SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to the Build a Church podcast where we help you gain momentum, grow your church, and go the distance in ministry. I'm Josh Robrie. This episode is one of the easiest ones I've ever recorded because I'm talking with Pastor Wayne Francis on how to make a friend with anyone. Isolation is such a huge issue in the church and especially among pastors. And I know this episode is going to help you with some strategies to figure that out and be more intentional and get more meaning out of your relationship. So I'm really, really excited to talk with Pastor Wayne. He's a pastor of Life Church in New York. He's also the chaplain of the Brooklyn Nets. He's an author and he hosts the podcast, Leadership in Black and White, with Pastor John Steely. On top of all those things, if you've ever been around Wayne, he literally is one of the friendliest people you will ever meet. So we're going to jump into that episode in just a second. But before we do, I want to let you know that it's brought to you by your team.church. Your team.church is the assessment app that helps you place every team member where they thrive by giving you a unique URL for your church, for your members to go through an assessment process that matches them to a team based on their personality. So it doesn't just give you a personality test and it doesn't just show you the teams, but it shows what life is like for each personality on that team. So if you haven't tried it out yet, you get 30 days for free at your team.church. Go check it out. I think it can be a help to you. Now let's jump into our conversation with Pastor Wayne Francis. Man, I'm so pumped to talk to you about this topic, your book, Make Friends with Anyone. When I saw the title on Instagram, I just thought to myself, there's not a better person in the world to write this book than you. Oh, that's cool. Thank you. That's flattering. Yeah, you know, there's just certain people you're around, and really I I can only think of one other person. And maybe Pastor Dino would be in this category too. Chad Beach would be the other one. Where it's like every time I'm around them, they are just friends with everyone. The EQ is just off the charts. And so I really think you found the right book to write.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Thank you. I'm I'm very proud of it. It feels like uh, for at least the book that I have singularly authored, the right one to debut.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

So yes, and everyone that knows you would know that you're the right person to talk about this topic. Uh, but you're a pastor in New York City, Life Church in New York, author, you host an amazing podcast of Pastor John Siebling. And you also have a very interesting side job. Do you want to mention everybody what that is? Can you guess what I might be talking about?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Oh, I'm the chaplain for the Brooklyn Nets.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, pretty cool. And so uh this last season or summer, did you go over um Proverbs with them? Proverbs? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I did I did um a year on uh I I called it Proverbs, where we just went through um the a chapter of Proverbs every time and I kind of gave it a sports angle. So it was cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Man, I think that would be some uh good notes to share with some pastors. I'm sure they'd love to read that. Yeah, it's uh well, very cool. Well, we're gonna get into your book. Um, I can't wait to see how you bring this alive for pastors because I think this is a skill that pastors need. Sure. Um, because some pastors would say that most pastors would probably say they're good with people, but you kind of bring in some things about how to be intentional in your relationships that I think are gonna be really powerful for people. Plus, I have a problem-making friend that I'm gonna kind of bury right now as a as a lead in later on the conversation that I'm hoping you can kind of shed some light on through for people who had the same issue, gone through the same problem and maybe help them get better at making friends. But before we do, I want to give you some rapid fire questions. Would you be open to that? Oh, yeah, let's do it. I love those. Okay, really, really fast. Best slice of pizza in New York.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Um, Nick's pizza in Bronx in the Bronx on Gunhill Road. If you're in Manhattan, I think you got to do it by borrow. Um, if you're in Manhattan, um, I would probably say either Joe's or Prince Street pizza. If you're bougie, go to the industry.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Okay, awesome. Love that answer. Okay, coffee or tea before you preach.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Tea, Jamaican roots, man. You know, you have tea is like the elixir of life. You know, my grandmother, if you had you said, hey, I just got diagnosed with cancer, she'd be like, drink some tea.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

