Pastors need to pursue friendship, if not as a guard for the gospel, but for their own souls.
Having survived the first ten years of ministry, I have found that pastors need friendship. Friendship has been a grace of God to settle my soul and refocus my mind in the trenches. I have also observed that going rogue is more likely to result in desertion from duty, or worse, a dishonorable discharge.
The pitfalls in ministry have been well-documented and sadly portrayed throughout media to remind us of the fallibility of evangelical leaders. Yet, no matter how high or low the profile, shared experience with other soldiers can be a guardrail for the soul. At its root, friendship is a selfless and joyous harmony among equals. Friendship is a humble discourse of souls in a perilous journey.
C. S. Lewis observed in The Four Loves that “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.” Friendship is a value of incalculable benefit shared between two human souls.
Many know of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), but sadly, few know of his son and namesake, Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745–1801). Each in their own generation faced opposition over the gospel, and each found that friendship gave rich value to survival.
Perilous Parallels between Father and Son
The younger Edwards’s life and death had a surprising and eerie similarity with his father. Both older and younger were
- Scholars exhibiting great piety in their youth
- Tutors for equal period of time at their respective colleges (Yale and Princeton)
- Settled ministers in the church of their maternal grandfathers (Northampton, MA and New Haven, CT)
- Dismissed for controversy over the half-way covenant
- Resettled in remote places (Stockbridge, MA and Colebrook, CT)
- College presidents (Princeton, NJ and Union College, NY)
- Died shortly after inauguration
- Preached a New Year’s sermon in the year of their death, entitled, “This Year Thou Shalt Die.”[1]
Edwards Sr. found John Erskine (1721–1803) in the British Isles to be the kind of friend who might buoy him amidst the controversies of the First Great Awakening era. Edwards Jr. would also follow his father in seeking intellectual intimacy with other men in ministry. Yet, there are some dissimilarities. In particular, Edwards Jr. began his ministry in the fire of controversy; while Edwards Sr. began in the peaceful shadow of his grandfather. Yet Edwards Sr. and Jr. both discovered that pastors need friendship through similar controversy.
Two Churches Under One Roof
Edwards Jr. inherited a raucous and divided ministry in New Haven a few months before his twenty-fourth birthday. Sixty-eight subscribers opposed to his installation presented a petition to the White Haven deacons requesting another candidate. Instead of forestalling installation, the deacons pushed through, even poking the disgruntles in the eye. A month before Edwards Jr.’s installation the church set aside the faction’s preferred half-way covenant. Most seminaries today would have advised against entering a ministry with such apparent division in play; however, Edwards Jr. gladly accepted the invitation to settle.
With the confidence of his mentor Joseph Bellamy (1717–1790) and the powerful ally and Founding Father Roger Sherman (1721–1793) Edwards began to preach in January 1769. In subsequent months of failed negotiation, an exodus of about two hundred left to start a rival church. With youthful zeal, Edwards Jr. preached to his remaining congregation of about five hundred. To the best of his ability, he sowed the seeds of true religion. Yet, with an unsettled flock, pastors need a true friendship they can turn to when they are uncertain who is a sheep or a wolf.
The Loss of His Beloved Polly
After this unsettled first year of ministry, Edwards Jr. pursued companionship through marriage, even as his church was trying to find its footing. Five years earlier, Edwards Jr. had met Mary Porter in the congregation of Samuel Hopkins during a brief time of mentoring. Mary, whom he affectionately called Miss Polly in his letters, would be his “bosom friend.” A few weeks before his marriage in the fall of 1770, he wrote these words to Miss Polly:
But I write to let you know that I neither have nor can forget you. How often, do my thoughts recur to her, whose esteem at least, I hope I have gained, & whom ere long I hope to embrace as my bosom friend. O How tedious is the time! […] Patience in other things is a virtue. But can it be a virtue in such a case as this?[2]
With the flare of Jane Austin, Mary replied to her betrothed:
Dear Sir I am not ashamed to own, that I am yours—what tho the sacred ceremony is not past; that it is true [it] can bind us more closely together—but the want of it cannot part us […] Your affectionate friend, Mary Porter[3]
Through the first decade of marriage together, they would weather pastoral disappointments, grieve over the death of Jonathan Edwards III (ca. 1775), and endure the early stages of Revolution.
