How To Be a Friend | Jordan McClarnon | Young Adults

Y.A., how we doing? Yeah. Well, hey, if we have not yet met, my name is Jordan. I have the honor of serving as the director here at Y.A., and I'm really just honored that you chose to take time out of your busy schedule, your Thursday night, to spend it here with us. So, thank you for doing that. As Zach and Leah just mentioned, I'm not the first person to say tonight that we designed this night, Collective Night, with two things in mind. We want to create space for young adults to find community and to explore faith. Now, in between the ages of 18 to 29, I'm not too far out of that range, but just in between the ages of 18 to 29, I lived in four states and seven cities. And every time I moved for a job, for a girl, for a new life stage, I was always asking the question, who are my friends gonna be? Who are my friends going to be? And I was just asking that question again last year as my family took a big leap of faith and moved from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Cincinnati, Ohio. And so, I've been working through this, as an 18 through 29-year-old, but just last year. And chances are, I'm not the only one in the room who's asking the question, who are my friends going to be? And so, we decided, hey, we're gonna take June,

July, and August to just talk about friendship. We're gonna talk about loneliness. We're gonna talk about community. We're gonna talk about belonging. And we're gonna talk about friends. If you came here tonight, I would be willing to bet that you are looking for some good friends. Maybe you would consider yourself a person who has friends, but maybe there's some people in the room tonight who just moved into a new life stage. Maybe you just graduated college, you're entering a new stage. Just started a new big boy job, big girl job, you're moving into a new life stage. Maybe you just got engaged, or you just got married. And you have friends, but a lot of your friends actually haven't moved into that life stage yet. And it's just different now, and you're struggling to connect with some people that you've been rocking with for a while. That's some of you. Some of you in the room tonight, you actually, like, just moved to Cincinnati in the last few months. You had friends where you were at, but a job brought you here, school brought you here, something brought you here to Cincinnati, and now you're just like, I'm just looking for somebody. Anybody. I'm not gonna be really that picky. I'm just looking for a friend. Some of you, you grew up here.

If I asked you, you got friends, you'd be like, yeah, man, I got a ton of friends, like, ton of social connections in and around the city. But if you're really honest with yourself, if you got into a pinch, you're not exactly sure who you would call. Like, if things kinda like went sideways, if life threw some curveballs at you, you're like, I don't actually know who I would get in contact with if that happened. I think every young adult in the room tonight desires deep friendships. My question is, if we all want it, why doesn't it feel like many of us have it? If we want it, why doesn't it feel like we have it? You and I have lived long enough to know that friends are a really big deal, and the stakes are high. The Bible, in the book of Proverbs, says it this way, this is Proverbs chapter 12. The righteous choose their friends carefully. The righteous choose their friends carefully. Friendship is not just a thing that happens on accident. I actually kinda believed that lie when I was growing up, and as I moved into adulthood, I was like, yeah, friendship's just like easy. I mean, like, if you're like me, you grew up around people, and you just like went to elementary,

and middle, and high school with a lot of the same people, and you were just around them all the time, and they talked like you, and they walked like you, and they were into the same things that you were into, and solely out of convenience and proximity, you're like, I guess these are just my friends. And then as I was thinking about that later, I was like, were those actually my friends, or was I just forced to be with these people all the time? And as you step into adulthood, you're just like, man, actually, like, making friends, it's really hard. You know this, and I know this, that you just don't stumble into friendship. You don't just passively drift into the type of community that you are longing for, and at some point, you gotta get proactive, and you gotta choose carefully who my friends are gonna be. One chapter later, in Proverbs 13, the Bible says it this way, if you walk with the wise, you become wise. But if you're a companion of fools, you will suffer harm. Friendship is not just about casual hangouts. No, friendship is actually one of the most formative things that you could possibly do in the entirety of the human experience. It's friendship. Your friends, quite literally, will dictate the quality and the direction of your future. That's what's happening.