That's awesome. Okay, so you're stuck on the subway for an hour. Which Nets player do you want next to you?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Oh, you know, that is so funny. That you we just actually he he he got traded recently, but I would have probably said Jalen Wilson, he's um amazing and uh really loves the Lord and um is a is a great young man. He's gone on to Atlanta, but um, we still got some great guys. But Jalen, shout out Jalen.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Okay, awesome. Okay. One word classy would use to describe you after 25 years. Fun. Fun. I agree with that. Uh your daughters, they catch you dancing on IG stories. Are you proud or embarrassed?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Oh, they're so proud. They love their dad.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Okay. Um I hate I hate my answer for this question, and I wonder what yours is for you. Do you text back immediately, or are you more I'll respond in three to five business days?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I'm not a three to five business day, but I am uh I'll get to that guy.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, I think for me, sometimes I see something I want to be so thoughtful in my answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, that's me. That's me too. I'm right now like guilty of not responding to a couple of people that I want to, but I just don't like being trite. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Okay, and so making friends, is it a skill or is it something somebody's born with?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Um, it's both. It's a skill, but there are certain people that are born with more of a capacity to manage and make friendships. Wow, 100%. But everybody can grow their capacity to make friends.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Okay, so we're we're gonna jump into your book here, and I just can't wait to hear what you have to say on this topic. Make friends with anyone practicing God's design for real friendships in a lonely world. And whenever I went to see Spider-Man this weekend, I love Spider-Man movies, I love Marvel movies. It was such an emotionally charged movie because it the the basis of the movie is that everyone in the world has forgotten who Peter Parker is. They still remember Spider-Man, but they don't know Peter Parker. And man, what a great picture for pastors who know who you are publicly, but who knows you privately. And basically, the movie, the big struggle in the movie is how is he handling loneliness? And I watched this like breakdown of the movie where basically in the Marvel titles where you they normally show the characters kind of flash on the screen. As they show the scenes, Spider-Man is disappearing from the scenes. They remove notes from the music uh so that it sounds and is more lonely. And basically the movie is about this one guy, what isolation does to him, even though he has this great responsibility and he's really good at his job, but he's totally isolated and alone and how it begins to tear him apart. I could not help but to think about your book and how you probably address some of that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, isolation is a big issue. You know, the former Surgeon General Vivek Murphy said that isolation is an epidemic that is on par with a person that would probably smoke 15 packs of cigarettes a day. And so the implications of not being connected to other people actually has biophysical um implications. So it's a huge problem. And the truth is, you know, we've we're more connected um than ever, but connection um doesn't mean that we are actually having authentic uh relationships with one another. We're digitally connected, we're relationally distant.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

So you sat down one day and you decided to start writing this book. Where did it come from?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

It actually came from people always like would say things like, you know, I threw my birthday party and there was like 240 people there, and and people always like, dude, like everybody feels like they're your best friend. And there's times where people feel like that's a bad thing, and then there's other times where people are like, that's awesome. How do you have so much capacity to um have so many close friends? And that's what spurred the idea to a certain degree. I always loved making friends because I'm just naturally curious about humans, but I would tell people, well, I know where everybody fits in my life. And and they're like, What do you mean? I'm like, I have a stratification for how my relationships work. Jesus did, and I have one too. And um, I remember sitting on uh this was a true napkin kind of conversation where I only had two or three pieces together, and then I was sitting with a friend and I wrote it on a napkin here in Westchester, and I was like, dude, I I gotta I gotta put this in a book. And that's where it started. It started with the rubric that I talk about in the book for stratification of friendships. So what is that rubric? All right, there's five levels of friendship. Um, and then I guess I could explain Jesus' later, but I'll explain.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

