Thinking Little is what Jesus did when he spent his first thirty years in quiet, obscurity, obeying his parents in Nazareth. It’s why he spent his three-year ministry training 12 disciples, and confined himself to a small area, in order to change the world. 

In 1970, the author Wendell Berry wrote an essay called “Think Little”. He argues that in order to sustain the Green Movement over the long-term, it can’t just be something we expect Big Thinkers in government to fix. It’s got to be dealt with by personal change in how we live. “For most of the history of this country [the USA] our motto, implied or spoken, has been Think Big. A better motto, and an essential one now, is Think Little”. P.54. By Think Little, he means we need to stop hiding behind general, vague slogans, and get specific. We need to build our marriages, care for a garden, and switch the lights off. There’s nothing Christian about the essay. But I love the basic idea.
“Don’t Think Big. Think Little.” I wish Christians would adopt this mindset.
This doesn’t sound obvious, at first, does it? As Christians, we have all kinds of reasons to Think Big. Our God is Big, after all. Isaiah tells us “the nations are like a drop from a bucket” to him (Isa 40:15). The Great Commission is Big; Jesus sends us out to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). The consequences are Big—people will spend an eternity in heaven and hell depending on how they respond to Jesus (John 3:16). Therefore, having big ambitions for Christ’s kingdom seems only natural. Surely, we want the little mustard seed to grow big (Matt 13:31-32)? Jesus is Saviour of the world (John 4:42).
But it’s precisely at this point that the danger of Thinking Big appears. It gets very hard to disentangle our promotion of Christ from self-promotion. Every Christian ministry knows this, if they’re honest. It’s scary how building platforms and “brand” have become part and parcel of our thinking. We feel the pull of the internet, and the size and scale of the audience it offers (especially among the young), and we’d love to harness it for Jesus Christ. But before we know it, our well-meant enthusiasm gets sucked into the hype of Big Thinking. Fads and bandwagons periodically roll through the Christian church. So-and-so becomes “the Next Big Thing”. The Think Big slogan doesn’t fit very well with the spirit of John the Baptist, who said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
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Having seven questions each with five levels of depth can sound mechanical. You don’t build friendships like you stack Legos following the instructions to create what’s on the cover of the box. The seven questions are intended to help you to always have something to talk about. The five levels are meant to help you identify what area of a friendship is least developed and allow you to be intentional. If you have that level of awareness, go with where the conversation takes you.

Building meaningful friendships can be difficult, especially in a culture that is lonelier and more disconnected than ever. In Transformative Friendships: 7 Questions to Deepen Any Relationship, counselor Brad Hambrick encourages readers to develop new rhythms, habits, and lifestyles that will shape and grow their relationships, both with casual acquaintances and closer friends.
In this interview, we talk to Brad about the importance of building friendships and how doing so can transform your life.
Q: TRANSFORMATIVE FRIENDSHIPS EXPLORES SEVEN QUESTIONS THAT YOU BELIEVE CAN DEEPEN ANY RELATIONSHIP. WHAT ARE THOSE SEVEN QUESTIONS?
Hopefully, it’s not intimidating to imagine yourself asking a friend these questions or being asked them by a friend. In Transformative Friendships, we unpack how these simple questions can transform casual acquaintances into “iron sharpens iron” friendships that become dearer than family (Proverbs 27:17).

What’s your story?
What’s good?
What’s hard?
What’s bad?
What’s fun?
What’s stuck?
What’s next?

