I am writing this as I am travelling on a train to go and visit a pastor friend. This has meant a considerably earlier than normal morning, a seeral modes of transport. The work of getting out has just been harder than usual.

Forgive me if that comes across as me moaning. I’m really not. I was genuinely really pleased to see my friend and spend the day with him. And despite other places en route being nearer for me, the sad reality is, getting to London is usually easier than trying to get to other places. My point is that if we want meaningful partnerships and meaningful pastoral friendships, they’re going to take a bit of work.

It is no coincidence that the best partnerships and friendships we have are with people that we’ve been friends with and known for decades or those with whom we’ve put in a lot of facetime. As my late friend, Jeremy Marshall, was fond of saying: people give to people and people give to people they trust. Which means if we are going to have proper partnerships, that are not just paternalistic receiving relationships, it is going to involve a bit of work, a bit of effort and some facetime with people so that they can get to know us, might trust us and consider us somewhere worthy of sending their people, spending their mission budgets and partnering with in whatever other ways we might.

That work might be as basic as just keeping in touch. I have friends I don’t see very often because we live miles away from each other and have genuinely busy lives. But I can still keep in touch. WhatsApp and emails are easy means of keeping in touch and keeping our hand in with people who we’d love to see more of but can’t see so much,

But keeping up with people might also involve curating and then sending out prayer letters. This involves a bit more work. Not only the discipline of actually remembering to write one every month, but then working out what you are going to include and writing it up. You then have to keep on top of your contact lists and make sure it is regularly updated. It involves a bit more work, but if you want people to meaningfully pray for you and to pray for the stuff that actually matters rather than constantly offering up generic stuff of limited value, this is quite important.

There may be a bit of work involved in making the time to see people at fraternals, conferences, retreats and meetups. Some people thrive at these places and absolutely love them. A lot of pastors I know don’t. But  nevertheless, these are places where we may see and connect with people. It is a place where many of us will be and can make the time for others that we wouldn’t otherwise see.

More work still might be involved in going and preaching at different partner churches. This is a good means of serving other churches we are in partnership with as well as giving them the time to speak with us, hear from us and understand more about our situation. Of course, that means not being with our own churches and doing the work that we are ultimately set aside to do. It means spending time writing a sermon and understand the scriptures for the benefit of another place. It is all work. But it is necessary work if we are to meaningfully partner with others. A step up from these things, but in the same ballpark, is taking away days, weekends away and whatnot where you are being asked to be around all day and deliver a set of talks that all need preparing.

Different of us will find various bits of this harder than others. I, personally, love preaching and so preparing talks for me isn’t a big deal. I like it. I might find getting the time to do it a bit tricky, but because I enjoy it I am usually able to carve out the time. Other people find this a lot of hard work. Some find simply being with people and chatting all day no problem at all, others I am sure find this much harder. Some love the travel and having a jolly here, there and everywhere while other people hate it. We will all find bits of the stuff we need to do easier or harder than others.

But nevertheless, if we want meaningful relationships with people and we want decent two-way partnerships built on trust with people who don’t paternsalise but want to be genuinely reciprocal, it’s going to take work. There is no way around it. And it is simply a fact that the more facetime you have with people, the more trust will be built and the better your partnership will be. The more effort you put into them the more you will get out of them. We just need to get our heads around the fact that such partnerships will involve that sort of work.