No, it's jumping to him later. You probably start with him in the book.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I do start with him in the book. But um, I think there's five levels of friendship. The first level is sunbaters. Sunbathers are people that you meet on the surface level. It's the person that you sit next to on a plane or that you're standing in line in front of a barista about to order a coffee or maybe at the bus stop. It's just hi, hello, casual exchange. It's surface level. The problem is if you stay at the sunbather level too long, you know this and I know this, you get sunburned, right? Or you get exhausted. Um, the next level is a surfer. A surfer is somebody that kind of moves into your life, but then they also recede with the season of life. And so these are people that you might say, oh yeah, man, we're we're good friends. We just pick up where we left off. That's a surfer relationship. They could come in at times where there's a difficulty or a challenge, or when you need wisdom, or when you need some whimsy in your life, they could come in, but they don't stay there very constant. They they move in and they move out at with the tide of life or season. The third level is a snorkeler. A snorkeler is a person that will get below the surface. They'll get, you know, um, a little bit more personal, and you can look at things together, but you're not going deep. But it is a relationship that most people stay at. The level, um, and I'll talk to you a little bit later about an AI tool of sorts, uh, a relational um uh tool that I made so you could discern what your your your natural position is toward friendship, and you can see where you land on this rubric. Um, but you know, you go from a surfer to a snorkeler, a snorkeler is just gonna kind of hover a little bit, but you're not gonna get too close. And this is where many men in particular might enjoy friendship. The next level is a scuba diver. A scuba diver is a very intense relationship. This is your boy, this is your tribe, this is the the the the people that you are going deep with. And what's so interesting about it is that when you if you decided to pull out of this relationship too fast, you you'd get the bins, you know. It's like we can't pull out of this, but it requires a totally different level of apparatus. There's tools, there's a face mask, and there's uh some metaphors that are breaked down in the book so that people can know there's an air tank, there's different things that you need to have a scuba relationship, but the deepest level of friendship, I think you can see where I'm going, is a submarine. And I'm a pastor, so I have to use a lot of alliteration just to remember this stuff. But submarine level relationships are the deepest. It's where you know you go into the dark places, it's where you have what I call a vulnerability hangover. You tell people there's actually another phrase that I like to use where you have mutual destruction. You give yourself over to the places of your soul that somebody um knows you and you know them. But the beautiful thing about a submarine level relationship, it's not always deep. The beautiful thing about submarines is that they can go to all the levels, right? You can surf at the top and just coast, but you could go a little bit deep. You could skim. And so those are the five levels of relationships I talk about in the book.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Genius. Love it. Thank you. Never heard of anything like that in my life. Such fun words to describe, and they're so accurate. Did you come up with all of that on the napkin? I did. I can't believe it. You're a great preacher. I did. I mean, that's what we expect preachers to do, and you're gonna be a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

I should have saved the napkin, though, man. I'm like, why didn't I save the napkin? I could have put it in a frame.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, you would have put that in a frame and be hanging. You could just walk it down to the uh to the MoMA or something and put that thing up. That is awesome, man. I love that. And one of the things you mentioned in there, and there's so many questions, uh, but the vulnerability hangover, could you talk a little bit about what that is? Because, you know, I guess one of the things I'm wondering is there's there's sometimes you can be too vulnerable.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Most people give vulnerability to the wrong places. So for the premise of my Rubik and the book would be don't give submarine access to a sunbather. Um they haven't earned it yet, they haven't waded into the waters with you. You need to go there. And sometimes we get vulnerable with the wrong people. But uh a vulnerability hangover is like, you know, when you say something to somebody that you're worried that they could leave your life because they you've shown something, maybe a despicable part of you. It's like my buddy Jonathan Moynihan, um, you know, he he says something interesting. He's like, a vulnerability hangover is fascinating. He's like, you know, if you admit to somebody you watch porn, it's more like, well, what kind of porn do you watch? You go to the next level, right? It's not just um the surface level thing. It's a thing that you you you're like, ooh, the emotional nudity will make you um feel like I don't know if I should have said that. I or or you have the feeling of, man, I might have regretted saying that. And the only thing that's gonna make you keep going is if you stay in the submarine together.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