I mean, like, they shape who you're becoming, your habits, your faith, your character, for better or for worse. So, if building friendships requires this, like, intentional choice, then why does it still feel like the people who are really desiring to have friends just feel like they're coming up empty? As I've looked back on my own personal experiences in between the ages of 18 to 29, as I look at my own life right now, I've identified a painful cycle that I have gone through a few too many times, and I am just calling it the cycle of friendship. And I want to share it with you because chances are this cycle has not just been true for me. It's also been true for you. So, here we go. Stage one of friendship. Come on, you know this. It's the idealization stage. You could maybe even call this the honeymoon stage of friendship. This is what it looks like. I have an idea in my head of what friendship's gonna be like. Based on my favorite TV show and the group of friends that's in that TV show, man, I wanna have those types of friends right there. It's gonna be amazing. Everyone, we're gonna just like the same stuff, and we're gonna be into the same things. We're gonna hang out together all the time. You enter into a space like YA, and you're like,

dude, there's amazing people here. I've interacted with some of them. They seem really great. It's like an infatuation stage of friendship. Everyone's kind of putting on their best. It's a little shallow. You're like, we're perfect for each other. This is awesome. I've met my people. And then after you hang out with them a little bit longer, eventually you get to stage two, and that's reality. Yeah. Wait. People were hanging out last night? Oh, I didn't get the text. Oh, okay. Well, that sucks. People just say things that annoy you. They frustrate you. I can't believe she said that. I can't believe he did that. Dude, I've been trying to schedule a hangout with the same guy and the same girl for weeks, and they just keep backing out. We have to keep pushing plans. The shine of friendship just kind of wears off, and you are forced to face reality, which is that your friends, they're pretty average. They're just normal people. In fact, some of them are actually pretty boring.

It's just the reality of friendship. It's messy. It's inconvenient. It's awkward, and it's hard work. So, when fear and some frustration start to infiltrate your relationships and your friendships, you end up at stage three, and that's disengagement. This usually is not a dramatic exit. It's usually just a quiet kind of tiptoe out of the friend group. Stop responding in the group chat. Just, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it. Or, yeah, man, we should totally hang out with zero intention of actually following up on that appointment. Some of us get a little jaded. We're a little bit bitter about how friends were acting, or how things were perceived, or what was going on, and it felt like there was a group within the group. I mean, like all types of things, right? And eventually, you get to a spot where you just say, I guess these people just weren't the friends for me. I guess this person, this group, this community, I guess they just didn't have it. It wasn't the right fit. And I think right there, something dies. And as time goes on and you start to crave the real deep meaningful relationships that you thought you had in the first place, you build up the courage to start the cycle all over again. And to get back out there into the wild, and to meet a few people, and to put yourself out there, and you say things like, okay, well that place over there didn't have community,

but maybe this place will. That group over there, they weren't my people. But guess what mom, I think I got my friends. This time, they're actually the friends for me. And we hope, and we pray, and we wish that maybe just maybe this time, it's going to be different. If any of that sounds familiar, if any of that stings a little bit, if you resonate with any of that, if you're still like wondering, man, why haven't I been able to attain and achieve the deep friendships that I'm really longing for and desire, I want to slide something across the table to you for you to consider tonight. It's this, what if community has very little to do with you finding the right people? And what if community has a whole lot to do with how we approach friendship in the first place? That's what I want us to consider for just a few moments together. How can I break free from a history repeating itself over and over and over again because I feel stuck in this cycle that I can't break free from? And so tonight, if you came to hear the five easy ways to make friends talk, you are really going to be disappointed. This is not that talk. And so we're going to speak for a few moments on the subject of how to be a real friend. How to be a real friend. We're going to go to the book of Proverbs. If you know the book of Proverbs, Proverbs is incredible. It's like one-liners and zingers about wisdom and relationships and finances and discipline. It's just incredible. And so I actually want to ask a favor, and that is, like, if you are the type of person who likes to just use Drake bars for your summer Instagram captions, how about we take 2026 off from that, and I encourage you to try out Proverbs. It'll be great. So I'm just throwing it out.

Take it or leave it. But there's some pretty good stuff in here. And I like Proverbs because it's just, like, honest, punchy, tell-it-how-it-is truth. And so that's what we're going to look at together tonight, written by one of the kings of Israel, Solomon. The Bible actually says he was the wisest man that ever lived. And the Proverbs give us this amazing balance of truth and wisdom. So here's what I'm going to ask. I really, really, really, really, really think it would be easy for you to hear this Scripture and think, man, I wish this person was here to hear it. I'm going to encourage you not to do that. And I'm going to encourage you, you, to receive the wisdom, and let's internalize it, and let's try to identify a few areas that God wants to speak to you about what it looks like to be a real friend. So I'm going to ask God to help us do that as we get into the book of Proverbs. Because we are open and we are receptive to hearing from your truth right now. God, we're here, we're in the moment, and so we may as well just open our lives and our hearts to your never-ending, never-changing, timeless truth. We thank you for it, and we're ready to receive it, amen. I got three verses I want to give to you. Proverbs 18, verse 24. Proverbs 18, 24 says, one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin. But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. First thing I've got for you, real friends, they show up. They show up. There's nothing worse than an unreliable friend. There's nothing worse than an unreliable friend, somebody who just keeps... like backing out of plans, someone who keeps just like not putting things on the calendar, not getting stuff on the schedule,