Q: THREE OF THESE QUESTIONS SEEM TO LINK TOGETHER—WHAT’S GOOD? WHAT’S HARD? WHAT’S BAD? WHY ARE EACH OF THESE QUESTIONS IMPORTANT AND HOW DO THEY EACH HELP IN DEEPENING OUR FRIENDSHIPS?
From a Christian perspective, this invites us to explore our identity in Christ (what’s good), suffering (what’s hard), and sin (what’s bad). In different Christian traditions, one of these questions may be emphasized more than the others. But if friendships are going to have a holistic and balanced influence on our life, then we need to emphasize all three.
Q: IS IT BETTER TO HAVE A FEW REALLY CLOSE FRIENDS OR MANY MORE CASUAL FRIENDS?
That’s a good question, but I think it’s better not to think in terms of either-or. There are benefits to having really close friendships, but if all our friendships were “deep” that would be exhausting and crowd out other life responsibilities. Casual friendships also enrich our life, but if all our friendships were “shallow” we would feel lonely in a socially crowded life.
One of the things I want to do in Transformative Friendships is help people see the value of both and learn how to be intentional in taking a few of their casual friendships to a deeper level.
Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FACTORS THAT MAKE HAVING GOOD FRIENDSHIPS HARDER THAN IT SHOULD BE?
This can vary from context to context. I currently live in a big city where people move in and out all the time. The frequency with which people move make friendships feel temporary. But I grew up in a small town where being vulnerable felt riskier because everyone there would know you for the rest of your life.
There is also the factor of social media. Social media allows us to polish our image as we post the best pictures and narrate them in our preferred way. Because of this lots of people know a lot about us, but we don’t really feel known. We put out curated information about ourselves, but that can impede cultivating an actual relationship because of the limited engagement. I’m not against social media. I just think we need to be more aware of how it impacts who we call a “friend.”
Q: AS YOU’VE SERVED AS A COUNSELOR AND WORKED TO CREATE CHURCH-BASED COUNSELING MODELS, WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT PEOPLE’S RELIANCE ON COUNSELING OVER FRIENDSHIP?
Many people begin to rely on counseling as a friend-substitute. Counseling is where they are “real” and talk about what’s “hard.” They think if they’re engaging in counseling (which I’m all for) that friendships can just focus on what is “fun” and “good.” The result is that their friendships become more superficial. Ideally, when counseling is needed, it would be a place to talk about and tame the hard parts of life in a way that makes those subjects more approachable in their closer friendships. An indication that someone is ready to graduate from counseling is when he or she feels like they can talk about their hardships in their friendships.
Q: HOW DOES TRANSFORMATIVE FRIENDSHIPS FIT INTO THE CHURCH-BASED COUNSELING SERIES THAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN?
The Church-Based Counseling series is primarily about helping churches create counseling ministries that are relationally sustainable, liability wise, and church compatible. But I didn’t want churches to think, “Now that we have a counseling ministry, that is where we send all the hurting people.” That would make the church less of what God intends it to be.
Transformative Friendships is meant to be a resource that strengthens friendships in a church. That should serve a counseling ministry, if a church chooses to create one, in two ways. First, it helps those who are reaching out for counseling not to over rely on counseling. A counseling ministry cannot and should not privatize discipleship. Second, it creates a relational context for those receiving counseling that makes counseling more effective.
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Let not your heart be troubled by that which the Lord has seen fit to hide from us. The day and the hour is kept secret that we might be given to much holy living and prayer, always ready and never ashamed at the coming of the Lord. Many examples of disaster can be given of individuals and families who have pursued the secret things reserved for God. Let us pursue the revealed will of God and resist all deceivers seeking to give us a secret message from God concerning that which He has reserved only for Himself.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Matthew 25:6
In the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible, the Lord tells us that He created the Heaven and the Earth. He proceeds to give us a day by day, morning and evening account of what He created each of six days before resting on the seventh. He brings these great days of creation back to us on several occasions most explicitly in the 4th commandment, for in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day… (Exodus 20:11). Nevertheless, many well educated Christians approach the first chapter of Scripture and tell us that it doesn’t mean day in the ordinary sense of the word. They tell us it means, or could mean, something entirely different.
Perhaps it surprises us when that which seems to be written so clearly in Scripture is so confused by Christians. It troubles us that the perspicuity of Scripture seems to be ignored and a complex and difficult interpretation is presented in the place of the clear and plain. Such teaching seems to weaken the Christian witness to the world and brings reproach upon the Word of God as novel interpretations are given to what is so simple and elementary. Those who posit strange theories are rightly asked: “If the first chapter takes such elaborate interpretation, how will we ever understand the balance? If we cannot know whether or not God created in six literal 24 hour days how can we actually know whether or not Christ rose bodily from the dead?”
As Jesus left the temple in Matthew 24 he told His disciples that the temple would be torn down. The disciples asked him “When shall these things be?” Jesus then began his discourse both on the end of the Jewish world and Jerusalem as well as the end of the whole world and his return from Heaven. After warnings and instruction Jesus spoke of the end of the world in 24:36 with these words, “but of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven…” 
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