And another thing that you mentioned there was like the surfer, and it reminded me of like when I was in college, um, I I felt like my friendships almost revolved around who had the same schedule as me, you know? Yeah. Because we were available to be around. So, like what what part does those external environments uh play in making friendship or the depth of it? Because it seems like the next semester would come and people I thought were maybe like my best friend, I never even saw anymore. Yeah. And what is that, what is that telling us about friendship and relationships?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Well, our calendars are our best preachers because our calendars actually preach to us what our values are and what you value, you make time for. So I don't believe that people really value friendship if it's not intentionally etched into their calendar. Um, the whole idea of just like, man, we haven't seen each other, but we're boys and we're best friends, or man, that's you know, my my best girlfriend or whatnot is false if there are no intentional rhythms. Life has a rhythm that we have to everything that is spiritual formation uh requires discipline. And so friendship is spiritually formative. So the way I like to, and one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book was because I believe that Jesus elevated a theology of friendship. So much so there's no other religion in the world that has the the ethos of friendship baked into it. And in the book, the first chapter is about the theology of friendship because the trinity there's always been friendship, it's eternal because the trinity has always been in perfect relationship. Father, son, and holy spirit. There's always been that thing. We are formed in the image of God, and so that means we can't enjoy the best of God without enjoying the best and the worst of each other. It's impossible. So when people don't say, I don't need the church or whatever, and it's not you it's not in your schedule, it's false.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

One of the things that I think of a lot of times is you can't believe in God and not believe in people. Oh because you you know, you can't say, Oh, I have faith in God, but I don't have faith in people. Well, who's who's who created those people? You know, who's inside of them, who's operating in them? And a lot of times that r reveals your wound and your hurt if you're not willing to do that and and make that time for them, which brings me to my lead that I buried at the beginning. And when I see someone like you, which you make me feel like I'm your best friend every time I'm around you, like Wayne, I'm surprised you have other friends than me, you know? And uh, because you just you just have that way about you and you you make me feel better. You showing like to me makes me feel better about myself. Honestly, it does. And so I wonder what you'd say to someone like this. Because I was talking to a friend recently who was dealing with this, and I see sometimes even in in our in the most intimate relationships, this can be an issue, and that is when people make you feel vulnerable by maybe showing that they like you, it seems to be a tendency sometimes is to close up and not accept that because you don't want to make that space you know open to hurt. And then the other thing is that you know, I don't I'm so focused on being real and authentic. I love really deep conversations. I sometimes struggle with that, you know, surfer, sunbather level that I almost don't let people know that I like them because I'm unwilling to say, like in the ministry world a lot, we say I love you a lot. You know, men say it to each other. And sometimes when a guy, I'm like, Do you love me? Or are you just like I start to wonder that a little bit? So what would you say to that person to maybe help them make more friends?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

I would say anybody that is overcalculating about relationships will always be a person that's stunted in their relational capacity. Overthinking is the the poison that kills friendships. You you have to be open and you have to take risks and you have to be willing to be hurt and you have to be willing to be cynical at times, but always taking the risk to move deeper into relationships without overthinking it.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Man, so good. I'm doing my best to try not to talk over you with excitement over all these zeners that you're laying on me right now. It's so good. So good. Okay, so you mentioned the theology of friendship and broke that down a little bit, but you also talked about the model of friendship to Jesus, that that's you talk about that. What is the model that he gave us to maybe talk a little bit more about what that is?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, this is just my alliterative way of looking at things and and so on. I think Jesus had a bunch of people that he gave parables to, right? You could say that number was like 120 to 72, people that he told stories that he pointed people to. They were relationally loose, but they had proximity. Then I think that there were some people that Jesus um gave passwords to. He was a little bit more insightful on this is how the kingdom of God works. Here's some ways that you can understand there was a higher level of intimacy. There were three that he gave his presence to, and he allowed them to see him transform. Um, he was on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John seemed to have a different level of access to Jesus, and they had his presence in a different way. But there's only one that got his pectoral, and that was the disciple that Jesus loved that got to lay his head on his chest. And I think that's how life can work, right? There's these levels. And in there, there was also a pariah, really a social outcast. There was somebody that he, Judas, who he kept around even though he knew the intentions of his heart. He called him a friend even after he was betrayed. And that's a tension point that I think, you know, we try to address, we don't address enough, is that there are some people that are fringe that at some point or another they will self-identify. But what we need to do is to make sure that we maintain our hearts in the right place so that we can react to our betrayals in the way that the Son of God did. Not without hurt, but with the right posture.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

If someone isn't taking this book and making it a series for their church, young adult ministry or youth ministry, you are just missing out. This is so, so good. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, and there there are pariahs, there are Judases. And in your book, you talk about sometimes you have to break those off. So how does someone because and the other part of us is as a Christian, you know, I think someone called it like unhealthy empathy. You know, we just keep or toxic empathy. You know, we just kind of keep things around, but it's it's not really good for either one. So how do you know when when to make that shift?

