feed on God’s word together, digest it as we talk to each other, and come away nourished by a dish that someone else has kindly put the effort into preparing and even plating up for us!

What I was expecting

And so on the night of Thursday 7^th April I was expecting a familiar dish, one that I’d kind of tried before. The topic was ‘You, Me and the Bible’, i.e. one-to-one ministry. The speaker was Alison Blake, who serves alongside her husband Michael at Shellharbour’s Harbour Church and who also serves us at Moore College as a Women’s Chaplain. (And she’s also mum to one of our students!) I was pleased to be tasting this topic again, having heard similar talks in the past. I’d even tried once or twice the awkward conversation suggesting to read the Bible with someone, with varying success.

What I wasn’t expecting

But I wasn’t expecting this dish (or should I say the Holy Spirit) to rock my world.

We began with Ephesians 1:3-14, where we see just how much we have in Christ. Not only that, but how God’s plan is to bring not just us but everything in existence under the lordship of Christ. That happens as people hear and respond to God’s word.

Alison explained that one-to-one Bible reading is a valuable ‘word ministry’, but it acts as a complement to the other word ministries that happen in a church. If preaching is like a sprinkler watering a garden, then one-to-one is like a watering can which can concentrate on a few individual plants.

So what exactly is a one-to-one? Alison’s definition, inspired by David Helm’s book One-to-One Bible Reading:

In one-to-one Bible reading and prayer we take the initiative to build a loving spiritual friendship with another woman that will help them receive Christ and keep walking in him. We do this by reading the Bible together, asking and answering questions together, applying and praying God’s word together. And we leave the results to God.

And her encouragement to us was that one-to-one Bible reading is simple and challenging, but so worth it.

It’s challenging because:

• it’s hard to observe from the sidelines before getting in there and trying it
• it’s not (at the moment) in the DNA of our churches, so we don’t naturally do it
• it can feel too intense, like it’s not what we really need. Surely it’s better to just catch up over coffee or go for a walk and chat?

But Alison also talked about the deeper obstacles:

• we can question our God-given commission to be disciple-makers
• we can doubt the goodness of God’s word
• we can doubt the power of God’s word.

But what really made me sit up was Alison’s statement: “So don’t believe the lie that women need friendship without God’s word”.

It made me sit up because earlier that very week a friend at my church had asked if we could meet up over coffee and chat, since she was going through a particularly challenging time at work. So I’d met with Kate in a café near my daughter’s school for the hour before school pick-up. We talked and we prayed, and it was good and encouraging. (The coffee was bad but that didn’t really matter too much.) But if what Alison said is true, my friend needed not just friendship, she also needed God’s word.

So the next time I saw Kate at church, I asked her if she’d like to meet up for coffee and to read through 1 Peter together. Happily, she was keen! So, once a week, I headed in for the school run an hour early, we chose a café (finally found one that does nice coffee) and we read through 1 Peter. It quickly became a highlight of the week. To begin with, neither of us had much of an idea about how to start, but Alison had given us a handout for just this purpose. After the first week or so, we were able to open the passage and read and talk without needing the formally structured questions.

Once we finished 1 Peter we were both keen to keep going, so we spent a few weeks in the Psalms, and are now onto Malachi. There’s something wonderful about reading the Bible with someone else. While reading it on our own is definitely an important discipline, I find that it’s very easy to read and go “yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, got it”. But with someone else there’s a different dynamic where we can tease things out and bounce off each other. I love the richness this brings. I love that God is speaking to us both. I love that our friendship has grown.

But it’s not only enriched the two of us—it’s caused my friend to look around for others who might benefit from meeting with her to read the Bible. While we are not rushing out now to ask all our friends to read the Bible with us, it’s demonstrated to us again the power of opening God’s word, and given us a very simple way to reach out to others. Alison also encouraged us in her talk to think about how we can open God’s word with a non-Christian friend. The dynamic will obviously be very different, but Alison gave us some good pointers and a challenge to give it a go.

Kate has written about the experience from her perspective; here she is in her own words:

I’m very thankful that Bron suggested we read the Bible together. This simple weekly activity has enriched our friendship, deepened my love of Christ and helped me delight in reading God’s word. I’d heard about one-to-one Bible reading at church but had said ‘no’ when invited to try it. But this time the words “…don’t believe the lie that women need friendship without God’s word” drew me in.

Ahead of the first meeting I definitely felt nervous. Would I be able to say anything sensible about the passage? Is it weird to read the Bible in public? However, the structured questions helped out, I discovered that God has plenty to say, and I found myself grateful that we can read the Bible in public.

Over the last few months, I’ve become excited to find out what God has to say to me. I’ve seen for myself how his word is light and life in dark and difficult times. I love that Bron and I are walking together, guided by God’s word, through the joys and tribulations of life. Our weekly coffee has become the highlight of my week and a blessing in my life.

This article was originally published in Magnolia, and has been edited and republished with the author’s permission.