someone who just like is inconsistent, they're flaky, they're untrustworthy, they're always hitting you with the like, I think I should be able to make it. I'm gonna try to make that, I'm gonna try to make it. We all got that friend, we'll call him Steven, sorry if there's any Stevens in the house tonight. Steven, he's been trying to make it to a hangout for the last 10 months. And it's at some point we're like, Steve, we get it man, like you're not coming. You're not showing up. So stop like playing this game with us. Real friends show up, they commit. They get it on the calendar. They schedule, they don't overextend themselves. They're men and women of their word. Friends who show up, they're not constantly assessing and waiting till the last moment for a better option to pop up. And I think that a lot of us can get caught in the trap of living in this sort of fantasy land of friendship where we're in the idealization phase, the infatuation phase, and things are light and easy and you can kind of just pop in and slide out whenever you want, that's nice. And we know how to move and operate in that type of environment because it doesn't cost much. But as we begin to move into reality and we're confronted with like real life

and real situations and real friendships, we feel the freedom of better options start to fall away. And a lot of us, we're like, I don't like that. I'm gonna take my talents to a different community. I don't like that, we're gonna go over here. And so if I asked a few of your friends, Charlie's here in the front row. Charlie, if I asked a few of your friends, is Charlie, it is, well, this is for everyone, you just happen to be in the front. Charlie, if I asked the people closest to you, is Charlie a man who has a reputation of reliability? What would they say? If I asked you, hey, do your friends say that you have a reputation of reliability, what would their answer be? There's two options that you have in friendship. You can either have a reputation of reliability or you can be a liability. That's your only two options. The scripture actually says that an unreliable friend leads people into ruin, which means unreliable people don't just hurt themselves, everyone involved gets caught in the shrapnel of their flakiness and their inconsistency. And when people view community and friendship as this product that is supposed to be constantly re-evaluated and assessed and adjust here, it's like everyone loses when people view community and friendship in that type of light.

Now, here's the great news, anybody can show up. Anybody in this room can show up, which means that anybody in this room has the potential to be a great friend. I don't know about you, I don't have enough time for unreliable friends. And I would like to think that you don't either. So what if you picked a friend? You picked a group of friends, you picked a community and you just committed to it and you started showing up. If you're new around here, if you're new to the city, if you're new to YA, the greatest thing you could possibly do is just start saying yes and just start showing up. It's the best thing that you can do. Proverbs 27, verse 17. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. All right, so a real friend shows up and then a real friend learns the ability to sharpen somebody. Sharpen somebody. So once you start showing up consistently as a friend, the next question you have to ask yourself is, what am I actually doing when I'm there? It's extremely easy to show up in a big room like this, a big community like YA every single month. You can show up, sit in the same spot, you can hug the wall, you can do whatever you wanna do. Talk to the same like one or two people which talked to you last time and then get out of here and nobody actually knows You can do whatever you wanna do. You can do whatever you wanna do.

You can do whatever you wanna do. Anything about you so technically you showed up But did you like really? Did you really show up showing up? It's like 90% of the work and then it feels like the last 10% just fell flat friends Sharpen one another and so when the reality of friendships and community sets in when it gets messy when it gets Inconvenient when it's awkward at times many of us myself included. I've done this numerous times. I absolve personal responsibility To sharpen and contribute to and improve the group And we get frustrated Because the community isn't giving me what I want But my friends aren't giving me the things that I desire out of friendship and what if we stopped Assessing the legitimacy of community solely based on what we get out of it Iron sharpens iron and for iron to sharpen iron two things have to happen iron has to be in proximity with iron Which means it's like the showing up part and the second thing that has to happen is that iron has to come into friction? With iron and that's the sharpening So there's no way that you and I can grow in relationship without friction and without friction You and I will remain dull We will remain stagnant in relationships And when you show up to YA man, we're counting on you to help sharpen this space We're counting on you to make it better To contribute to it. We're certainly not claiming to have it all figured out, but I want you to hear from me I don't want you to show up with the expectation that that someone else is gonna figure it out all for you Iron sharpens iron and Sharpening somebody is really just being the friend that you also desire to have So if you're new around here instead of oh Man I wish someone would ask how I'm doing