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, I think the beautiful thing is that we can actually root this in biblical examples. So I was having a conversation with a friend. Um, shout out to one of the art church planners, Mark Johnston. Mark Johnston and I are really good friends, and I was lamenting over a relationship that was going awry, and I was talking to him about it on several several times. He changed my life with one sentence, and I included in the book. And he said, Wayne, stop giving people a story that only deserve a sentence. Now, this is a big deal because we can root this in scripture. Demas must have done something really bad to Paul, but Paul gives him one sentence. Demas has forsaken me because he loved this present world. He didn't write an epistle, he didn't write a whole chapter. Think about in the book of Acts, we find out about Alexander the Coppersmith. He has one sentence. Alexander the Coppersmith has done me much harm. May the Lord repay him. I think sometimes we need to set healthy boundaries with conversations with people. There was uh, you know, times where he had to separate himself from even John Mark, right? We we talk about these things. I think Christians, since Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend started talking about these boundaries, we still haven't implemented one sentence, great ways to deal with some of the challenges that we face with people. Don't give people a story that deserves a sentence. Sometimes it's as succinct as yeah, you you you've done something that right now, this is where we have to pause.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Wow, that's great. Uh you know, the thought I was thinking about today was when we don't forget people that hurt us, we allow them to continue to have control over us. But the quicker you move on, the best revenge is is a life well lived. It's not tearing somebody else down. And that's that's a great point. So you mentioned boundaries there too, which you know, the book Boundaries really changed my life. I didn't get a hold of it until probably You know, way too late after I've already kind of lived a life of unhealthy boundaries. And now like I'm I'm convinced, you know, and just have lived my life where I have strong boundaries in in most areas. And so I'd love for you to kind of break down how that can help a friendship and not hurt it by having boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah, it goes back to the honesty piece. Sometimes people think boundaries are, you know, these things that we put in place to just block people. There's a difference between a boundary and a barricade. Boundaries are should be more flexible and uh they're not permanent. And I think a lot of times we just don't get honest and say, this is how this affected me. A lot of times we have poor attachment styles, emotional attachment styles where we over-function for friends, we over-function for people, we're scared that somebody's gonna walk out of our lives. We're we're holding on to things that aren't healthy for us. And I think that the best thing to do is we have to develop a mentality of honesty. I think that sometimes Christians are the least honest emotionally. I'm not talking about deceiving people. I think we are afraid to tell people we're hurting or what I need or I don't want to come across as smothering or so on. And these are tools that we all have to work on. But in the absence of clarity, people fill in the blanks. And usually with worst-case scenarios. So what do we need to do as friends? We need to be clear with one another. Otherwise, we're just gonna fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