Nevertheless, at the highwater mark of Edwards Jr.’s New Haven ministry in 1782, he lost his beloved to a heart-rending carriage accident. On a hot day at the end of June, she took pity upon her horse, and not judging the depth of water allowed the horse to descend into a pond. Losing balance, she struck her head and drowned. The town was deeply affected. Hers was the largest funeral assembly in memory.
Finding Intellectual Intimacy through Friendship
C. S. Lewis recognized that “Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Friendship among pastors encourage a pursuit of the gospel.
Bereaved of his wife, Edwards Jr. was graced with another marriage to Miss Mercy Sabin; however, the remainder of his time in New Haven would require a strong theological fellowship to weather the storms of the universalist heresy which ravishing his flock and controversy over the half-way covenant. To keep Edwards Jr.’s soul within the guardrails of the gospel, he proposed an intellectual friendship to John Rylands Jr. (1753–1825) by letter in 1785.
Spurred by the gift of two printed sermons of Rylands Jr. from his father’s friend John Erskine, Edwards Jr. sent a letter, as a feeler, to see if there might be a possible connection.
[H]aving long wished there may be as extensive an acquaintance, & as frequent & friendly an intercourse, as possible, among the friends to real Christianity & to the peculiar doctrines of free grace; I at once determined to seek an acquaintance, by epistolary correspondence, with Mr. Ryland Junr. […] I wish for such a correspondence as may instruct & quicken us both as Christians & as ministers.[4]
While Rylands Jr. would be very close to Andrew Fuller, he made room for new friendships. To Edwards Jr.’s pleasure, over the next sixteen years, both men would correspond on topics of significance to the evangelical Calvinist cause. Edwards Jr. would also be a gift of grace to Rylands Jr. who had also lost his beloved wife of seven years to illness. Both pastors needed friendship. Edwards wrote in a follow-up letter:
Dear Sir, as you are so kind, as to remember me in your prayers, for wh I sincerely thank you, & hope God may hear & answer you add to your kindness, by praying sometimes for my poor children, “by nature children of wrath,” that your son & mine may live; walk in the paths of heavenly wisdom, & correspond on the subjects of piety & immortality; is the subject of my ardent wish & prayer.—Your affliction in the loss of Mrs. Ryland is truly affecting! As you mention my “former affliction,” I suppose you have heard, tho I know not how, of my peculiar trial, in the loss of a most amiable comfort. She was accidently drowned. A most surprising & afflicting scene! So that you see, I can feel for you.[5]
Pursue Friendship
Fellow Pastor, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. Friendship may be that way of escape for pastors. Many in church history have found friendship to be the key to survival in ministry. John Owen had a John Bunyan. Martin Luther had a Philip Melanchthon. John Calvin had William Farel. Even though separated by miles of ocean and slow mail service, God gave Edwards Jr. a Rylands Jr. to spur him through the challenges of pastoral ministry. Rylands Jr. was to Edwards Jr. as Hopeful was to Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress. No journey could be more perilous than gospel ministry. Who do you have? Whom could you befriend? Pastors need friendship.
[1] Samuel William Southmayd Dutton, The History of the North Church in New Haven: From Its Formation in May 1742, During the Great Awakening, to the Completion of the Century in May 1842: In Three Sermons (New Haven, CT: A. H. Maltby, 1842), 75.
[2]Jonathan Edwards Jr. LST Mary Porter, July 25, 1770, Series V. Edwards Family Correspondence. Edwards, Jonathan, 1745-1801. Outgoing letters. Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University (MS151, Box 26, Folder 1423).
[3]Mary Porter LST Jonathan Edwards Jr, September 23, 1770, Series V. Edwards Family Correspondence. Edwards, Jonathan, 1745-1801. Incoming letters. Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University (MS151, Box 26, Folder 1439).
[4] Jonathan Edwards Jr. LST John Ryland, Jr. May 28, 1785. Edwards Family Correspondence, Jonathan Edwards 1745-1801 Outgoing Letters. Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University (GEN MSS 152 Box 1, Folder 2).
[5]Jonathan Edwards Jr. LST John Ryland, Jr. October 2, 1787. Edwards Family Correspondence, Jonathan Edwards 1745-1801 Outgoing Letters. Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University (GEN MSS 152 Box 1, Folder 3).