SoulMATES: Friendship, But Not As We Know It

My church is part of a family of churches called ChristCentral, which sits within the wider Newfrontiers family. One of the distinctives of ChristCentral churches is that we’re called to be “friends together.”

Now, I’ll be honest, that can sound a bit sickly sweet if we’re not careful. Like something embroidered onto a cushion in a Christian bookshop next to a mug that says, “Too blessed to be stressed,” almost exclusively owned by someone who is visibly stressed.

But “friends together” isn’t just a nice slogan. It’s not a networking strategy with a Bible verse stapled to it. It’s not simply church leaders saying, “We can achieve more if we pool our resources, share a PA system, and occasionally borrow each other’s folding chairs.”

There’s truth in the old saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” But Christian friendship goes deeper than efficiency. It’s not just about getting more done. It’s about becoming more like Jesus.

The Friendship Your Soul Needs

Our culture has made the word “soulmate” almost entirely romantic. We imagine one perfect person who completes us, understands us, laughs at our jokes, tolerates our weirdness, and somehow knows exactly what we want from the Chinese takeaway without needing a 45-minute committee meeting.

But maybe we need to recover another way of thinking about soulmates. Not just one romantic soulmate, but SoulMATES: godly friends who know us deeply, hold us before God in prayer, love us honestly, and help us follow Jesus faithfully.

There’s an old phrase from Celtic Christianity: anam cara. It means “soul friend.” Not just someone you have a laugh with. Not just someone who likes the same music, supports the same football team, or also refers to olives as Satan’s grapes (disgusting things!). A soul friend is someone who helps you pay attention to your own soul before God.

That kind of friendship isn’t shallow or accidental. It’s not built on the occasional thumbs-up emoji and liking each other’s holiday photos. It’s intentional, honest, prayerful, sometimes comforting, sometimes challenging, and occasionally irritating in exactly the way you need.

Because a true friend doesn’t just flatter you. They help form you.

Friendship Is Biblical

Scripture gives us a far deeper picture of friendship than the thin, disposable version we often settle for. Jonathan’s soul was bound to David’s. Ruth clung to Naomi with covenant loyalty. Paul’s letters are full of names, greetings, tears, affection, partnership and longing. His ministry wasn’t a one-man spiritual roadshow. It was deeply relational.

Then we come to Jesus. He had crowds around him, but he also had friends. He ate with people, walked with people, wept with people, and let people close enough to misunderstand him, frustrate him, abandon him, and still be loved by him. In John 15, he says to his disciples, “I have called you friends.” Even amongst the 12 disciples, he had a particular closeness with Peter, James and John.

The Son of God didn’t show us friendship as a nice extra for people with spare evenings and decent banter. He dignified it. He modelled it. He made real, deep friendship part of discipleship.

From the beginning, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Yes, that verse sits in the context of marriage, but the principle runs wider than marriage. We’re not self-contained spiritual microwaves, able to heat ourselves up from the inside with enough quiet times and worship playlists on Spotify. We need God, and after God, we need each other.

Proverbs says, “A friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17), that “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), and that there’s a friend who “sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Biblical friendship carries weight. It’s one of the ways God steadies his people.

Friendship Is Missional

Friendship is also missionally important. Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Not if you have the slickest website, the punchiest sermons, the nicest church building, or the best community projects.

The watching world is meant to see something different in the way Christians love one another. Not plastic smiles. Not forced friendliness. But genuine love, deep loyalty, honest forgiveness, and friendships that cross the social boundaries of age, background, class, personality and life stage.

In a lonely, disposable, hyper-individualised world, Christian friendship can become a living apologetic. Not an argument shouted at people, but a community that quietly says, “There is another way to be human.”

People are rarely loved into the kingdom by programmes alone. Programmes can help. Events can serve. Courses can explain. But often, people are drawn in because someone made room at the table, remembered their name, noticed their absence, sent the text, invited them again, and loved them without making them feel like a project with shoes on.

Friendship Forms Disciples

Friendship is also crucial for discipleship, because we don’t grow well in isolation. Left entirely to ourselves, most of us become either too hard on ourselves or far too impressed with ourselves. We need people who encourage us when we’re weary, challenge us when we’re drifting, comfort us when we’re hurting, and occasionally tell us, with great love, that we’re being a bit of a prat!

Hebrews tells us to spur one another on towards love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24–25). Galatians tells us to carry one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). James tells us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another (James 5:16). These aren’t abstract ideas. They require actual people, actual trust, actual vulnerability, and actual commitment.

You cannot “one another” yourself.

A SoulMATE doesn’t replace Jesus. They point us to him. They’re not our saviour, therapist, conscience, pastor and emotional support golden retriever rolled into one exhausted human being. But a true Christian friend can help us keep walking towards Jesus when our own legs feel tired.

Not Every Friendship Needs To Be Intense

Now, before this gets too intense, not every friendship has to operate at maximum spiritual depth all the time.

Nobody wants to hang out with the guy who turns, “How was your weekend?” into a three-part teaching series on the existential loneliness of modern man. Sometimes friendship is laughing until your face hurts, eating food you probably shouldn’t, talking nonsense, and sending stupid memes that would make no sense to anyone else.

That isn’t shallow. It’s human.

Not every friendship needs to be intense, but some friendships need to be intentional. We only have so much time, energy and emotional capacity, so wisdom means recognising that not everyone is a suitable soul friend. Some people are lovely, but not safe. Some people are fun, but not faithful. Some people may be good acquaintances without being the people we should entrust with our deepest wounds, temptations, fears and questions.

Be as careful with your own heart as you’d want your soul friend to be with theirs.

Distance Doesn’t Always Break Depth

I’ve been blessed with a number of friendships I’d describe as anam cara friendships. Some are with people I see every week. Others are with friends I made as a kid in church youth group, people I grew up with and now consider closer to brothers and sisters than simply friends.

Sometimes months go by without much direct contact. Sometimes, if I’m honest, it can be years. But then we see each other again, and somehow we never miss a beat.

There’s no awkward rebuilding project. No emotional scaffolding. We just pick up where we left off, because underneath the friendship there’s something deeper than convenience. There’s history, trust, prayer, shared faith, and a foundation of godly brotherhood and sisterhood.

That’s one of the beautiful things about soul friendship. It isn’t destroyed by distance.

Of course, anam cara friendship is something we should seek intentionally in everyday life. We need people near us, people who see us regularly enough to notice when we’re drifting, hiding, struggling or slowly becoming a bit of a muppet. But soul friends don’t stop being soul friends just because life moves us in different directions.

Soul Friends, Not Should Friends

Some friendships are soul friendships. Others become “should friendships,” the ones we maintain mainly because we feel guilty we haven’t messaged, met up, or replied to that voice note from three months ago, which is now staring at us like a tiny digital judgement.

That doesn’t mean we discard people casually. Christian love isn’t flimsy. But it does mean we stop pretending every friendship carries the same weight, depth or calling.

Not everyone will be a SoulMATE. Not everyone should be. But we should all be asking God to make us the kind of people who love deeply, walk faithfully, speak truth gently, carry burdens wisely, and point our friends back to Jesus.

Because friendship is deeper than we think.

It’s biblical. It’s missional. It’s formational.

And in the hands of God, it’s one of the quiet ways he keeps making disciples through our SoulMATES.

I encourage you, if there is someone in your life you have been thinking about as you read this, send them a message, tell them how significant their friendship is to you, get your diaries co-ordinated and intentionally love them as Christ loves the church!