So you you wrote this book. It's obviously for everybody. Anyone can apply this. Um I'm just so excited, like the more I talk to you, the more excited I get. I'm about to like rocket out of this chair. I'm so pumped about this book. But you know, this podcast is mostly reaching pastors and people in ministry. So taking, you know, the principles from this book, like pitch this to a pastor. Why does he need this book and how can it help him?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Oh, como se dice pastors are the most isolated people on the planet. We rarely trust anybody, and the people that were around the most usually work for us. Um and so there's that thing where you know you can't cross the line, pastor can't, pastor can't be too honest around here, and pastor can't show his vulnerabilities. And if they're not people that work for us, they are people that we're afraid. Because here's the thing with pastors, and why I think this book would be useful for people, is that our jobs are so connected to what we say, right? And so if you have a a false confidant, right, and there are certain things that if you say to somebody, you should be disqualified from your your role, right? Like, but there are also things that all we do is have a reputation to uphold so that we can have the integrity. So if you're telling somebody that you're super depressed or that you had suicidal ideation, but you're still having to preach about joy and so on, friendship becomes a very scary thing. It is like stepping on just like a mind somewhere. So I believe that the problem is that pastors don't stratify correctly. And I don't think that they ordered relationships in their life the right way. And I think that they don't understand who to pull close and who to push away. And so everybody gets a sort of homogeneous approach to relationships. It's just like, I don't do, I don't do that, you know, or it's you're moving in the opposite direction. What we actually need is diversity, you need you need a stratification for you to have healthy relationships, and I think that's where the book helps the most because so many pastors are um alone. Alone. It's one of the mantras of arc, right? Like don't do ministry alone, and yet for all, it's the thing that we have to combat the most because ministry is lonely more than any other role that I can think of.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Man, that's good. And I love what you said about the stratification because I think sometimes pastors believe that the only solution is to just go deep. And it's not that, it's understanding. I heard one pastor kind of identify like what you said about stop giving people a story that only deserve a sentence, like identifying the people in your life that just need a sentence and just move on. Um super helpful. You mentioned an AI tool. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah, so along with this book, um, which you could pre-order now, um, along with this book, I I was very inspired by, I don't know if you've ever um read Mike Foster's book about a seven, the primal question. Yes, yes. And so I was so amazed by his assessment tool to find out what your primary question is. Mine happens to be, am I good enough? And so, which has been very, very helpful to me. Am I good enough in filtering the way I relate to people as friends, to you, to the congregants? So I decided to use the um content of my book and to work with an organization called Love and Lead to develop my own assessment tool, a free online personality friendship assessment tool that is based on this rubric of surfer to submarine. And when you take it, it's very brief. It'll take you about six minutes. It it also kind of has that sort of Enneagram flow because I'm hoping that this becomes a vocabulary that people start using. Like, dude, I'm a surfer, right? Like I don't do submarines, but that doesn't mean you won't have us, you know, a scuba diver friend or a um, you know, a snorkeler friend. It just means your natural disposition. And what I think is helpful about this is not only will you find out the tools about what makes up your friendship personality and why you may struggle going deeper, especially if you you know sign up to say, hey, Wayne, I want to learn more about how my personality can interact with the other levels and how I can make friendships. If I'm a surfer dude, how do I maximize my surfer capacity to make sure that I'm not missing out on other relationships? I think the tool helps you do that. But if you're a preacher, it'll also help you understand that every time you're preaching the gospel, somebody in your audience is a surfer, somebody needs to go deep, somebody just wants to snorkel, somebody wants to scuba. How do I speak to those people? A surfer is a person that may only come to church um three times a year. So, how can this message impact somebody that recedes and comes in? So now, even when I'm preaching, I'm looking at the different levels of how I could communicate to people. Um, and and think about this in a life group ecosystem. Every time you have a life group, there is somebody that is there that's like, I don't care how good the nachos and the salsa is, I ain't trying to go deep with somebody, this, and so how do we unpack these things so that we can learn from each other better?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, I could even see somebody like writing a message and trying to hit every one of those people in the audience, making sure that I'm hitting this person here, uh, which is a real strategic thing to do when you're preaching anyway. So I guess I you you have a link you can share with me that I can Yeah, I can get it out to you.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Um I could send it to you, you can put it in the show notes and stuff like that, and people could start to take that personality assessment. We're actually building, we built some uh ways in the background. It it's very simple. How you know how many males tend to be surfers versus females? You know, how many from this region? It's not gonna ask you a bunch of questions, it actually doesn't ask much, but that that's the next level of what I want to build it out for. As I think that this um uh this content really has, I believe, of course every author believes that, but really has the potential to open up some really great dinner conversations. I really want the personality assessment tool to be a dinner type of thing. You're going out on date night or you're with six or seven friends, like, yo, dude, I got this thing. I got you gotta take this personality assessment for friendship for and in eight minutes, you're like, oh my gosh, I thought I was a submariner. I'm actually a snorkel. What is up with that? And it just opens up this conversation and lets you know a lot about your personality type as it relates to friendship.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

So you said you're a surfer?