How about you ask how they're doing I Wish someone would invite me to hang out after this You invite them to hang out after this I Wish someone would check in on me. I asked me how I'm doing. It's like introduce themselves to me. It's like you go first Be the friend that you want to have You could learn some names You get some numbers You can introduce yourself you can say hey to somebody who's sitting by themselves You can invite some people to hang out next week. You could get her number Different talk But you could Just just contribute And if you're somebody who's like what man I kind of already have some some close-knit friendships that seems more elementary Okay, um Ask the hard questions Don't take BS answers from your friends Pry pry in there a little bit Challenge the group spiritually Hold people accountable to what they say they're gonna do What if all of us Just said hey enough With searching for communities that don't have any friction and We said, you know what? I am embracing friction as part of God's design for healthy and thriving community Proverbs 17 verse 17 last one a

friend loves at all times and A brother is born for a time of adversity So real friends show up They sharpen and lastly real friends stay They stay How does somebody move from friend to family The scripture says there's a friend that loves at all times and then it says there's a brother Who's born for a time of adversity some of you may have people in your life You're not related by blood, but you say that's my brother That's my sister What does it take for someone to go from friend? To family I'll tell you it's people who commit to staying for the long haul I'm committed. I'm staying I'm not leaving and when two people commit to stay for the long haul, when they walk through adversity, something incredibly beautiful and resilient blossoms on the other side. That's what takes place when people say, hey, no matter what, I'm in it with you. Man, we hit the reality of friendship and a lot of us just choose to disengage. We bail on the messiness of community and the friction points of sharpening. I wanna give you my favorite definition of friendship. Friendship is committing to people who are going to let you down. Friendship is committing to stay with broken people who are gonna walk through adversity and they're gonna cause problems and it's gonna be a mess.

And I wanna encourage you to stay when it's hard. Stay when it's awkward. Stay when she said that thing that she shouldn't have said. Stay when he did that thing that he shouldn't have done. Stay when it's inconvenient. Stay when your schedule in life gets busier than it's ever been. Stay when someone hurts your feelings. Stay if you want friends that are like family. And I wonder how many times I have been on the brink of experiencing the benefits and the blessings and the rewards of community. And I was right there and I backed out. I wasn't all in. And what if we have not yet experienced those blessings, those rewards, those benefits of community because we keep jumping from group to group to group thinking the next one is gonna be the one that had what the last one was missing. I wanna share a quote with you that's been really impactful for me. Two guys from a book called Slow Church, this is what they said. Spiritual formation, that's just growing spiritually, occurs primarily within the context of community. Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay grow and people who leave do not grow. It is a simple but profound biblical reality that we both grow and thrive together

or we do not grow much at all. I don't believe that the perfect friend group is this thing that God like put out there and you and I gotta go on this crazy, elusive, mysterious mission to somehow unearth it and find it. No, God wants you to have friends and I believe he wants you to see tonight that friendship isn't really found or stumbled upon, it is built. It is built by people who are willing to show up, to sharpen one another, and people who are willing to stay for the long haul. And our vision for YA is that we would create a space right here where, I almost said hundreds, I'm gonna say thousands of young adults would find and build deep friendships. I think that's already happening. I think it has happened, I think it's gonna continue to happen and I just wanna share one story with you of how God's working in our community right now through an individual named Carson. So check out his story. For a lot of my early years, Crossroads was kind of my parents' church, it was my parents' faith and it didn't really mean much more to me than something we did as a family. I think on the outside,

I always desired to be in good image but then there were certain chores of my life where I just wasn't willing to invite God in. I also liked being seen, so I liked the fact that I had so many friends but it was just the lack of depth, I think, that really kept me wandering around. When I got to college, I kind of immediately was thrown into the Greek life scene. Kind of just seemed like the thing to do at the time and that kind of set the pace for that entire first year. I had toyed around with drinking and sort of the party scene in high school and it kind of ramped up a lot. Felt like in those first couple of weeks I had dug myself into a bit of a hole. I kind of had God in a small box during that time of my life and it was really just like the Sunday morning church service. Coming back for last summer, I just decided to go with my family like it was any regular Sunday. There was, I think, a part of me that was looking for a community to belong to over the summer because I think I had this. idea that maybe my freshman year of college wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. And after the service, I ran into Tim Seneff, told me about 1824, that they were going to be hosting a Romans Bible study over the summer. Showing up that first time gave me an in to a community