SPEAKER_01 29:51

No, my natural, my natural disposition is to be a scuba diver. I like deep, but I think I would have I actually thought I would have been a submariner, but I think that there's parts of me that are still holding on to trying to figure out who actually gets that access. As a 51-year-old male now, that access is extremely limited. But my personality, my disposition is to go deep. I I I'm not, I I want to go deep.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, I'd be surprised if I'm not a submarine, but maybe I want to be surprised and you know, need to take the test, see what happens. Yes, sir. Well, this has been a great conversation. I can't remember the last time I recorded an episode where I was just pumped, just fired up. You know, you're the right person for this book. I think it's gonna help a lot of people. Just maybe give us uh a little advice. Like, hey, struggling, struggling with making friends, or you feel like you're not connecting with people the way you want to, but you do care about people more than maybe you feel like they they're able to recognize in you. What's the first step you would give people?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

You know, first off, be easy on yourself, right? Like there could be also this kind of angsty thing to make your friends with anyone should be fun and it should be life-giving, and it should be something that you recognize as a need. And I think if you're a follower of Jesus, that you have to realize that you are wired this way. Um there's no sin in the world, everything's great, and God still looks at what he created and says it's not good for him to be alone. Well, like we're gonna have to do something about it. So our relational ethos is uh is made to do this. So what I would encourage you to do is one of the big I've been doing men on the street interviews, and this is so shocking. I can't wait for you to see this on Instagram. Some of these realms walking up to people on the streets like, hey, when's the last time you made a new friend? And people are like, I don't know. We are so comfortable without making new friends, and I think that the goal is one friend a year is a great way to start off. It says, I'm gonna make a new friend this year, and I'm not trying to make a new best friend, I'm trying to make a new friend, and that's where you start.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Wayne, I want you to add the final word on this episode, like I always do, but I just couldn't help but to think about the fact that my belief is most people want you to be their friend. Yeah. And having that perspective, like it's very rare to me that I try to I start a new relationship with someone, new friendship, new conversation, and they're like, ugh, and if they are, it's like that's kind of on them. You know, I I feel like most people will look forward to you reaching out. So maybe don't assume that people don't want you to reach out to them and and start a friendship.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Exactly. You know, don't be presumptuous and don't answer for people. In the absence of clarity, don't fill in your own blanks. Just and you gotta to make friends, you have to be okay without getting reciprocity. Like you you gotta work on your whole rejection piece. You know, it's like, oh, they didn't want that from me. You know, like so I'm talking to you right now, I'm extremely endeared towards you. Like, I'm like, man, I I wish I was sitting in that chair behind you, and you know, me and you were talking because you have such an um an inviting type of presence to you, right? And you're curious. That's the key to making friends with anyone, by the way. You need curiosity. If you're not curious, a relationship is always gonna end. But um, it's about making a new friend, not a best friend.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Love it. That's a great way to end this episode. Thank you so much. Can't wait for your book to come out and all the stories that are gonna come from it.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

I don't know if you could tell how excited I was to have that conversation with Pastor Wayne Francis, but I was really enjoying myself. And hopefully you got a lot out of it too. He's such a fun guy, so easy to listen to. I want you to go check out his book, How to Make Friends with Anyone. It's available on September 22nd. There'll be a link to order it in the show notes as well as to take his assessment, which I think is going to be such a fun assessment for people to take to help them understand what level of friendship they're operating under. And I'll also give you ways to follow him and keep in touch with him in case you want to reach out to him yourself. So hopefully that'll help you make some more friends. Hopefully, it'll help you be vulnerable with the right people. And as pastors, um, help us be more intentional and enjoy our relationships even more. So, again, this episode was brought to you by your team.church, a digital assessment that helps you match volunteers to the right team based on their personality with a custom URL with your church's branding, colors, and design. Right now, you can get the Pro Tier for free for 30 days at your team.church. So go check it out. Also, again, I want to thank our guest today, Pastor Wayne Francis. And I want to thank you. Thank you for joining me each week. That's the best thing you can do is keep showing up. The second best thing you can do is go subscribe wherever you get your podcast. You don't know how much that means to this show to have you as a subscriber. We'd love for you to do that. It means so much. So thank you for taking a second and doing that. Until next time, keep building and believing strong.