that I really had no idea how much of an impact it was going to have on my life. I remember during the small group time afterwards, I sat around in a circle on the floor of the auditorium with a bunch of guys who I didn't really know. I had an ability to bring part of the weight that I was carrying from this past year at college into the light in that circle. And like, I remember leaving the George after the first Romans Bible study and being like, this is a place where I want to come back to for the entire summer. But I remember walking in alone and being a little bit nervous. I didn't really know anybody at the time. I ended up going up to a group of four guys who were kind of in conversation and then they openly welcomed me into their circle. And it was like five minutes into this conversation and each of us in the circle are bringing out some of our like darkest times in our lives and praying over one another. And I remember leaving and I was like, those sorts of conversations don't happen in any other space. And I even remember journaling. I don't know what's going on right now, but I feel like my faith is radically changing. This is a place where I want to come back to for the entire summer. Eventually I came to realize and made the decision that going forward, I did not want my college experience to look like what it had been. That season of my life honestly was one of the most terrifying as I looked forward to going back to college because I had built such a strong faith community here in Cincinnati, but I knew that I didn't have that in Columbia. And at some point, as I'm telling my story about going back to a school where I was going to live in a fraternity house, I made a joke and I was like, what if I just brought this down to Columbia? The girl that I was talking to, she was like, you could. And I remember I was just like, I'm not worried. Like I'm going to be living in a fraternity house. But then over the next two weeks, I would say the thought kept coming back to mind, could I actually start this in Columbia? Like, is that a possibility? Because I just had this deep desire of like, what if there's kids like me back down in Columbia who are broken, who are searching for something deeper, and they just don't know where to go. They don't know where to start. I think one invite can change everything. And I think now, like, even as I attend collective nights, and even as I attend outreach nights, like, I try to be intentional about inviting people in my life to those who I feel like could experience some form of freedom in that. So I think there's a lot of power in just inviting people. And I think we all naturally desire to be invited into community. I think that's where a lot of people just experience freedom

and experience joy. And I think young adult events embody that idea of amazingly well. I think I felt like I was going to be trapped in this identity that I built for myself freshman year. But in walking faithfully with God, and just experiencing his presence in my life, I realized that I didn't have to be bound by the things that once held me down. So ultimately, I would say I experienced freedom and being able to bring myself and all of myself in the community and into relationship with people. One year ago, Carson walked into this exact room. And he was just looking for friends. Just looking for community. Just looking for something to belong to. And I know the temptation would be to look at that cool video and go, that is so great for him. Glad that worked out, man. I get it. I get it. And I need you to hear me when I say that the same type of community and belonging that was available to him in this room one year ago is available to you one year later, right now. Right now, it's available. And what we like to do at every single collective night is provide an opportunity for you to just have space. Just margin. Some peace and quiet. The ability to just slow down and to honestly contemplate what is God the creator of the universe trying to say to me right now? What's he trying to say? Is he trying to nudge me towards something? Does he want me to heal something? Does he want me to take a risk? I don't know. I just know we're gonna give you space

to think about that and to process that. And my only ask would be, when God speaks, move. When he says something to you, just do it. So the team is gonna be on either sides of the room here. That's the prayer team. They got these cool little lights, so make sure you're walking up and you know you're going to the right person. They're gonna be on either side and they'd love to pray with you about whatever that thing is related to friendship, related to forgiveness, related to community, related to healing, whatever it is. We're just gonna give you space. Lastly, some of you, you're thinking about the friendship thing. That's amazing. You're like, man, I just never even heard it explained this way. I don't even really know where to start on that type of commitment. That just feels so counter-cultural. And it is. And I genuinely believe the only way for you to actually begin to even walk or attempt to walk in that type of true, real, honest, gritty friendship is to know the creator of the universe through the person of Jesus Christ. He is the only one that even makes it possible

to understand what true friendship looks like. He's the greatest friend that you could ever have. And so maybe tonight, God's actually nudging you to move to either side of the space and to pray with someone and to ask them, what does it look like for me to even have a relationship with Jesus? What does friendship with the God of it all even look like? So I'm gonna pray for us. Band's gonna play. You have space. We're in no rush. And when God speaks, move. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your kindness. God, thank you that you made us for friendship, for belonging, for community. God, you made all of those things. So God, in this moment of space and reflection, we are drawing near to you. God, would you be good on your promise that as we draw near to you, you would do your part and you would draw near to us? Thank you. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen.